Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Volume 15 [15] 1783274123, 9781783274123

Table of contents :
Illustrations page vi
Tables viii
Contributors ix
Preface xi
1. Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles / Gale R. Owen-Crocker 1
2. Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon England / Maren Clegg Hyer 33
3. Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the 'Nibelungenlied' and 'Völsunga Saga' / Elizabeth M. Swedo 53
4. Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216 / Hugh M. Thomas 79
5. Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe / Tina Anderlini 101
6 Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders / Alejandra Concha Sahli 137
7. The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art / Joanne W. Anderson 157
Recent Books of Interest 183
Contents of Previous Volumes 197

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Contents GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles MAREN CLEGG HYER Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon England ELIZABETH M. SWEDO Unfolding Identities:The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga HUGH M. THOMAS TINA ANDERLINI

Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216

Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe

ALEJANDRA CONCHA SAHLI Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders JOANNE W. ANDERSON The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art MONICA L.WRIGHT is Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 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.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Cover image: Detail of cope in opus ciprense (end of the thirteenth century; Museo della Cattedrale, Anagni). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma.

Editors Wright, Netherton & Owen-Crocker

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Edited by Monica L. Wright, Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker



Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 15

Medieval Clothing and Textiles ISSN 1744-5787

General Editors Monica L. Wright University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA Robin Netherton       St. Louis, Missouri, USA Gale R. Owen-Crocker    University of Manchester, England

Editorial Board Eva Andersson Strand Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen, Denmark Elizabeth Coatsworth      Manchester, England Sarah-Grace Heller Ohio State University, USA Thomas M. Izbicki Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA Christine Meek Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland Lisa Monnas London, England M. A. Nordtorp-Madson University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, USA Lucia Sinisi University of Bari, Italy

Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 15

edited by

MONICA L. WRIGHT ROBIN NETHERTON GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2019 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 2019 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-78327-412-3

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

viii

Contributors

ix

Preface

xi

1  Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles   Gale R. Owen-Crocker

1

2  Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon   England   Maren Clegg Hyer

33

3  Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the   Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga   Elizabeth M. Swedo

53

4  Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216   Hugh M. Thomas

79

5  Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western    Medieval Europe   Tina Anderlini

101

6  Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for    Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders   Alejandra Concha Sahli

137

7  The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in    Late Medieval Art   Joanne W. Anderson

157

Recent Books of Interest

183

Contents of Previous Volumes

197 v

Illustrations Old Rags, New Responses Fig. 1.1 Mantle of King Roger II of Sicily Fig. 1.2 Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry Fig. 1.3 Detail of shroud from St. Bees, Cumbria, England Fig. 1.4 Shoes associated with St. Germanus Fig. 1.5 Shoe associated with St. Dizier Fig. 1.6 Sock from York, England Fig. 1.7 Garment from Herjolsfsnes, Greenland Fig. 1.8 Hood from Orkney, Scotland Fig. 1.9 Alb associated with Emperor Barbarossa Fig. 1.10 Vestments associated with Bishop Augustin Kažotić of Lucera, Italy

3 4 6 8 8 10 12 22 26 27

Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe Fig. 5.1 Shroud of St. Germain, Auxerre, France 104 Fig. 5.2 Shroud of St. Colombe and St. Loup, Sens, France 106 Fig. 5.3 Detail of imperial dalmatic, Vienna 108 Fig. 5.4 Detail of cope in opus ciprense, Anagni, Italy 109 Fig. 5.5 Paintings in the church of Ourjout, Bordes-sur-Lez, 118 France Fig. 5.6 Griffin in the pavement at the Cathedral of Bitonto, Bari,       119 Italy Fig. 5.7 Fresco in the Palazzo Bonifacio VIII, Anagni, Italy 121 Figs. 5.8–5.9 Paintings from the Collégiale de Notre-Dame-la-Ronde,      123 Metz, France Fig. 5.10 Detail of coffin from an altarpiece by the Master of 124 Roussillon Fig. 5.11 St. Clare from the Kamp-Bornhofen Triptych, Bonn, 126 Germany Fig. 5.12 Detail of fig. 5.11 127 Fig. 5.13 Detail of the Majesté Batlló [Batlló Crucifix] 128 Fig. 5.14 Fresco from the Crypt of St. Magnus, Anagni Cathedral,        130 Italy vi

Illustrations Fig. 5.15 Tomb effigy of Heinrich II, Maria Laach Abbey, Germany      131 Figs. 5.16–5.19 Details of the effigy in fig. 5.15 132–135 Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art Fig. 7.1 Annunciation, Sankt Magdalena, Rentsch 158 Fig. 7.2 Detail of the loom in fig. 7.1 158 Fig. 7.3 Ground plan, Dominican Church, Bozen 162 Fig. 7.4 St. John Chapel, Dominican Church, Bozen 164 Fig. 7.5 Giotto’s Annunciation to Anna, Arena Chapel, Padua 166 Fig. 7.6 Annunciation to Anna, Dominican Church, Bozen     167 Fig. 7.7 Giotto’s Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Arena 168 Chapel, Padua Fig. 7.8 Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Dominican 169 Church, Bozen Fig. 7.9 Illustration from the Meditatione de la Vita del Nostro 170 Signore Ihesu Christo Fig. 7.10 Detail of Procession after the Marriage of the Virgin, 174 Dominican Church, Bozen The editors, contributors and publisher 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 publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

vii

Tables Clothing at King John’s Court Table 4.1   Prices of fabrics recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216 Table 4.2   Prices of fur panels recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216

viii

84 87

Contributors MONICA L. WRIGHT (Editor) is the Granger and Debaillon Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her publications include the book Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century Romance (2010) and many articles on the use of clothing in medieval French literature. She has a chapter on literary representations of clothing in literature for the “Medieval Age” volume of the six-volume Cultural History of Dress and Fashion (2016). Her most recent article in Medieval Clothing and Textiles (in volume 14) examined the French literary sources for the term bliaut. 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. Her published articles have addressed such topics as fourteenth-century sleeve embellishments, the cut of Norman tunics, and medieval Greenlanders’ interpretation of European female fashion. 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 on dress and textiles include Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe, with ­Elizabeth Coatsworth (2018); The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450, a database available at http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk; Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook, with Louise Sylvester and Mark ­Chambers (2014); Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, with Elizabeth C ­ oatsworth and Maria Hayward (2012); and The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers (2012). TINA ANDERLINI holds a Ph.D. in Art History and is an associate researcher at the Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale de Poitiers. After completing a dissertation on Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s influences, she has focused on medieval art and costume and the connections between them. Since 2010, she has frequently contributed to the magazines Moyen Âge, Antiquité, and Historia, Histoire et Images Médiévales. Her academic publications include Le Costume Médiéval au XIIIe Siècle (2014) and articles in Medieval Clothing and Textiles and selected conference proceedings on the Middle Ages and the Pre-Raphaelites. ix

Contributors JOANNE W. ANDERSON is Lecturer in Thirteenth- to Seventeenth-Century H ­ istory of Art at the Warburg Institute in London. She is the author of Moving with the Magdalen: Late Medieval Art and Devotion in the Alps (2019). Her research interests include art in the landscape, workshop practice, and patronage in the medieval and early modern periods. She also works on exhibition history in the twentieth century. ALEJANDRA CONCHA SAHLI holds a doctorate in Medieval and Early Modern History from University College London. She studies the function of clothing as a form of social code during the Middle Ages. She focuses, in particular, on the role of religious habits in the construction of the collective identities of religious orders in the late Middle Ages and is currently preparing a book on this topic. She works at the Chilean Ministry of Education and teaches Early and Medieval Church History at Universidad Católica de Chile’s Faculty of Theology.  MAREN CLEGG HYER is Professor of English at Valdosta State University. She specializes in researching textiles and material culture in the literary imagery of Anglo-Saxon England. Her recent publications include Water and the Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, with Della Hooke (2017), and Sense and Feeling in Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, with Gale R. Owen-Crocker (forthcoming), both in the series Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World; and Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays in Honour of Gale R. Owen-Crocker, with Jill Frederick (2016). ELIZABETH M. SWEDO is Associate Professor of Medieval and Early Modern ­European History at Western Oregon University. She specializes in Icelandic religious culture in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, including implementation of ecclesiastical reforms, interactions between laity and clergy, practiced religion, and material culture. Her current research projects explore continental and Icelandic perceptions of as well as devotional responses to natural disasters. HUGH M. THOMAS is Professor of History at the University of Miami and Director of the Center for the Humanities there. His scholarly specialty is the social and cultural history of England from the Norman Conquest to the early thirteenth century. He has published four books, the most recent of which is The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (2014). His current project is a social and cultural history of the court of King John of England, 1199–1216.

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Preface Volume 15 opens with an essay by founding editor Gale R. Owen-Crocker that provides a panoramic overview of the discipline of medieval clothing and textiles. The article affirms the importance of this truly interdisciplinary journal—a unique meeting place for diverse scholars whose academic homes are far afield from one another—for the work of understanding the fabric of the medieval world. The six essays that follow bear witness to a rich diversity of range in chronology, geography, and discipline. Maren Clegg Hyer explores the lexical legacy of “wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon literature. She demonstrates that we must understand the text-textile metaphor found in texts composed in both Old English and Anglo-Latin as reflective of a deep familiarity with the practice of weaving and clothwork in Anglo-Saxon society. She traces this material aspect of literary composition through Anglo-Saxon poetics and through the influence of Greek, classical Latin, and early medieval literature on Old English and Anglo-Latin poets. Elizabeth M. Swedo focuses on the narrative use of clothing in medieval Germanic literature, analyzing the divergent approaches embraced by the thirteenth-century authors of the Middle High German epic poem the Nibelungenlied and its late-thirteenth-century Old Norse prose counterpart Völsunga saga. Swedo demonstrates how the authors of both works richly employ clothing signifiers and relates the differences to each work’s unique cultural milieu. Hugh M. Thomas probes the purchasing habits of the early-thirteenth-century English King John by examining the close and misae rolls that record the king’s chamber and wardrobe. Thomas’s work allows a clear picture to emerge of the importance of clothing and textiles at court, whether as personal adornment or as gifts bestowed upon members of the court. The contemporary literature attests to this focus, but as Thomas concludes, history tells a different story. Tina Anderlini argues that silks with medallion designs were among the most luxurious and desired in Western Europe and relates their appeal to Christian symbolism despite their initial Eastern origin. Assessing the evidence provided by archaeological, textual, iconographical, and visual sources, she suggests that this spiritual connection helps to explain the prevalence of roundels in representations of sacred contexts. Alejandra Concha Sahli asks if the habit does indeed make the religious and examines the various attempts by the Church to regulate the sartorial gestures that materialize the religious praxis of such pious but unsanctioned groups as the ­beguines xi

Preface and the penitents. She concludes that by dressing in habits, members of these extra-­ religious groups alternately enjoyed privileges and risked accusations of heresy. Joanne W. Anderson concludes the volume with an analysis of a representation of the Annunciation in Tyrol, Italy, in which the Virgin’s loom is depicted strung with a partially completed heraldic textile. Anderson asserts that the Virgin’s creation of the textile both represents and elaborates the emerging noble identity of the patron’s family by evoking the rich ties to family and community created through strategic marriage and iconographic imagery. Joining our board this year is Professor Sarah-Grace Heller, author of two articles for our journal (in volumes 5 and 11) and Fashion in Medieval France (2007) and editor of A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age (2016). She is Associate Professor of French at Ohio State University, where she served as director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She has published widely on sumptuary law, fashion in medieval literature, and the semiotics of culture. Professor Monica L. Wright became lead editor for the current volume as founding editors Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker began a phased withdrawal of editorial duties. Monica heartily thanks Gale and Robin for their guidance and mentorship throughout the process of preparing volume 15. Monica will be joined by a new collaborator in 2020, and Robin and Gale will join the journal’s editorial board while remaining General Editors of the affiliated book series Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles (see below). As always, we thank our board members and the many other scholars who have generously devoted their time and expertise to review article submissions and consult with authors. 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 Kalamazoo) or gale. [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 [email protected]. Authors of larger studies interested in submitting a monograph or collaborative book manuscript for our subsidia series, Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and T ­ extiles, 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 to discuss their ideas with the General Editors, Robin Netherton ([email protected]) and Gale Owen-Crocker ([email protected]), before making a formal proposal.

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Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles Gale R. Owen-Crocker

As the founder editors of Medieval Clothing and Textiles make a phased withdrawal and a new team takes over, it is an appropriate time to consider the ways in which our subject has developed, not just in the fifteen exciting years of our editorship but in the last half-century (coinciding with my own career); the current state of the art, including its historiography; and potential new directions. I make no claim to be encyclopaedic: My view inevitably reflects my own research experience and what I have learned from editing submissions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles and other collaborative volumes. I begin with artefacts, commencing at the higher end of the social ladder and the later Middle Ages with surviving complete or near-complete garments, and continuing (by way of explaining the gender imbalances of our evidence) to the earlier material remains of textile and dress accessories from furnished graves in pre- and early ­Christian cemeteries and the organic remains (literally “rags”) from medieval occupation sites. I then consider representations of dress and textile in art and text before going on to examine theoretical approaches to the subject, giving particular emphasis to the usefulness of “object biography,”1 which privileges study of the long-term life of artefacts, including their reuse, modification, preservation, and display, an approach I have found particularly useful in my recent work in collaboration with Elizabeth Coatsworth.2 In following the continued existence of medieval textiles I consider why An earlier, and more autobiographical, version of this paper was delivered as the opening lecture of the “Text-Textile-Texture” collegium at Stanford University in May 2017, under the title “From Dissertation to Database; and from ‘Costume,’ via Cloth, to ‘Dress and Textiles.’”    1 See below, pp. 20–23.    2 Elizabeth Coatsworth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Several items discussed in this paper appear in this book, with high-quality images, discussion, and bibliographies: the mantle and eagle dalmatic of the Holy Roman Empire; the buskins of Clement II; the Durham stole and maniple; the Ailbecunda belt; the shoes of saints Dizier and Germanus; two gowns of Eleanor, queen of Aragon; Greenland garments; the York hood and sock; a headdress from a Frisian terp; Bryggen shoes; the Orkney hood; the cloth-of-gold gown in Uppsala; Garçia d’Medici’s doublet. Where appropriate, original sources are cited in the present paper, but

Gale R. Owen-Crocker and how artefacts have survived and discuss ways of treating and d ­ isplaying them. Finally, this article highlights some gaps and imbalances in our present knowledge and suggests possible future approaches. A major development of the last half-century is that the subject has, rightly, become interdisciplinary. When I began postgraduate research into what was then called “Anglo-Saxon costume”3 this was not the case, and I had to discover the books, journals, and (where they existed) bibliographies for a whole range of different topics: archaeology, literatures, languages, manuscript art, stone sculpture, and ivory carvings. It is now much easier for specialists in one topic to access the work of those in other fields and to become cross-disciplinary in their own writing.4 New researchers do not have the time to reinvent the wheel. They must have easy access to the achievements and variety of scholars who have gone before if they are to push the subject further. This article outlines the major areas which they must consider. SURVIVING MEDIEVAL TEXTILES: SOURCES AND TYPES

Textiles are organic: They rot. They burn easily. They fade. Medieval textile was produced by labour-intensive methods, making it precious. Therefore it was extensively reused, sold on the secondhand market, handed down the social or familial hierarchy, repaired, remade, and often recycled into an artefact different from its original identity. This intensive use meant that much medieval cloth ended up as rags, fated to be burned or discarded, when it was sometimes used in landfill or, in the late Middle Ages, collected for paper-making. The nonspecialist might therefore suppose that little or nothing remains of medieval textile. However, the opposite is true. There are in fact many surviving medieval textiles, some complete or almost whole, thanks to skilful modern conservators and restorers. Many have simply been kept for hundreds of years, usually in church or royal treasuries. Ecclesiastical v­ estments where sources are numerous or obscure, or where the book contains a synthesis or information not available elsewhere, I have cited the book.    3 At that time—1968—“costume” was understood to mean “dress style.” The term has since become largely confined to the more specialised meaning of a dress style deliberately created in imitation of another period or place for the stage, re-enactment, or other performance.    4 In my own Anglo-Saxon area there are annual interdisciplinary bibliographies in past volumes of Anglo-Saxon England and still currently in Old English Newsletter. A subject-specific bibliography is Elizabeth Coatsworth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Medieval Textiles of the British Isles AD 450–1100: An Annotated Bibliography, BAR British Series 445 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007). Recent online bibliographies are Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, “Textiles,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Medieval Studies, 2012, http://www.oxfordbibliographies. com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0184.xml, accessed June 29, 2018; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, “Dress,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Medieval Studies, 2014, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/ obo-9780195396584-0150.xml, accessed June 29, 2018; and Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, “Medieval Textiles,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Art History, 2018, http://www. oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199920105/obo-9780199920105-0130. xml, accessed Jan. 10, 2019. There are annual bibliographies in the journal Costume.

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Old Rags, New Responses

Fig. 1.1:  Mantle of King Roger II of Sicily (1133–34); red silk decorated with gold and silk threads, pearls, gemstones, and enamels. Photo: Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

form the majority of the near-complete survivals. Cloths that had been imported, expensively dyed, woven or decorated with gold thread, or adorned with pearls, gemstones, enamels, and metal plaques were especially valuable. The garments among the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire are outstanding examples: Accumulated over centuries, the surviving vestments include a magnificent mantle (fig. 1.1) and alb, dated by Islamic inscriptions respectively to 1133/4 and 1181. A blue-purple dalmatic with borders of red silk and gold is probably twelfth-century; shoes and buskins, though much altered, may be contemporary. The red silk gloves were made for the coronation of Emperor Frederic II in 1220. The so-called Eagle Dalmatic (see fig. 5.3 in this volume for a detail) and a stole were added in the fourteenth century.5 Made of luxurious silks and sumptuously decorated, these garments are at the peak of the social scale, combining secular power and the spiritual nature of rulership in their vestment-like nature and iconography.6 A survival in more unpretentious materials, but nevertheless still impressive to audiences today, is the 244-foot-long Bayeux Tapestry, a wool embroidery on linen (fig. 1.2). Probably made within twenty years of the Norman Conquest of 1066, which it illustrates, it is first definitely mentioned in an inventory of 1476 and was rediscovered in the eighteenth century. Bayeux Cathedral still owns the wooden box in which it is believed to have been contained. Now on exhibition in carefully controlled conditions,

  5 For a helpful list of relics and chronology, see “Imperial Regalia,” Wikipedia, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Regalia, accessed Feb. 20, 2018.    6 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 19–20, 22, 71–72, 85–88, 233–34.

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Fig. 1.2: Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, showing the Normans feasting after their invasion and Duke William seated with his half-brothers Odo and Robert (eleventh century); linen embroidered with wool. Photo: By special authorisation of the city of Bayeux.

Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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Old Rags, New Responses the Tapestry, with its bright colours and animated figures, draws over 400,000 visitors each year. It is probably the most famous surviving medieval textile.7 Numerous medieval cloths have been recovered from tombs, where airtight conditions have preserved some fibres while others have been damaged or destroyed completely by the rotting of the corpse and other destructive circumstances. Many of these textiles are garments; other surviving cloth items include coffin linings, bedding, and shrouds. Since elaborate tombs and burial in clothes which symbolised the importance of their office were normally the prerogative of only royalty and distinguished ecclesiastics, surviving material is predominantly silk and associated corpses predominantly male. Some discoveries present a time capsule of the burial date, such as the magnificent silk vestments of Pope Clement II, who died in 1047, preserved in Bamberg, Germany. 8 In other cases, such as the shrines of Charlemagne in Aachen, Germany, and St. Cuthbert, in Durham, England, tombs were opened and their contents augmented over centuries of veneration, resulting in the eventual excavation of strata of precious textiles of various eras. Sometimes the probable occasion of the presentation of additional textiles is known: The gold-embroidered stole and maniple found in the shrine of St. Cuthbert originate from early-tenth-­ century Wessex, according to both the inscriptions upon them and their art style. They were very likely given by King Æthelstan, whose visit to the shrine of the seventh-century saint in 934 is documented in an eleventh-century history (formerly attributed to Symeon of Durham), with details of the king’s donation which included a stole with maniple. 9 The Elephant Silk found in the tomb of Charlemagne, who had died in 814, was, according to its inscription, woven in a Constantinople workshop and dates to the eleventh century. It was certainly a royal gift, but whether presented at the opening of Charlemagne’s tomb in 1100 (by Holy Roman Emperor Otto III whose mother and fiancée were both Byzantine), added at his canonisation in 1165 (by Holy Roman Emperor F ­ rederick I), or given at the completion of Charlemagne’s shrine in 1215 (by Frederick II, later Holy Roman Emperor) is uncertain.10   7 For a comprehensive bibliography, see Shirley Ann Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry; Bayeux, Médiathèque Municipale: MS 1: A Sourcebook, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013).   8 Sigrid Müller-Christensen, Das Grab des Papstes Clemens II. im Dom zu Bamberg (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1960); Gregor Kollmorgen, “Catholic Bamberg: The Vestments of Pope Clement II and Other Treasures from the Diocesan Museum,” New Liturgical Movement, May 29, 2009, http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2009/05/catholic-bamberg-vestments-of-pope.html, accessed Dec. 20, 2018; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 18, 295–96.    9 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 327–30.  10 Anna Maria Muthesius, “Silk, Power and Diplomacy in Byzantium,” in Textiles in Daily Life: Proceedings of the Third Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, September 24–26, 1992 (Earleville, MD: Textile Society of America, 1993), available online at Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/580, accessed July 31, 2018; Muthesius, Studies in Byzantine, Islamic, and Near Eastern Silk Weaving (London: Pindar, 2008), 42.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Fig. 1.3:  Detail of fringed outer shroud from St. Bees, Cumbria (fourteenth century, possibly 1368); loom-woven linen. Photo: By permission of Chris Robson and courtesy of Beacon Museum, Whitehaven, Cumbria, UK.

The Elephant Silk was not tailored into a garment and was effectively a shroud. There are many such remains of magnificent textiles from Christian tombs.11 ­L esser-known survivals, relatively simple in terms of textile but unique, and therefore special in terms of cultural history, are two linen shrouds, from a tomb that probably belonged to a local knight fatally injured in Prussia on the Northern Crusade of the Teutonic Knights in 1368 and buried at St. Bees, Cumbria, England. Both shrouds were constructed of several pieces, two fringed (fig. 1.3), treated with preservative, and the whole corpse tied up like a parcel with knotted cord.12 Many surviving textiles have been preserved because of a real or supposed connection with a once-celebrated person. Fragments of high-quality textiles have been found wrapping bones or other relics of now-unidentifiable saints. Marian textile  11 Robin Fleming, “Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Early Medieval Europe 15, no. 2 (2007): 127–58.  12 Deidre O’Sullivan, “St. Bee’s Man—and What 14th Century Shrouds Actually Looked Like” (lecture, London, Oct. 20, 1993), http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/bstsmon3.pdf, accessed Feb. 20, 2018; I. W. McAndrew, J. M. Todd, and Chris Robson, St Bees Man (St. Bees, UK: Parochial Church Council, 2016).

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Old Rags, New Responses relics were popular in the Middle Ages and many survive today, including the silk veil in Chartres, France,13 and a camel hair girdle in Prato, Italy.14 A ninth-century ecclesiastical girdle, preserved in Augsburg, Germany, probably owes its survival to the fact that it was used to support textile remains believed to derive from the belt of the Virgin Mary. In fact the supposed relic (part of which is stitched to the Carolingian girdle and part contained in a silver and glass reliquary attached to it), is centuries later than the supporting girdle. Today, interest in the composite object focuses not on the spurious religious association but on the material objects. Both textiles are tablet-woven. The supporting belt is monochrome, with a skilfully worked inscription, only readable because the differently angled threads of the lettering reflect the light differently from the background. The inscription includes a repeated Christian invocation and a female name, “Ailbecund[a].” The person is unknown, but the name, probably from East Frankia, is relevant both for establishing the origin of the band and to questions of female workmanship and patronage.15 The attached band attributed to the Virgin Mary is twelfth- to fourteenth-century, multicoloured, skilfully depicting stylised animals and birds. It may be Islamic.16 Some garment-relics, shown by modern research to be chronologically incompatible with the saint to whom they are traditionally attributed, may have been linked to that saint erroneously through the desire to own relics, or perhaps because they were utilised in religious services associated with that person. Examples include the embroidered liturgical shoes now displayed at the Musée Jurassien d’Art et d’Histoire in Delémont, Switzerland, once preserved in the relic collection at Moutiers-­ Grandval Abbey and passed from there to the Church of St. Martin in Delémont. The c­ ampagi-type shoes (fig. 1.4), associated with the seventh-century St. Germanus, Abbot of Moutiers-Grandval, could be contemporary with the saint, since they are of an early European Christian style, bearing a family resemblance to undated shoes from Irish peat bogs and those illustrated in the eighth- to ninth-century Book of Kells; but the sandalia-type shoes (fig. 1.5) attributed to an obscure eighth-century bishop, St. Dizier (Desiderius), are probably from the twelfth or early thirteenth century, dated on stylistic grounds from sculptures and by comparison with datable archaeological finds.17 A considerable amount of research has been done on silk textiles which survive in western Europe in various states, from fragments to whole cloths and garments, almost entirely from the Christian period, encompassing the technical details of  13 “Marian Relics,” Textile Relics: Research Guide, Feb. 8, 2011, http://sites.tufts.edu/ textilerelics/2011/02/08/marian-relics, accessed Feb. 20, 2018.  14 Cordelia Warr, Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215–1545 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 35–50.  15 Valerie L. Garver, “Weaving Words in Silk: Women and Inscribed Bands in the Carolingian World,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 (2010): 33–56, at 37–40 and 51–56.  16 Sigrid Müller-Christensen, “Zwei Fragmente eines Zingulums. Aus dem Dom zu Augsburg,” in Müller-Christensen, ed., Sakrale Gewänder des Mittelalters (Munich: Hirmer, 1955), 14; MüllerChristensen, Suevia Sacra: Frühe Kunst in Schwaben (Augsburg: Städtliche Kunstsammlungen, 1973), 136–37.  17 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 380–85.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Fig. 1.4 (top):  Shoes believed to be associated with St. Germanus (possibly seventh century); leather (probably sheepskin) embroidered with red silk. Fig. 1.5 (below):  Shoe (probably erroneously) associated with St. Dizier (probably twelfth century); dyed leather embroidered with gilded leather strips, red silk. Photos: Courtesy of Musée Jurassien d’Art et d’Histoire, Delémont, Switzerland.

8

Old Rags, New Responses the weaving, the origin and interpretation of motifs, and the cultural significance of silk.18 The surviving garments and textiles from Christian tombs, like the dress items surviving in treasuries, are predominantly male-associated and ecclesiastical. Copes and chasubles exist in considerable quantities, sometimes wool but mostly silk. Linen albs are less common, silk dalmatics and tunicles rarer still. Stoles, maniples, episcopal gloves, buskins, and shoes survive in small quantities. Textile remains associated with females are few and predominantly royal, but each unique in the evidence of dress which it yields. The richly dressed corpse of a woman found in the cathedral of Saint-Denis, France, is identified, by the inscription on her ring (Arnegundis, and an abbreviation of Regina), as Aregund, wife of Clotair I, king of the Franks, who died ca. 580. Her clothes were certainly of royal quality. She wore a long silk coat, dyed purple with expensive shellfish dye, with a front opening decorated with tablet weaving and cuffs with tablet weaving and gold embroidery, over a wool garment and possibly a linen one. She wore a silk veil on her head, stockings, cross-garters, and shoes. Over her purple coat was a luxurious garment of fine wool and beaver hair.19 Textile relics of Bathilde, wife of the Merovingian Frankish king Clovis II, later queen regent, nun, and eventually saint, were preserved in her abbey of Chelles, France, along with those of Abbess Bertille. Bathilde died in 680, Bertille ca. 704. Garments attributed to Bathilde include a linen “chasuble” embroidered in silk with depictions of two necklaces, one supporting pendants and a pectoral cross (the queen had abrogated jewellery in her lifetime); a fringed, silk, semicircular mantle; a voluminous linen overgown; a linen shawl; and a long silk ribbon that still binds the remains of her long, once-blonde hair. A silk tunic with silk tablet-woven decoration on the cuff is attributed to Bertille.20 Eleanor, queen of Aragon, who died in 1244, was buried in Burgos, Spain, in the royal mausoleum of her birth family, the rulers of Castile and León, wearing a gold-brocaded green silk gown, tightly laced up the left side and long enough to trail on the floor; a sideless overgown; and a semicircular mantle. Beneath, she wore a linen blouse, and she had a headdress of muslin, silk, and gold.21 There is, in contrast, a predominance of female evidence for the earlier medieval period in the form of grave-goods from pagan and early Christian burials. This is  18 See particularly Anna Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving AD 400 to AD 1200 (Vienna: Fassbaender, 1997); Muthesius, Studies in Silk in Byzantium (London: Pindar, 2004); Muthesius, “Silk, Power”; and Muthesius, Byzantine, Islamic, and Near Eastern Silk Weaving.  19 Sophie Desrosiers and Antoinette Rast-Eicher, “Luxurious Merovingian Textiles Excavated from Burials in the Saint Denis Basilica, France in the 6th–7th Century,” in Textiles and Politics: Textile Society of America 13th Biennial Symposium Proceedings, Washington, DC, September 18–September 22, 2012 (n.p.: Textile Society of America, 2012), available online at Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/675, accessed Feb. 20, 2018.  20 Jean-Pierre Laporte, Le Trésor des Saints de Chelles (Chelles, France: Société Archéologique et Historique de Chelles, 1988); Jean-Pierre Laporte and Raymond Boyer, Trésors de Chelles: Sépultures et Reliques de la Reine Bathilde et de l’Abbesse Bertille (Chelles, France: Société Archéologique et Historique; Amis du Musée, 1991).  21 Manuel Gómez-Moreno, El Pantéon Real de las Huelgas de Burgos (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Instituto Diego Velazquez, 1946), 23–24; Concha Herrero

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Fig. 1.6:  Sock from York, England (tenth century); wool in naalbinding technique. Photo: Courtesy of York Archaeological Trust, York, UK.

because dress fasteners and other jewellery are largely female grave-goods. The positioning of the former, and the fact that many fragments of textile, or oxidised remains of it, have been found on women’s dress accessories, particularly brooch pins, make it possible to reconstruct female clothing style from a time when neither documentary records of dress nor many naturalistic images in art existed. There is much less evidence of dress from male graves.22 Fragments of bedding, textile furnishings of grave chambers, and wrappings of precious objects are also occasionally found. Urban archaeology, which developed enormously in the twentieth century, is a rich source of organic finds including leather and textiles. Major excavations have taken place in, for example, London and York in England, Dublin in Ireland, and ­Bryggen, Bergen, Norway. Finds are sometimes quite closely datable: For example, rags were among the domestic rubbish dumped as landfill to pack the area behind timber revetments built to extend the waterfront facilities of the River Thames in London. Non-organic items among the rubbish, and dendrochronology of the timber, date

Carretero, Museo de Telas Medievales: Monasterio de Santa María la Real de Huelgas (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1988), 47, 52–53; Vestiduras Ricas: El Monasterio de las Huelgas y su Época 1170–1340: Del 16 de Marzo al 19 de Junio de 2005, Palacio Real de Madrid, exhibition catalogue (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2005), 171–73.  22 See for example, for Anglo-Saxon dress, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004); and Penelope Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450–700, CBA Research Report 145 (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007). For Scandinavian dress, the groundbreaking Agnes Geijer, Birka III: Die Texilfunde aus den Gräbern (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1938); Inge Hägg, “Viking Women’s Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archaeological Methods,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting (London: Heinemann, 1983), 316–50; and Thor Ewing, Viking Clothing (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2006).

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Old Rags, New Responses the landfill.23 Finds from Frisian terpen,24 on the other hand, though rich in organic finds, particularly wool, cannot be precisely dated because they emerged in the course of digging for fertiliser, not systematic excavation. Textile remains from occupation sites are mostly fragments—much larger than the scraps found on cemetery dress accessories, but nevertheless rarely recognisable as anything. A sock from York (fig. 1.6), hoods from York25 and Dublin,26 and headgear from terpen27 are unusual in being complete, or almost complete, garments; a buttoned sleeve from fourteenth-century London sheds light on contemporary fashion28 as do remains of silk-embroidered shoes from Bryggen.29 Detailed study of textile fragments, even some of those that are mineralised by contact with the metalwork on which they are preserved, potentially can yield technical evidence of the type of fibre, spinning technique and type of weave, relative fineness or coarseness. The large numbers of surviving textile fragments from burials and earlier medieval occupation sites make it possible to compile comparative studies highlighting regional variations and chronological developments, which can sometimes provide potential for study of sociocultural aspects of textile use such as gender variation in selection of cloth types, or status of particular types of textile.30

 23 Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150–c.1450, 2nd ed. (1992; repr., Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2006).  24 Artificial mounds built for occupation to avoid flooding.  25 Penelope Walton, Textiles, Cordage, and Raw Fibre from 16–22 Coppergate, The Archaeology of York: The Small Finds 17/5 (London: Council for British Archaeology, 1989), 360–61, 375–77, 427, and 438 (cat. 1372).  26 Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, Viking Age Headcoverings from Dublin, Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962–81, ser. B, vol. 6 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2003).  27 Chrystel Brandenburgh, “Old Finds Rediscovered: Two Early Medieval Headdresses from the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8 (2012), 25–47.  28 Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, plate 1 (no. 64).  29 Arne J. Larsen, Footwear from the Gullskoen Area of Bryggen, Bryggen Papers, main ser. 4 (Bergen: Scandinavian University Press, 1992); Gitte Hansen, “Luxury for Everyone? Embroideries on Leather Shoes and the Consumption of Silk Yarn in 11th–13th Century Northern Europe,” in Textiles and the Medieval Economy: Production, Trade and Consumption of Textiles, 8th–16th Centuries, ed. Angela Ling Huang and Carsten Jahnke (Oxford: Oxbow, 2015), 86–103.  30 Klaus Tidow, “Textiltechnische Untersuchungen an Wollgewebefunden aus Friesischen Wurtensiedlungen von der Mitte des 7. bis zur Mitte des 13. Jhs. und Vergleiche mit Grab- und Siedlungsfunden aus dem Nördlichen Europa,” Probleme der Küstenforschung im Südlichen Nordseegebiet 23 (1995): 353–87; Lise Bender Jørgensen, “The Textiles of the Saxons, AngloSaxons and Franks,” Studien zur Sachsenforschung 7 (1991): 11–23; Lise Bender Jørgensen, North European Textiles until AD 1000 (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1992); Rogers, Cloth and Clothing; Chrystel R. Brandenburgh, Clothes Make the Man: Early Medieval Textiles from the Netherlands, Archaeological Studies Leiden University 30 (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2016), reviewed in this volume, p. 184.

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Fig. 1.7:  Garment used as a shroud, from Herjolsfsnes, Greenland (ca. 1434). Photo: Courtesy of Danish National Museums (no. D10581).

Once the practice of burial with grave-goods was abandoned (at different times in different western European cultures), cemetery evidence for dress was no longer being created. Now the dead were buried without the metal brooches, buckles, clasps, and pins that can indicate how clothes were fastened, and therefore also without the metalwork which can preserve textile. They were probably buried naked in shrouds, which have rotted away. A notable exception, however, is the unique evidence from a fourteenth- to fifteenth-century cemetery at Herjolfsnes, Greenland, where garments were preserved by permafrost. Old clothes had been used as shrouds (fig. 1.7): The arms of the corpse were not threaded through the sleeves; the body was simply enveloped in the garment. Though Greenland was a distant, and probably economically fairly poor,

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Old Rags, New Responses colony of Denmark, analysis of the surviving clothes demonstrates complex tailoring and detailed trimming of garments and that they were once smartly coloured.31 IMAGE AND WORD

Traditionally, those writing dress history have drawn heavily on art and on text, at best working in an interdisciplinary way. Particularly productive art sources have been manuscript illuminations and, for the later medieval period, frescoes. (Surprisingly, since the same images often illustrate textiles in the background to the figures, soft furnishings have not received very much attention.)32 Stone sculptures, especially funeral effigies, and memorial brass engravings have also been heavily used. As the Middle Ages shade into the Renaissance, panel paintings on wood, especially portraits, become important sources. Images must, however, be treated with caution as evidence of dress, especially regarding date. Even if an artwork is securely dated, many medieval images were dependent on models; makers of monumental effigies and funeral brasses used stock models, hence their style of dress might be considerably earlier than the date of death of the subject they commemorated. Conversely, artists depicting historical and biblical events habitually dressed the figures (apart from God, Christ, and prophets) in the clothing of their own era. It is rare that a detail of a seam or fastening is depicted, and, in the earlier medieval period at least, figures are rarely viewed from the back; we are presented with a rather bland, “shorthand” view of clothing. There is an understandable interest in depictions of upper-class figures, since their dress is fashionable and elaborate, like the portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford added to a magnificent Book of Hours between 1423 and 1430.33 An artist would naturally wish to show his patrons at their best. When peasants or artisans are depicted, though their costume is different from that of the courts, they generally appear to be well dressed, with no evidence of the piecing and patching which in reality would have been characteristic of the clothing of the poor. For example, the men building the Tower of Babel, in the same Book of Hours, wear colourful tunics, hoods, hose or stockings, and boots. The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412–16 with later additions) seems to be exceptional in showing, in illustrations of the Labours of the Months, a ploughman in a patched tunic, with holes in the knees of his hose (March),

 31 Poul Nörlund [Nørlund], Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes: An Archaeological and Historical Study, Meddelelser om Grønland 67 (Copenhagen: Kommissionen for Videnskabelige Undersøgelser i Grønland, 1924); Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2004); Robin Netherton, “The View from Herjolfsnes: Greenland’s Translation of the European Fitted Fashion,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008): 143–71.  32 The present author plans a volume about soft furnishings provisionally titled Cushioning the Past in collaboration with Elizabeth Coatsworth.  33 The Bedford Hours (London, British Library, MS Add. 18850), fols. 256v, 257v, viewable online at http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages, accessed Feb. 18, 2018.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker a ragged shepherd (July), and a sower with ragged hose (October).34 However, it is worth remembering that today many of us keep a few old garments, clothing near the end of its useful life, to wear when gardening or doing dirty jobs about the house. A medieval person, even in a humble social position, may have had clothing kept for “best” (which would include going to church and special occasions such as weddings), as well as the holey old clothes in which they worked. Public appreciation of art sources for historic dress has moved forward rapidly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as book production has developed from volumes that relied heavily on line drawings and a few black-and-white plates, to those with colour plates; and, above all, with the availability of Internet access to digitized photographs. Although it is still necessary to get special permission to handle a medieval manuscript in a library, or to travel to view a fresco or brass in situ, the fact that selected items are accessible on the Internet, and that details can be enlarged on-screen, has transformed research in textile history. Written sources have generally polarised into literary texts—the province of university language and literature departments—and documentary texts—the province of economic historians. The editing of texts from manuscripts—codices, rolls, and individual leaves—began in the nineteenth century. The majority of literary texts were made accessible in printed form long ago, but there are still historical documents that remain unedited. Few of these texts are solely concerned with dress and textiles. The researcher must dredge through long narrative poems, wills, inventories, and accounts (to name only some of the sources) to extract references. The reduction of teaching in medieval languages, once staple fare in undergraduate degrees, means that the pool of specialists able to read original sources is reducing. When a text is newly edited today, it is advisable to provide a translation. This means, however, that the researcher who cannot read the original language is dependent on the interpretation of the translator, who, in most cases, is not a dress/textile specialist. It is important not to take translation for granted, and to probe the possible meanings of terms. From the nineteenth century up to the present, people researching dress have been interested in what garments were called. Earlier scholars sometimes seized on a term and, unjustifiably, applied it to an item of clothing. Such misapprehensions are gradually being unpicked: Gunna was not the Old English name for a woman’s gown; it was a Latin term for a fur garment worn by male ecclesiastics.35 Medieval people did not call the long tail on their headgear a liripipe. Liripipium is indeed a medieval word, Latin, but was a medical term referring to a funnel. “Liripipe hood” is a modern costume historians’ term. Medieval people would have called the long tail

 34 Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Chantilly, France, Musée Condé, MS 65); for the calendar images, see “Labors of the Months from the Très Riches Heures,” The Public Domain Review, https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-richesheures, accessed Feb. 19, 2018.  35 Owen-Crocker, Dress, 182.

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Old Rags, New Responses a “tippet” or “cornet.”36 Bliaut could refer to both a textile and an item of dress, but its nature remains obscure; the term does not refer to the particular costume depicted on column sculptures at Chartres, with which it has been confidently identified since the nineteenth century.37 In a recent five-year research project, the present author and colleagues at the universities of Manchester and Westminster attempted to document all the dress and textile vocabulary of the British Isles from the beginning of written records up to 1450.38 Britain is linguistically complex, not only because Old and Middle English are Germanic languages, whereas Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Cornish are Celtic, and Latin and French are Romance, but because multilingualism existed from an early stage: Clerics were required to read and write Latin as well as English. Scandinavian settlers, and conquerors, brought their own language(s). Norman French was introduced to England even before the Norman Conquest, since Edward “the Confessor” had spent years of exile in Normandy, and became the language of the court following the Conquest. Add to this the further influence of merchants, diplomats, and other visitors, bringing Frisian, French, and Italian terminology for dress and textiles, and the result is a rich mix. Middle English accountants often used what linguists call “codeswitching,” moving smoothly between English, Latin, and French within a single entry. A word may change its usage over time: kirtle, Old English cyrtel, was probably derived from Old Norse kyrtill; Latin curtus (“short”) probably lay behind it. In Old English it was used both for the short tunic of a man and the longer main gown of a woman, but by the Middle English period referred only to a woman’s garment, worn over the shift but under the cloak. In Modern English it signifies a woman’s undergarment. Other words might have a wide range of meanings in different contexts: Pall, in its many forms and in the Germanic, Celtic, and Romance languages in use in the British Isles, was variously used of a beautiful textile (often nonspecific, sometimes satin, brocade, or expensively dyed); a rich covering for an ecclesiastical object—sometimes in this sense used figuratively; a secular garment—cloak, mantle, or tunic—sometimes rich; a pallium, the narrow vestment which was the insignia of archbishops and popes; and an ecclesiastical chasuble. It is important that scholars adopt accurate and precise terminology of our own era to describe medieval textiles, and it is desirable that there should be consistency between authors. To this end, vocabularies of technical terms in nine languages are  36 Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Liripipe,” 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), 329.  37 Monica L. Wright, “The Bliaut: An Examination of the Evidence in French Literary Sources,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 14 (2018): 61–79.  38 The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain project was directed by Gale R. Owen-Crocker with Louise Sylvester and Cordelia Warr, and completed with the research assistance of Mark Chambers, Stuart Rutten, and Mark Zumbuhl; administrative assistance of Brian Schneider; specialist Celtic language assistance of Michael Hayes and Patricia Williams; and input from Emira Bouhafna, Anne Kirkham, and several undergraduates of Smith College, Northampton, Mass., gaining work experience as honorary fellows. Pamela Walker was the project’s Ph.D. student. The database is freely available at http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker published by the Centre International d’Etude des Textiles Anciens (CIETA)39 and updated in their bulletins. Also useful are the specialist works by Dorothy Burnham and Anne Morrell, the latter specifically relevant for archaeological and historic textiles.40 THEORISING DRESS AND TEXTILES

In the last half-century attention has switched from attempts to establish a chronological picture of what was worn to more theoretical approaches. Theorising fashion has been a major issue in postmodern criticism since the publication of Roland Barthes’ The Fashion System (1967),41 though his focus was on the semiotic language, the “vestimentary code,” of 1950s women’s (French) fashion magazines. In the introduction to his The Systems of Objects (1968), Jean Baudrillard raised the questions of “how objects are experienced, what needs other than functional ones they answer, what mental structures are interwoven with—and contradict—their functional structures, or what cultural, infracultural and transcultural systems underpin their directly experienced everydayness,”42 questions equally applicable to medieval garments, dress accessories, and other textiles as to the modern objects he goes on to consider. Anthropological theory acknowledges the metaphorical significance of cloth-making, -usage and -­giving; this is just as relevant to discussion of the language of medieval poetry43 and other writing,44 to art,45 and to early and later medieval burial practices46

 39 Available at http://www.cieta.fr/uk/publications.pdf, accessed June 28, 2018.  40 Dorothy K. Burnham, A Textile Terminology: Warp and Weft (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); Anne Morrell, The ATN (Archaeological Textiles Newsletter) Guide to Structural Sewing: Terms and Techniques, ATN Occasional Paper Series 3 (Leiden: Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, 1989).  41 Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).  42 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 1990).  43 See, for example, Maren Clegg Hyer, “Textiles and Textile Imagery in the Exeter Book,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 29–39; Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).  44 Andrea Denny-Brown, Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012).  45 Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert, eds., Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and Their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).  46 For example, pre-Christian graves in Western Europe are often found to have been provided with bedding, grave-goods wrapped in textile, and covers for the base of the grave, recently demonstrated for the Netherlands in Brandenburgh, Clothes Make the Man, 199. Precious silks were often used as shrouds in the graves of important persons; see Fleming, “Acquiring, Displaying, and Destroying Silk”; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Textiles in Christian Graves,” in Kulturhistoriske Studier i Centralitet—Archaeological & Historical Studies in Centrality 2 (forthcoming). Rich silks were used to line coffins and knitted silk cushions to furnish them in thirteenth-century royal burials at Burgos; see Gómez-Moreno, El Pantéon Real; Herrero Carretero, Museo de Telas Medievales.

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Old Rags, New Responses as it is to small-scale non-industrial societies which are the concern of professional anthropologists.47 The concept of fashion—what it was and where it began—has become prominent in discussions of medieval dress. Stella Mary Newton and Françoise Piponnier argued for a beginning in the mid-fourteenth century.48 Sarah-Grace Heller advocated the twelfth.49 Heller identified a number of defining criteria, which include a desire for constant change, shared—or resisted—by many individuals in a given society; the introduction of a subtly new, promising social identity and personal satisfaction; rejection of the past; criticism of decayed mores; conspicuous consumption and waste; theatricality; and a sense of the right to pursue pleasure. While it is clear that we have no evidence for some of these criteria from the earlier periods, scholars are now recognising “fashion” much earlier. Stefanie Hoss convincingly presents changes in Roman military belt equipment as independent of technical requirements, rather subject to changes in fashion.50 The present author would argue that “fashion” can be found in the medieval period much earlier than the eras on which Heller and Newton/Pipponier focus: There were two sweeping changes in women’s dress in Anglo-Saxon England, at the turn of the sixth/seventh centuries and again at the tenth century, which involved in the first instance a change in types of brooch and the ways they were worn, and the second the adoption of a voluminous headdress and the disappearance of jewellery from the public appearance of women, as least as depicted in manuscript illuminations.51 The latter at least was unlikely to have been in pursuit of pleasure; it may well have been inspired by Christian art,52 though the voluminous headdress may have constituted conspicuous consumption of textile. Elizabeth Coatsworth notes: “Recognition of the social importance of clothing by people who worked for their living is evident from the formal wedding gifts documented in marriage contracts of the children of leading citizens as early as the eleventh century,”53 citing recent work on the records of medieval Bari, Italy.54 Moralists and satirists confirm the shocking nature of some innovations, including writers from the late seventh/early eighth century onwards attacking women for extreme headdresses  47 Christopher Y. Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 57.  48 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980); Françoise Piponnier, “Une Revolution dans le Costume Masculine au XIVe Siècle,” in Le Vêtement: Histoire, Archéologie et Symbolique Vestimentaires au Moyen Age, ed. Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 225–36.  49 Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007).  50 Stefanie Hoss, “The Roman Military Belt: A Status Symbol and Object of Fashion,” in Dress and Society: Contributions from Archaeology, ed. Toby F. Martin and Rosie Weetch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2017), 94–113, reviewed in this volume, p. 187.  51 Owen-Crocker, Dress, chaps. 4 and 6.  52 Specifically by the dissemination in Western Europe of images of the Virgin Mary in a Middle Eastern headdress; Owen-Crocker, Dress, 220.  53 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 27.  54 Antonietta Amati Canta, “Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 1–43; Lucia Sinisi, “The Marriage of the Year (1028),” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 44–54.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker and men being vehemently abused in the twelfth century for extreme shoes55 and in the fourteenth for skin-tight, genital-revealing hose, particularly offensive when coloured mi-parti!56 Magnificent dress and soft furnishings were tools in the propaganda of rulers from at least the eleventh century. Their clothing and the theatres in which they made their public appearances were orchestrated with splendid textiles to demonstrate power.57 Cloth was exploited by the Church as well as secular authorities.58 The sumptuous furnishings which greeted Eleonora, princess of Naples, as the guest of the Pope in Rome in 1473 are testament to what Jane Bridgeman calls “soft diplomacy and the propaganda of material luxury and gift giving.”59 In the early Renaissance the Medici family cultivated rich dress and other textiles to create a public image of authority and wealth that went beyond death.60 In the great households from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance, dress proclaimed hierarchy; the quantity of fabric granted for the clothing and the choice of fur used to trim it made obvious the relative status of each person.61 The recognition that fashionable clothes were desirable and very visible status symbols clearly spread below the ruling classes: German accountants Matthäus and Veit Konrad Schwarz had their wardrobes recorded in a series of portraits covering the years 1497 to 1561; some of their garments are astonishing in both their intricacy and the extreme nature of their styles.62 Research today looks beyond images of aristocrats who wore fine dress and lived among elaborate furnishings. It is less concerned than earlier works with establishing  55 Owen-Crocker, Dress, 134–37; Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. OwenCrocker, eds., Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2014), chap. 4.  56 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Oxford: University Press, 1990), X, 300–1, translated by Owen-Crocker in Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 274.  57 Stephen Rigby, “Political Thought,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 422–26.  58 Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring, eds., Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014); Maureen Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).  59 Jane Bridgeman, “‘Bene in ordene et bene ornata’: Eleonora d’Aragona’s Description of Her Suite of Rooms in a Roman Palace of the Late Fifteenth Century,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 13 (2017), 107–15, at 115.   60 Eve Borsook, “Art and Politics at the Medici Court I: The Funeral of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistoriscen Institutes in Florenz 12, no. 1/2 (1965): 31–54; Roberta Orsi Landini and Bruna Niccoli, Moda a Firenze 1540–1580: Lo Stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la Sua Influenza (Florence: Mauro Pagliai, 2005); Roberta Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540–1580: Lo Stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici (Florence: Mauro Pagliai, 2011).  61 Frédérique Lachaud, “Dress and Social Status in England Before the Sumptuary Laws,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002); Melanie Schuessler Bond, Dressing the Scottish Court, 1543– 1553 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2019).  62 Ulinka Rublack and Maria Hayward, eds., The First Book of Fashion: The Book of Clothes of Matthäus and Veit Konrad Schwarz of Augsburg (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

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Old Rags, New Responses norms; instead, there are a number of studies of “Otherness,” demonstrating that artists used certain kinds of textiles and garments conventionally. Certain headdresses indicated “foreignness,” Eastern exoticism;63 jagged and particoloured garments identified entertainers and minstrels, sometimes pagans and evil figures;64 stripes and other patterned garments, bright colours, skin-tight clothing, and women’s trains were used to indicate reprehensible behaviour, particularly in religious artworks.65 However, it is important to recognise that in artworks these details are semiotic, signs planted by artists and recognised by viewers, yet fashions such as stripes, dags, mi-parti, and trains were in fact in common use. Ruth Mellinkoff notes: Tight-fitting clothing was frequently condemned—and equally often worn. Members of all classes of society were remarkably capable of ignoring not only criticism of trendy fashions but also the sumptuary regulations outlawing them. The criticism of pious moralists and other conservatives is faithfully mirrored, however, in religious art, where enemies of the faith are repeatedly depicted in brightly coloured, skintight clothes.66

Recent focus on dress in relation to the body means that dress study is no longer confined to artefacts of fibre or leather worn as clothing and the fasteners, jewellery, and other appendages and items classed as “dress accessories.” It can include refinements of the body itself 67 in ways that vary according to time, place, culture, and fashion: hairstyle and the shaping or removal of body hair;68 cultivation of long, shaped fingernails such as the sharpened talons which Aldhelm condemns in the late seventh century;69 changing the appearance of the skin temporarily with cosmetics70  63 John Block Friedman, “The Art of the Exotic: Robinet Testard’s Turbans and Turban-like Coiffure,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008): 173–91.  64 John Block Friedman, “The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist Writers,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 121–38; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Fools in the Bayeux Tapestry,” Text 42 (2015): 4–11, at 5.  65 Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric, trans. Jody Gladding (New York: Washington Square, 2003); Friedman, “Iconography”; Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Cordelia Warr, “The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in the Camposanto Last Judgment,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 11 (2015): 99–117.  66 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 39.  67 Martin and Weetch, Dress and Society, 1–2.  68 Penny H. Jolly, “Pubics and Privates: Body Hair in Late Medieval Art,” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. Sherry C. M. Lindquist (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 183–206; John Block Friedman, “Eyebrows, Hairlines, and Hairs ‘Less in Sight’: Female Depilation in Late Medieval Europe,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 14 (2018): 81–111; Roberta Milliken, ed., A Cultural History of Hair in the Middle Ages (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).  69 Aldhelm, De Virginitate, LVIII. See Rudolf Ehwald, ed., Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919), 318; Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren, eds., Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), 128.  70 Probably in use in England and on the Continent as early as the sixth century if the identification of a few dress accessories as cosmetic brushes is correct; Owen-Crocker, Dress, 68 and note 120. See also Aldhelm, De Virginitate, XVII, in Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 246, and Lapidge and

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker or permanently with tattoos; and piercing the body to display jewellery or other items, amuletic or decorative. Attention has turned to cultural issues: tools, technology, and distribution of textiles, and hence to the artisans who made them.71 Many formal illuminations of women doing textile work are illustrations of figures in classical stories, such as Penelope, and must be understood in that context. Bas-de-page images and witticisms showing working women may be more genuine, such as in the Luttrell Psalter (1325–35), which contains one of the earliest depictions of a spinning wheel alongside a woman carding wool, as well as a humorous marginal image of a woman beating a man with a distaff, and a convincing detail of daily life in which a woman feeds chickens with distaff and drop spindle tucked under one arm.72 Manuscripts of the Tacuinum Sanitatis, a translation of an Arabic work on medicine and health, contain several images of tailors at work as well as street scenes involving the purchase of garments.73 The Nuremberg Housebooks, which record the men accepted as brethren into a community of twelve pensioners between the early fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, have portraits of each man in his working environment, which in the case of workshops, contain tools. Many of the men are engaged in textile production or associated trades, like producing textile tools or making dress accessories. Men packaging goods, and merchants selling them, work with cloth-wrapped bales secured by cords.74 OBJECT BIOGRAPHY AND AFTERLIFE

The theory of “object biography” formulated by Igor Kopytoff and originally applied to anthropology, proposes that objects, as well as human beings, may be seen as having life stories: Herren, Prose Works, 73; Montserrat Cabré, “Cosmetics,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret C. Schaus (New York: Routledge, 2006), 173–74.  71 Penelope Walton, “Textiles,” in English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, ed. John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (London: Hambledon, 1991), 319–54; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past; Eva Andersson Strand and Sarah-Grace Heller, “Production and Distribution,” in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age, ed. SarahGrace Heller (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 29–52.  72 Luttrell Psalter (London, British Library, MS Add. 42130), respectively folios 193r, 60r, 166v; viewable online at http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages, accessed Feb. 19, 2018.  73 Of particular note are a group of copies of the Tacuinum Sanitatis illustrated in northern Italy in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, notably Vienna, Austrian National Library, MS s. n. 2644; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1673; Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 4182; Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université, MS 1041; and Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 3054 (formerly Leber 1088). Some illustrations from these are viewable at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tacuinum_sanitatis, accessed Feb. 21, 2018. For additional images, see Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis (New York: George Braziller, 1976).  74 Nürnberger Hausbücher (Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderbücherstiftungen) (Nuremberg, Germany, Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°), viewable online at http://

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Old Rags, New Responses In doing the biography of a thing, one would ask questions similar to those one asks about people: What, sociologically, are the biographical possibilities inherent in its “status” and in the period and culture, and how are these possibilities realised? Where does the thing come from and who made it? What has been its career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognised “ages” or “periods” in the thing’s “life,” and what are the cultural markers for them? How does the thing’s use change with its age, and what happens to it when it reaches the end of its usefulness?75

The theory was subsequently used by prehistoric and, later, medieval archaeologists. It is particularly appropriate for dress and textile studies: firstly, because many excavated dress accessories were manifestly old when buried, sometimes broken beyond practical use; some probably heirlooms; some, particularly bag/ amulet collections and finds from settlement sites, probably curated—that is, collected and retained for some purpose (memorialisation, healing)—by their last medieval owners;76 and secondly, because textile is particularly liable to be remade, repaired, and recycled. Alexandra Lester-Makin has recently applied object biography theory to selected early medieval embroideries,77 and this approach is implicitly used throughout the recent study of surviving garments by Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker.78 This approach is particularly fruitful for stray finds, textiles discovered with no context at all, or with none recorded. It may be possible to reconstruct a biography of the textile from evidence presented by the material remains themselves. Its components and techniques may have stories to tell. A case in point is the wool hood found in a peat bog in Mainland, Orkney Isles, Scotland (fig. 1.8). The body of the hood is made from a piece of undyed woollen cloth which, before its long exposure to peat, was reddish-brown. The wool, of hairy medium texture, was probably from local sheep and probably spun by four different spinners, since the fibre varied in thickness. It was woven in an irregular chevron twill, each change of direction corresponding to a www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de, accessed Feb. 18, 2018. Textile-related occupations include carding wool, dyeing, weaving, teaselling, shearing, and embroidering silk. There are tailors and cloth merchants working in their shops, distaff-makers, a man making wired wool cards, and others making implements for teaselling and needles. Packers and merchants use the end product. Manufacturers of dress accessories include those making and selling hats, and those making buttons, leather bags, fabric purses, laces with metal aiglets, metal buckles, and wooden clogs. Unfortunately the two gold-spinners are not shown at work, though one holds up a spool of his shiny product.  75 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91, at 66–67.  76 Alexandra Knox, “Middle Anglo-Saxon Dress Accessories in Life and Death: Expressions of a Worldview,” in Martin and Weetch, Dress and Society, 114–29.  77 Alexandra M. Makin, “Embroidery and Its Context in the British Isles and Ireland during the Early Medieval Period (AD 450–1100)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 2016), 40–45; Alexandra Lester-Makin, The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: The Sacred and Secular Power of Embroidery, Ancient Textiles Series (Oxford: Oxbow, forthcoming).  78 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past.

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Fig. 1.8:  Hood from Orkney, Scotland (ca. 250–615); loom-woven and tablet-woven wool. Photo: Courtesy of the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh.

change of spindle. The cloth had been used before it was remade into the hood, since it was worn and repaired with a darn and a little decorative stitching (chain-stitch embroidery) around the darn. For the later use, a rectangle was cut from the cloth, folded, and tailored into a hood of a size to fit a child of about eight. Its lower edge was finished off with a narrow tablet-woven band, probably purpose-made, originally 22

Old Rags, New Responses three colours. Lower still, a longer, wider, fringed band, in black and white stripes, was attached. It had probably been recycled from an adult’s cloak and, being longer than the hood’s lower edge, was wrapped round twice. (It was not cut down to fit the hood, perhaps with a view to future recycling.) Leather thongs were attached to the front. The hood was excavated in 1867. Repairs in cotton thread date to the nineteenth century. The garment was first supposed to be Viking. Radiocarbon dating in 1981 reassigned it to ca. AD 250–650, so it probably belongs to Pictish culture, and in fact both the fringe and the cape effect find parallels on Pictish-era stone sculptures from mainland Scotland. The observation that it was child-sized was made during the creation of a reconstruction and published in 2001.79 Recent scholarship has highlighted what Elizabeth Coatsworth has called the “life after life/afterlife” of medieval textiles.80 Instead of changes to an original textile being ignored or treated as intrusions, they are now considered of interest both in their own right and as a part of the composite artefact which exists now. This may be pursued by the artefact biography approach (above), documentary evidence, or both. Maren Clegg Hyer draws on both documentary evidence and artefacts surviving in Durham, Milan, and Maaseik, Belgium, to demonstrate regular recycling of expensive borders and embroidered panels in Anglo-Saxon England.81 It is an intrinsic feature of the biographies of some medieval items that they have spent far longer in their “afterlife” than they did in the situation for which they were created. A fifteenth-century cloth-of-gold gown preserved in Uppsala Cathedral was probably made for a single occasion, a future queen’s wedding gown, but has survived far longer as a supposed souvenir of probably the wrong queen.82 The original purpose of a textile may be lost or disguised; the Creation Tapestry, an eleventh-century embroidery now displayed as a hanging in Girona Cathedral, Spain, may originally have been a presbytery carpet.83 Though patching and darning were taught to children in western Europe and America as late as the 1950s, there is little need of these crafts today. Since, in our affluent societies, we have clothing specifically designed to withstand sports or industrial activity, it is rare that our everyday garments get torn or worn out. In an era when clothes are relatively cheap, we have many, and we replace them often. In medieval and Renaissance times, although dependents in a great household would be issued with new clothes on a regular basis, at least twice a year, they wore them day in and day out. Fifteen-year-old Garçia de’Medici, a son of the ruler of Florence, was buried in December 1652 in a red satin doublet with gold brocading and collar embroidered with pearls and gold, a garment which had probably been purchased for him in May  79 Ibid., 32–34.  80 Ibid., 15; also Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Survival, Recovery, Restoration, Recreation: The Afterlife of Medieval Garments,” in Refashioning Medieval and Early Modern Dress, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, forthcoming).  81 Maren Clegg Hyer, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined Textiles in AngloSaxon England,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8 (2012): 49–62.  82 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 210–14.  83 Manuel A. Castiñeiras, The Creation Tapestry, trans. Amanda Dawn Blackley (Girona, Spain: Catedral de Girona, 2011), 79–85.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker that year. Over the course of seven months, the elbow had been clumsily patched and the beautiful garment had been treated brutally when thirty-one additional eyelet holes (for lacing the doublet to the breeches) were stabbed, higher up the garment than the original ones which were carefully finished.84 Such alterations give insight into ad hoc repairs and adaptations, carried out no doubt in the Medici case by household servants, and lower down the social chain, by female servants and family members. New clothes, or rather clothes made of new cloth, were a luxury some never enjoyed. Fripperers dealt in secondhand clothing, as either their main business or a sideline. Clearly some lived on the fringe of the law, trading stolen goods or operating forbidden evening markets.85 Botchers repaired and remade old clothes for the secondhand market,86 a trade that was still carried out in the slums of London in Victorian times.87 Particularly fruitful object biography and afterlife study have been applied to the Bayeux Tapestry. The 1982–83 examination included both scientific studies and close observation of the back of the Tapestry, including its repairs and patches, remains of hanging loops, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century lining,88 and its sixteenth-century backing strip, now bearing the inked scene numbers which postdate the lining.89 Nineteenth-century restoration employed synthetically dyed threads of a different torsion and thickness from those used in the original embroidery. They include a bright red and threads now almost colourless. Embroidery stitches that pass through a patch must be restoration. It is important that scholars seeking both to appreciate the art and to interpret the narrative of the Tapestry pay attention to what has been restored, which is sometimes only possible by looking at the recently published photographs of the back90 and checking against drawings made before the restoration.91 Alterations include the ingenious choice of chain stitch for a ship’s rope—it indicates the texture of a rope  84 Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women c1560–1620 (London: Macmillan, 1985), 53–54; Arnold, “Cut and Construction,” in Moda alla Corte dei Medici: Gli Abiti Restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia (Florence: Centro Di, 1993), 49–73, at 49–50; Orsi Landini and Niccoli, Moda a Firenze, 59–61.  85 Kate Kelsey Staples, “Fripperers and the Used Clothing Trade in Late Medieval London,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 (2010): 151–71; Kate Kelsey Staples, “Fripperers,” in OwenCrocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 212–13; Kate Kelsey Staples, “Con-artists or Entrepreneurs? Fripperers and Market Space in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Paris,” Journal of Medieval History 43, no. 2 (2017): 228–54.   86 Kate Kelsey Staples, “Botcher,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 92–93.  87 See George Gissing’s novel The Nether World, published 1889.  88 Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzeman, “The Technical Study of the Bayeux Embroidery,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History: Proceedings of the Cerisy Colloquium (1999), ed. Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy, and François Neveux (Caen, France: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004), 83–109.  89 Gabriel Vial, “The Bayeux Embroidery and Its Backing Strip,” in Bouet, Levy, and Neveux, Bayeux Tapestry, 111–16.  90 See “Tapisserie de Bayeux,” L’Agence Photo, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, https://www. photo.rmn.fr/Package/2C6NU05WWFF8, accessed Feb. 21, 2018.  91 See the drawings of the Tapestry published in 1729–30 by Bernard de Montfaucon and the hand-coloured drawings made by Charles Stothard in 1816–18, reproduced in Martin Foys,

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Old Rags, New Responses rather well, but is an obvious repair; and the controversial arrow which appears to​ pierce Harold’s eye, but which is a restoration following original stitch holes that may have depicted something different.92 Recent studies have not only attempted to trace the whereabouts of the Tapestry before its documentation in the fifteenth century,93 but have also considered its adventures during the French revolutionary years, the Napoleonic era, and World War II.94 A €20-million project to study, conserve, and restore the Tapestry is planned for 2021–23. New technology may reveal hitherto unknown details of known textiles: Preliminary experiments on the Bayeux Tapestry with ultraviolet photography have indicated the use of different dye-lots which cannot be distinguished with the naked eye;95 microscopic images, exploited by Alexandra Lester-Makin in a significant reinterpretation of a seventh-century embroidery fragment,96 also offer exciting possibilities. A surviving textile may have been conserved and reconstructed at various times since discovery, with subsequent keepers often disagreeing with earlier ones. An earlier version of the garments of Aregond, in Saint-Denis, for example, was very different from the latest. There is disagreement about whether, and how, textiles should be displayed to the public and considerable variety in practice. One textile may be exhibited, with great attention to physical environment—controlled lighting, temperature, humidity, dust-proofing—as the Bayeux Tapestry is; another may be concealed from light, and therefore from sight, for its own protection, only to be seen by bona fide scholars with special permission, like many medieval textiles and textile fragments in European and American museums. Some holy relics are still kept in church treasuries, some simply stored, almost forgotten, and others produced and displayed in seasonal celebrations and processions. Many primary

The Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition: Online and CD-ROM (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, Digital Scholarly Editions, 2003, 2013).  92 The arrow in the eye is dismissed in Martin K. Foys, “Pulling the Arrow Out: The Legend of Harold’s Death and the Bayeux Tapestry,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed. Foys, Eileen Overby, and Dan Terkla (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2009), 158–75, with the reconstruction of the material object explained at 168–70.  93 George Beech, “Could Philip the Good of Burgundy Have Owned the Bayeux Tapestry in 1430?” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83, no. 2 (April 2005): 355–65; George Beech, “An ‘Old’ Conquest of England Tapestry (possibly the Bayeux), Owned by the Rulers of France, England and Burgundy (1396–1450),” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83, no. 4 (October 2005): 1017–27.  94 Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (London: Chatto and Windus, 2006), sections 3 and 5; Shirley Ann Brown, “Decoding Operation Matilda: The Bayeux Tapestry, the Nazis, and German Pan-Nationalism,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, ed. Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Dan Terkla (Oxford: Oxbow, 2011), 17–26.  95 Unpublished lecture with video by Sylvette Lemagnen, formerly Curator of the Bayeux Tapestry, Oxford, 2016.  96 Makin, “Embroidery,” 190–210 and figs. 62–82.

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Fig. 1.9:  Alb once thought to be associated with Bishop Bernulph of Utrecht, now with Emperor Barbarossa (probably twelfth century); linen, with tablet-woven bands, silk with gold and silver-gilt threads. Photo: Courtesy of Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands.

relics are bones, but these are very often wrapped in textile; sometimes, as we have seen, the textile itself is the relic. Styles of display are controversial. Although most surviving textiles were designed to be seen upright—either worn on the body or hung on a wall—displaying them vertically may cause them to be damaged by their own weight. This was the case with the linen alb once considered to be a relic of the eleventh-century Bernulph, bishop of Utrecht, but now thought to be a gift of the twelfth-century Emperor Barbarossa (fig. 1.9). Elaborate gold bands attached to the neck, cuffs, and hem make the alb an 26

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Fig. 1.10:  Vestments attributed to the Blessed Augustin Kažotić, bishop of Lucera, Italy (ca. 1303–23): linen alb with apparels embroidered in gold thread and silks; matching stole; unmatching maniple. Photo: Courtesy of Enrico Folieri and the Museo Diocesano, Lucera, Italy.

effective display item but are not practical for wearing.97 A supporting fabric attached to it during conservation was insufficient to prevent distortion of the alb from the heavy gold. In a further conservation procedure in 1972, it was restored to shape and subsequently displayed in such a way that the gold bands were unobtrusively supported.98 There are various treatments of historic garments in museum and gallery displays. They can be laid flat, hung up, or worn by dummies, themselves variously minimalist or naturalistic. The fourteenth-century alb attributed to the Blessed Augustin Kažotić, bishop of Lucera, Italy, and now displayed there in a showcase, is supported at an angle, with a mirror beneath to show the embroidered apparels which decorate the back of the hem as well as the front (and also the pectoral at the neck, and the cuffs). A matching stole and dissimilar maniple are laid out on the alb.99 This angled display (fig. 1.10), adopted at the conservation and restoration of the alb in 2000, is certainly good practice, and a considerable improvement on its pre-restoration existence folded up in a cardboard box! It bears no relation, however, to the way any of the vestments were worn. Hangings can be displayed in a reconstructed medieval ambience like the Flemish tapestries in the Cloisters Museum in New York, or they can be exhibited in a startling modern way, as the Bayeux Tapestry has been since 1983. Beautiful cushions, which were sometimes placed under the heads of corpses, and exist in various  97 Information from Maartje de Jong, Museum Catharijneconvent.  98 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 182–84.  99 Ibid., 193–96.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker techniques—knitted silk, woven silk, silk patchwork—present their own challenges. Generally decorated differently on each surface, they can be effectively displayed horizontally, as they were used, with the use of mirrors to show the back; or vertically, so that both sides are visible. The researcher coming to an artefact that has been conserved and displayed may sometimes obtain permission to have a textile removed from a showcase and to examine it, wearing gloves. It is sometimes desirable to ask the curator to turn it, since these items are so fragile. Some, however, cannot be moved. Displaying a textile in controlled conditions closes off certain lines of research to future generations, as do the practices of sewing, or gluing, a historic textile to a support (the latter procedure not followed these days, fortunately). It is important that when conservation and restoration take place, detailed documentary and photographic records are kept. However, metal detection, urban development, and new infrastructure—railway and road building—mean that archaeological finds have been made at such a rapid rate in recent years that there are not enough experts to process them or funds to support analysis and publication. Analysis of a single large or complex textile object may take years as various processes are required, and experts may disagree on interpretation. The finely decorated garment fragments from Llan-Gors, Wales, which are from the ninth or tenth century, are a case in point; the very fine and regular decoration has been published as “embroidery,” but the alternative possibility that it could be soumak-type brocading, made on the loom (therefore a kind of tapestry weaving) has also been considered and experimental reconstructions created.100 CURRENT INTEREST, GAPS, AND IMBALANCES

Reconstruction of medieval and Renaissance garments has become popular in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sometimes in relation to the hobby of re-­ enactment, sometimes not, and ranging from the thoroughly scholarly, using handmade materials and historic methods, to some more dubious approximations worn by amateur enthusiasts. Janet Arnold’s pioneering research101 and the organization The Tudor Tailor102 represent responsible and influential work. Some reconstructors have to work from images, when historic artefacts do not survive. Others are fortunate enough to have access to the fragile original items. Recent work of particular note includes Tasha Kelly’s 2012 reconstruction of the pourpoint of Charles VI of France, which she dates tentatively to 1378–79,103 and Cynthia Jackson’s 100 Summarised in Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Llan-Gors Decorated Garment,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 338–40. 101 Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 1: Englishwomen’s Dresses and their Construction 1660–1860 (London: Wace, 1964); Arnold, Patterns of Fashion c1560–1620. 102 Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davis, The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Dress (London: Batsford, 2006). 103 Tasha D. Kelly, “The Tailoring of the Pourpoint of King Charles VI of France Revealed,” ­Waffen- und Kostumkunde 55, no. 2 (2013): 153–80. The original is in the Musée des Beaux-

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Old Rags, New Responses ongoing reconstruction of the sixteenth-century Broderers’ Crown,104 both of which were funded by the Society of Antiquaries’ Janet Arnold Award; and Ninya Mikhaila’s copy of the jupon or coat-armour of the Black Prince (1376), which was made as part of a television miniseries.105 Despite the rise of interest in the classes who had to work for their living, the dress of the aristocracy still has more coverage than that of other seculars, largely because of their patronage of manuscript illuminations and the accounts and other records of their clothing that remain. The clothing of the working classes as depicted in the Tacuinum Sanitatis and Nuremberg Housebooks is undoubtedly plain in comparison. However, archaeological evidence tells its own story. The fragments of fabric from medieval London open a window on medieval town life. They demonstrate a great range of fabrics and techniques.106 Finds include a jaunty striped garter with a scalloped edging,107 laces, hairnets, buttons, woollens with bands of contrasting colour, and rich silks. Lisa Monnas’s discussion of selected colour terms for textiles in late medieval England, France, and Italy points to a rich range of colours and shades for wool and silk cloths produced on a commercial scale and certainly not confined to the aristocracy.108 Accounts of medieval textiles certainly focus on dress rather than furnishings. There are individual studies, of furnishings in Anglo-Saxon homes109 and London houses110 and a recent discussion of beds and bedchambers.111 There are also studies of painted cloths112 and tapestry hangings, of which many from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance still survive;113 but the subject merits a fresh and comprehensive approach.

Arts, Chartres, France. Additional information from Tasha Kelly to Gale Owen-Crocker, unpublished email. 104 Unpublished emails from Cynthia Jackson to Gale Owen-Crocker. 105 A Stitch in Time, BBC4, broadcast Jan. 31, 2018. The original is no longer accessible, but the reconstruction was made in consultation with Lisa Monnas, the most recent scholar to examine the garment. The original is in Canterbury Cathedral, England. 106 Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing. 107 Ibid., 142–45; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 286–88. 108 Lisa Monnas, “Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 25–57. 109 Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life: Domestic Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2007): 1–12. 110 John Schofield, Medieval London Houses (1995; repr., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 111 Hollie L. S. Morgan, Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations, and Realities (York, UK; York Medieval Press, 2017), chap. 1. 112 Nicola Costaras and Christina Young, eds., Setting the Scene: European Painted Cloths from the Fourteenth to the Twenty-First Century (London: Archetype, 2014); Susan E. James, “Domestic Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England: Imagery, Placement, and Ownership,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 139–60. 113 See, for example, Adolfo Salvatore Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993); Victoria and Albert Museum, London, online catalogue, https://collections.vam.ac.uk, accessed Feb. 5, 2018.

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Gale R. Owen-Crocker However, present and future are bright. The increasing legitimisation of cloth and clothing as an academic subject,114 and its general interest for the public, as shown for example in recent TV broadcasts, the popularity of the 2016–17 “Opus Anglicanum” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,115 and media enthusiasm about the planned visit of the Bayeux Tapestry to England in 2023, are positive signs for the study of medieval dress and textiles. At the popular level the topic is recognised as an enjoyable route into social and economic history, and in scholarly terms it has firmly established a place within the theoretical and innovative approaches which have characterised late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century writing about the past. POSSIBLE FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Although similar patterns of dress accessories in female graves have made it possible to reconstruct the burial garments for early Anglo-Saxon England, Merovingian Frankia, and Viking Scandinavia, the subject is certainly not closed. No two graves with grave-goods have identical artefacts and positioning, and there must have been a great deal of individuality about the arrangement of dress. Contemporary male dress is much less understood. However, archaeology continually provides new evidence. Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, for example, are being discovered at a rapid rate.116 A chance survival of organic remains, especially in an unusual position, might provide evidence for a garment not previously known to exist. Penelope Walton Rogers’s recognition of bands lying vertically in seventh-century male graves led to her deduction that certain men of this period were wearing a “warrior jacket” with a wrap-over front, previously attested only in metalwork art in England; and that gold brocaded bands in princely Anglo-Saxon male graves at Prittlewell and Taplow as well as a minstrel’s grave in Cologne, Germany, may have derived from such garments.117 There is more concern now than in the past to relate grave-goods to the body with which they were found, and techniques such as DNA testing and collagen testing of bones for pregnancy and lactation can tell us much more about the people who were buried with these items. Hopefully we may in the future establish family relationships in cemeteries and learn more about the relationship between dress and life cycle than we do at present. From the later medieval period, there are many tombs in churches which have not been opened and will probably not be opened unless structural repairs to the surrounding building demand it or ethical attitudes change. Some of these may 114 Demonstrated by conferences such as the Stanford University collegium which gave rise to this paper and the Fordham University Conference “Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages,” March 17–18, 2018. Historic dress is now studied in degree-level courses at a number of institutions in Britain and North America. 115 Clare Woodthorpe Browne, Glyn Davies, and M. A. Michael, eds., English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016). 116 Pers. comm. from Catherine Hills, Cambridge University, May 27, 2017. 117 Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 210–16.

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Old Rags, New Responses contain garments. However, non-intrusive methods are developing. Cameras can be inserted through tiny apertures, and scanning techniques can be applied to potentially furnished burials. Undoubtedly new and developing technology is an exciting way forward. A new set of photographs of the Bayeux Tapestry was taken in 2017 as a preliminary to the planned restoration project (p. 25, above), and the images will be published after the completion of that project. It has already been revealed that ultraviolet fluorescent imaging shows up the sequence of interventions, demonstrating that there were more recent, probably twentieth-century, restorations to the Tapestry than previously realised.118 The combination of technology and archaeology may produce surprising results. It was recently revealed that a seventh-century garnet pendant worn by an Anglo-Saxon woman buried at Winfarthing, Norfolk, was made of Sri Lankan gold.119 It has been known for much longer that the round frames of Anglo-Saxon women’s amulet bags were made of elephant ivory; the possibility that the cloth bags themselves were imported into England is an intriguing, more recent, suggestion.120 Undoubtedly there is great potential in collaborations between the humanities and science. A current project examining Iberian textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum is a case in point;121 a future project on the textiles wrapping animal mummies at the University of Manchester is another.122 There are many potential research projects that might be carried out on surviving medieval textiles. For example, it would be illuminating if chemical analysis could indicate the sources of the silk embroidery threads in surviving opus anglicanum embroideries, to determine if they all came from the same area, if different workshops had a single supplier or multiple ones, and if this information could be used along with analysis of technique and appreciation of art styles to indicate relationships between different surviving pieces. Such research projects require resources, both financial and technical, time, and consent. They require not just individual interdisciplinarity but cross-disciplinary collaboration between field-, laboratory-, museum-, and library-based scholars. First of all, they need people with the vision and the will.

118 Clotilde Boust, Anne Maigret, and Jérôme Rumolo, “Étude par Imagerie Scientifique de la Tapisserie de Bayeux,” in L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux: Naissance, Composition et Style d’un Chef-d’Œuvre Médiéval: Colloque International Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux 22–25 Septembre 2016, ed. Sylvette Lemagnen, Shirley Ann Brown, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Bayeux, France: Point de Vues / Ville de Bayeux, forthcoming), 333–41, English summary at 341. 119 Widely published in the press after it was included in the 2017 report of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. 120 Discussed in Owen-Crocker, Dress, 69 and note 126. 121 Information from Ana Cabrera Lafuente. 122 Information from Professor Tony Freeman.

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Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon England Maren Clegg Hyer

The overlapping, metaphorical relationship between text and textile is overt in the Old English and Latin literatures of Anglo-Saxon England, and one metaphor that capitalizes on such a connection is poet or author as “wordweaver.” One hypothesis to explain the metaphor—or rather, cluster of metaphors—in Old English literature is that Anglo-Saxon peoples were aware of the visual and etymological relationship in Latin between words for weaving and writing or composing. That they were clearly influenced by Latin examples of such metaphors is indubitable, and I will examine the metaphor’s transmission, and indeed genealogy, through a series of classical and late Latin texts known to have inspired Anglo-Latin texts, the latter of which have a fascinating inter-genealogy of their own. But to consider the connection solely through the lens of Latin source study forecloses other important possibilities. A more significant question is why such a metaphor would resonate sufficiently to take on a rich life of its own in Old English as well as Anglo-Latin literature; indeed, why such a metaphor or group of metaphors would be used to describe not solely Latin composition, but also Old English poetic techniques. Interrogating the resonance of text/textile metaphor allows for far more complex lines of enquiry. What elements of the material culture of textiles among the Anglo-Saxons would make a “wordweaving” metaphor comprehensible and attractive to its authors? What aspects of the composition of Old English poetry would make an original or a translated metaphor seem apt? What characteristics of stylized Anglo-Latin writing—from riddles to saints’ lives and passages of exegesis—would render the metaphor apt for those among the same specialized population of writers working in Anglo-Latin? Building on prior and present research, I will attempt to trace these patterns and relationships across the metaphors of “wordweaving” in the literatures of Anglo-Saxon England.

A version of this article was delivered as an address at the “Text–Textile–Texture” collegium at ­Stanford University in May 2017.

Maren Clegg Hyer LATIN WORDPLAY: TEXERE, TEXTUM, AND ORDIOR

Textual-textile metaphors are embedded in the Latin lexicon inherited by the ­Anglo-Saxons, or at least, by the small but significant portion of the Anglo-Saxon population that was textually as well as orally literate, or perhaps literary. The Latin words associated with “weaving,” texere/contexere, carry dual meanings, and had long done so: texere/contexere, “to weave,” and textum, “a web,” also became texere/ contexere, “to compose,” and textum, “text,” by (and perhaps before) the pre-Augustan days of Rome, and similar conflation had probably occurred in Greek and other Indo-­ European and non-Indo-European languages long before.1 They knew likewise the related word ordior, which developed a similar double meaning: “to lay out a warp” also came to be “to begin (a work).” Old English glossaries make it clear that some awareness existed among the ­Anglo-Saxons of the play on words associated with Latin texere, textum, and ordior.2 In glosses of the later tenth to early eleventh centuries, texo is ic wefe (both “I weave”), texta is gewefen (“woven”), and ordior is ic hefaldige (“I begin a warp,” as attaching heddle rods and leashes is part of laying a warp for the most characteristic loom of the period, the warp-weighted loom).3 An eleventh-century gloss makes the connection of this textile word to the textual: Texuisse is ðæt he awrite (“what he wrote”—an imperfect translation).4 This awareness has been used as one easy hypothesis to explain a beautiful text-and-textile metaphor used by the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf. “WORDWEAVING” IN OLD ENGLISH POETRY

Writing in about the ninth century, Cynewulf is one of the few named Anglo-Saxon poets whose work has survived until today.5 He wrote at least four lengthy poems,  1 The conflation of linguistic composition and weaving in Greek texts can be found as early as

 2  3  4  5

Pindar and perhaps Homer; see Pindar, Olympian Odes, Pythian Odes, ed. and trans. William H. Race, Loeb Classical Library 56 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 113, lines 86–87; John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro, The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 113. For non-Indo-European languages, see Scheid and Svenbro, Zeus, 111 and 204–5 n. 1; H. Moisl, “Celto-Germanic *Watu-/Wotuand Early Germanic Poetry,” Notes and Queries 225 (1980): 98–99. Jan Hendrik Hessels, ed., An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1890), B151, 25; S230, 107. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. Thomas Wright and Richard P. Wülcker, eds., Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (2nd ed., 1884; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 188.8, 188.9, and 188.3. Ibid., 492.17. Throughout this chapter, I refer to the poet of Elene as “Cynewulf ” in keeping with long­­ standing scholarly tradition. However, not all scholars accept Cynewulf ’s authorship of the entire work. For an overview of the controversy, see Jason R. Puskar, “Hwa þas fitte fegde? Questioning Cynewulf ’s Claim of Authorship,” English Studies 92 (2011): 1–19. For the full text of Elene, consult The Vercelli Book, ed. George Philip Krapp, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 66–102.

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature signing each one in runic code. In a famous passage from one of these poems, Elene, he explains the process of his work in creating the poem: wordcræftum wæf  ond wundrum læs, þragum þreodude  ond geþanc reodode nihtes nearwe. (lines 1237–39a) [I wove with wordcraft and selected marvels, deliberated at times, and searched out ideas carefully through the night.]

He conceives of his ability to complete such work as a divinely inspired gift:      gife unscynde mægencyning amæt  ond on gemynd begeat, torht ontynde,  tidum gerymde, bancofan onband,  breostlocan onwand, leoðucræft onleac. (lines 1246b–50a) [the Mighty King bestowed a glorious gift and anointed the intellect, revealed a brightness, prolonged the hours, unbound bodily frame, unwound the mind, unlocked poetic skill.]

What could have inspired such a metaphor? As I have suggested, the awareness of the texo/texere relationship in Latin makes the borrowing of the Latin metaphor an attractive solution. However, such an answer, on its own, is unimaginative and quite likely inaccurate. Simple conflation or borrowing presupposes a simple, unidirectional relationship that ignores time, space, language, and material culture. One question a simplistic source model neglects, for example, is, whether the Old English—or indeed the Latin—metaphor was original or influenced in its creation in another language tradition, why would such a metaphor linking text and textile be created or translated—linguistically and culturally—to describe an Old English—or an Anglo-Latin—poem? The answer to that question is far more interesting, and I would argue aptness or resonance would be critical to such a borrowing, from a material and creative perspective, as well as a genealogical one. My task in this article will be to look at each of the elements necessary for the metaphor to resonate: the creative material aspect of the equation (“weaving” or “interweaving”), the creative literary modes of the Anglo-Saxons (the “word”), and the potential genealogies of the metaphor. “Wordweaving” as metaphor is best assessed in the light of all three. MATERIAL CULTURE AND METAPHOR

Material resonance matters for the use of metaphor, perhaps far more than we often consider. Creative writers can, of course, make up completely novel and wholly incomprehensible metaphors that make connections their audiences cannot fathom from a material perspective, but there are compelling reasons for them not to do so, particu35

Maren Clegg Hyer larly if one assumes that most poets want their work to be understood, appreciated by the correct audiences, and as a consequence, valued and preserved among their people. Thus it is likely that “wordweaving”—or any other textile metaphor—would have demanded at least a basic familiarity with weaving and other types of textile work in order to have appeared an attractive connection within the literatures of the Anglo-Saxons. As I have discussed elsewhere, textile production, including weaving, was a fact of everyday life in Anglo-Saxon England, across all times and regions, as well as social stations and levels of religious commitment.6 As abundant textual, pictorial, and archaeological evidence suggests, textiles produced from sheep wool, processed flax, and—for upper-class people—silk were likewise a highly visible feature among all classes and regions of Anglo-Saxon England. Writers, including monastic ones, make reference to all aspects of textile production: preparation and finishing, spinning and weaving—often on the warp-weighted loom, if weave styles and archaeological finds of loom weights are considered. In discussing loom imagery found in the works of the renowned late-seventh-/early-eighth-century monastic writer Aldhelm, Gale R. Owen-Crocker has observed that “it is interesting to find a male scholar, Aldhelm, using the technical terms of the woman’s craft of weaving.”7 It would be logical for women, as the prototypical creators of textiles in Anglo-Saxon culture, to have recognized and used such imagery, but how would male monastics have known so much about textile work? Such familiarity is very likely to have been gained with exposure to domestic environments, perhaps the domestic environments of childhood—where both women and children were present, and women were identified with spinning, weaving, and creation of fabrics and garments8—or subsequent visits to the domestic workspaces of Anglo-Saxon women, lay or ecclesiastical. We have evidence for such visits in a Vita of Dunstan (an early-eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon saint) by a writer designated as Author B. His narrative tells of Dunstan’s arrival as a guest of a noblewoman named Æthelwynn, who, alongside her “workers,” is engaged in creating embroidery. Dunstan comes to help design an ecclesiastical vestment, but also arrives prepared to entertain them with poetry and song, accompanied by his harp.9 This shared artistic context pairs textile work and the creative energies  6 Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Woven Works: Making and Using Textiles,” in

The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011), 157–84.  7 Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 279–80. See also her article “Aldhelm,” 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), 31–34.  8 As an Anglo-Saxon maxim states, for example, “fæmne æt hyre bordan geriseð” [a woman belongs at her embroidery]. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 156–63, at 159, line 63.  9 William Stubbs, ed., Memorials of Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 63 (1875; repr., Wiesbaden, Germany: Kraus, 1965), 20–21.

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature of a poet/singer, called a scop or “shaper” in Old English. Dunstan is a creator of both poetic words and designs for threads. Fine finishing in brightly embroidered and tablet-woven fabrics was something for which Anglo-Saxon women, in particular, were renowned, in both secular and ecclesiastical contexts, and production of cloth in modes both humble and great was likewise a daily feature of the Anglo-Saxon experience. The braided and tablet-woven borders of Anglo-Saxon garments were considered in particular an identifying factor for the English and their textile work, and looking closely at them, we see another visual analogue that regularly connected weaving, embroidery, and other decorative arts among the Anglo-Saxons: elaborate geometric and figural interlace.10 Interlace of several types, including patterns of geometric and figural interweaving, is well-­attested in objects dated across the period and appears with regularity on the handful of examples of embroidery that remain, as well as in metal, bone, ivory, and manuscript. The material culture of textiles across the period thus suggests that weaving and interweaving were dominant artistic styles that surrounded Anglo-Saxon writers in multiple media, and a number of such styles were employed in the construction of both textiles and books. Metaphors of interwoven work were clearly resonant within their culture. That this connection existed in the material context is undisputed. Weaving and interweaving were more than just visual analogues, however. As it existed among the Anglo-Saxons, textile work is also experientially resonant with the construction of text—oral or written—at the level of process. A skilled weaver plans carefully for color and weave pattern long before she stretches the warp threads on the loom or decides the number of leashes and heddles she will use. A skilled maker of tablet-woven borders or braids must consider color and texture with similar insight and care. A poet acts similarly, planning the structures, sequences, and events to be included as the basic “warp” or “threads” of the narrative. The weaver interweaves weft threads—perhaps in differing colors—across the warp, skillfully creating a texture and a design. The maker of borders and braids twists and works threads to the same ends. The poet makes similar, thoughtful selection of varying words, images, and sounds to produce a written texture and design that gives poetic life and color to the larger narrative of the work. The result for both arts is a creation meant to be noted for its design, its beauty, and its technical prowess, all a testament to the skill of its creator. “Wordweaving” is indeed a natural metaphor that would have resonated on several very beautiful material levels across all elements of Anglo-Saxon society.

10

A particularly good example can be found in the borders of the page known as “David Victor” in the eighth-century Durham Cassiodorus (Durham, UK, Cathedral Library, MS B. II. 30, fol. 172v): Among the other interlaced patterns is a distinct twill weave. The image can be viewed at the Durham Priory Library’s digital collections website: https://iiif.durham.ac.uk/ index.html?manifest=t2mrn3011371&canvas=t2tcr56n1104 (accessed Aug. 1, 2018).

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Maren Clegg Hyer OLD ENGLISH POETICS

The material culture of textiles among the Anglo-Saxons thus provides a rich set of connections that would make a metaphor like “wordweaving” resonate powerfully for a poet’s audiences. But a second element must by extension also be true. The metaphor of “wordweaving” would need to resonate in the world of text, or “word,” as noted above. More specifically, if Old English poetic composition itself were not similar to the process of weaving, then the metaphor of “wordweaving” would have been dissonant or perplexing to Anglo-Saxon writers and their audiences—and it would have required extensive explanation to avoid falling flat. The component elements of Old English poetic style, then, must be accurately described as “woven” in order to explain the connection of the second element—“weaving”—to the first—“word.” As it happens, both the poetics themselves and descriptions in Old English of the scop’s creative process more than meet such a requirement. An apt example with which to begin is one of the earliest examples of traditional Old English poetry extant, “Cædmon’s Hymn.” It is a poem that, according to Bede, was constructed orally by divine inspiration to a former cowherd turned monk, and eventually written down: Nu sculon herigean  heofonrices weard, meotodes meahte  and his modgeþanc, weorc wuldorfæder,  swa he wundra gehwæs, ece drihten,  or onstealde. He ærest sceop  eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe,  halig scyppend; þa middangeard  moncynnes weard, ece drihten,  æfter teode firum foldan,  frea ælmihtig.11 [Now must we praise  the Protector of heaven-kingdom, the might of the Measurer  and His inner thought, the work of the Glory-Father,  as He for each of the wonders, the eternal Lord,  created a beginning. He first shaped  for the sons of earth heaven as a roof,  the Holy Shaper; then middle-earth,  mankind’s Guardian, the eternal Lord,  afterwards He made the earth for men,  almighty Lord.]

As with most Old English poetry, there is no end rhyme in the poem. Connection is provided instead by alliteration intertwining sounds across a caesura between half-lines, so that, for example, the letter m connects meotodes meahte or the “might of the Measurer” to his modgeþanc or “inner thought” (line 2) and middangeard, “­middle-earth,” to him as the guardian moncynnes, “of mankind” (line 7). As in almost all Old English poetry, poetic half-lines often contain formulae, or repeated “stock” 11

“Cædmon’s Hymn,” in The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, AngloSaxon Poetic Records 6 (New York: Columbia University Press; 1942), 106.

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature expressions that link the body of Old English poems within, but also to one another. Thus, the expression moncynnes weard appears within the poetic translation into Old English of Genesis (lines 860 and 904), as well as in “Cædmon’s Hymn”; meotodes meahte appears within and among four other poems for eight times total (Genesis 62; “Solomon and Saturn” 3, 61, 98, 127, and 134; Elene 121; and “Resurrection” 19). The expression heofonrices weard creates links within and across even more texts, with at least 23 total occurrences in 12 other poetic texts in Old English (Genesis 442, 477, 543, 637; Exodus 140; Daniel 4, 9, 139; Andreas 17, 18; “Dream of the Rood” 56; Elene 76, 136, 197; “Guthlac” 187, 237; Juliana 59; Metrical Psalms 657, 679, 753; ­Menologium 1; “Judgment Day” II 15; and “For Unfruitful Land” 11).12 Another prominent feature of Old English poetry is variation, or repetition of ideas with slightly varying emphases. This feature is obvious in “Cædmon’s Hymn,” as the interlinked descriptions for God, for example, interweave details together into a texture composed of his many divine characteristics. The techniques identified are not unique to “Cædmon’s Hymn.” A passage from Beowulf highlights the same type of poetic design:        Hwilum cyninges þegn, guma gilphlæden,  gidda gemyndig, se ðe eal fela  ealdgesegena worn gemunde,  word oþer fand soðe gebunden;  secg eft ongan sið Beowulfes  snyttrum styrian, ond on sped wrecan  spel gerade, wordum wrixlan. (lines 867b–74a)13 [At times a thane of the king, an exultant warrior mindful of poems/songs, one who remembered a great many of the ancient traditions, arranged other words properly bound; the man then began wisely to rehearse Beowulf ’s undertaking, and fluently to tell the adapted story, to vary words.]

This second passage contains imagery reminiscent of “wordweaving” and explains the creation of poetry in images quite similar to those in Elene. According to the poem’s author, after Beowulf ’s defeat of Grendel, at the celebration in the hero’s honor, a poet or scop [shaper] constructs a poem in the traditional oral formulaic style of early northern Europe, interweaving Beowulf ’s new exploits into the narrative traditions of legend. The Beowulf poet describes the wording of the created poem as soðe gebunden (line 871a), defined by the Dictionary of Old English as figurative, “either ‘bound in 12

13

In each instance, the citations were located through The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey, John Price Wilkin, and Xin Xiang (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project 2009), http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus, and reflect naming traditions and lines cited there. All citations from Beowulf are drawn from Robert E. Bjork, R. D. Fulk, and John D. Niles, eds., Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). I have not used the macrons and other pronunciation guides for letters used there, but have adopted the text in all other respects, including variants and lineation.

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Maren Clegg Hyer truth’ or perhaps, as has been suggested, ‘correctly joined by the device of alliteration’ (attested in late Middle English; cf. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 35: with lel letteres loken).”14 Certainly the passage, like all of the over three thousand lines of Beowulf, is bound across lines by alliteration, as when guma gilphlæden, “the exultant warrior”—or “boast-building” warrior, more literally—is connected to the description gidda gemyndig, “mindful of poems/songs,” interlinking ideas as well as sounds to describe the poet and his composition of a warrior’s victory song (line 868). Even within itself, the compounded adjective gilphlæden—representative of the many compounds and kennings characteristic of Old English poetics—interconnects the two: the boasting of great deeds and the creation of a poem as the vehicle or form for such content. The expression wordum wrixlan (line 874a), “to vary words,” suggests semantic variation, which, as discussed above, is a technique that creates a texture across the text, with the use of overlapping but slightly differing images in the process of narration. Both images describe the composition of poetry with elements reminiscent of interweaving: the oral poetry of the scop of Hrothgar’s hall, like the written poetry of Beowulf itself, is constructed and bound by skillful linguistic wordplay (alliteration), carefully selected and stacked details (variation of words), and adapted “marvels” from older narrative sources. While soðe gebunden of the Beowulf poet may or may not be textile imagery, the drawing together and binding of disparate elements into a poetic whole has a similar look to weaving of words, as a body must be onband [unbound] and a mind onwand [unwound] for words to be bound or “woven” together (Elene, line 1249). Cynewulf ’s poem Elene is constructed on very similar lines. Each of its 1,300 lines is interlinked across a caesura by carefully selected, alliterating words, many of them arranged in poetic formulae that are recognizably repeated from poem to poem.15 As in other Old English poetry, many lines of Elene create poetic accretions of images (semantic variation), creating a narrative texture for Cynewulf ’s audience to both “see” and hear.16 The construction of so lengthy a poem with words chosen and intertwined by such thoughtful design required considerable skill, indeed demonstrating that poetic skill is a “glorious gift.” Like the composition of other poems in the traditional Old English style, the poet’s composition of Elene is thus well-described as a feat of “wordweaving.” As all of these elements demonstrate, interweaving or weaving is a reasonable description of the construction of the Old English poetic line, with its interlaced alliteration and the interconnections across lines inherent to poetic compounds and variation.

14 15

16

Ashley Crandell Amos et al., eds., Dictionary of Old English, fasc. B (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), s.v. “(ge)bindan, A.2.” In his extensive analysis, for example, Andy Orchard documents many of the common formulae found in Elene and a wide assortment of other Old English texts. Andy Orchard, “Both Style and Substance: The Case for Cynewulf,” in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. Catherine E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (Albany: State University of New York, 2003), 271–305. See, for example, the additive accretion of epithets describing Constantine (11–14a) or the profoundly beautiful variations on words for a sailing ship (243–46a).

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature A number of scholars have observed these interlinked or interwoven patterns, and some have suggested additional layers of “interweaving” within the design of Old English poetry. James C. Addison proposes that “interwoven” or “interlace” alliterative poetics may extend beyond interwoven words and images of individual alliterative lines, stretching across entire sections of poetry interconnected by sounds and related ideas.17 He demonstrates that the first, third, and seventh lines of “The Battle of Brunanburh” “exhibit the interlace of theme, semantics, and sound”:18 Æþelstan cyning,  eorla dryhten (line 1) [Athelstan king, lord of earls] … Eadmund æþeling,  ealdorlangne tir (line 3) [Eadmund prince, eternal glory] … afaran Eadweardes,  swa him geæþele wæs (line 7) [sons of Edward, as was natural for them]19

Addison suggests that the focus on an individual name as the determinant for each line’s dominant alliterative letter is not a coincidence; the poem links the names of a royal father and two sons, the heroes of the poem. Each brother is also placed in his relationship to the other through parallel syntax across lines: Athelstan, the king, and Eadmund, the prince. This parallel is followed by a second: the second half of each of these lines is also linked by alliteration, eorla dryhten and ealdorlagne tir. Addison also notes a semantic relationship among the words Æþelstan, æþeling, and geæþele. All three words have the underlying meaning “noble.” Thus, through semantic interlace, the poet emphasizes one key message of the poem, the nobility of the heroic royalty being described. Addison states that his observations beyond the poem suggest that such interlacing across levels of sound and meaning is “typical” of the poem20 as well as much of Old English poetry, calling the techniques “widespread.”21 Addison’s argument for interlinear, alliterative interlace builds on the renowned analysis of “interlace poetics” by John Leyerle. In “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf,” Leyerle suggests that Beowulf demonstrates an interlace or interweaving of thematic material that extends across and links the entire narrative poem as past actions—or “episodes”—are intertwined thematically and symbolically with actions of the narrative

17 18 19 20

21

James C. Addison, “Aural Interlace in ‘The Battle of Brunanburh,’” Language and Style: An International Journal 15 (1982): 267–76, at 267. Ibid., 268. Addison quotes from “The Battle of Brunanburh,” in Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, 16– 20. The translation here is his. Addison, “Aural Interlace,” 270. He includes analysis of an interesting second group of lines: “Sceotta leoda and scipflotan” (11), “secga swate, siðþan sunne up” (13), “sah to setle. Þær læg secg mænig” (17), and “ofer scild scoten, swilce Scittisc eac” (19). The interlinear, interlaced alliteration of sc and s words is obvious. Sceotta and Scittisc set off this section of the poem in an alliterative envelope of sorts, words “similar in both etymology and sound.” Ibid., 267.

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Maren Clegg Hyer present.22 For example, Leyerle observes that an episode involving Beowulf ’s uncle Hygelac on his fateful Frisian expedition is alluded to in several meaningful, episodic moments across the narrative.23 The first reference takes place as the Danes give a famous treasure, the necklace of the Brosings, to Beowulf; the poem refers immediately thereafter to its loss when Hygelac is killed during a raid on the Frisians. The treasure is thus connected with disaster, and is perhaps a foreshadowing of Beowulf ’s later, fateful encounter with treasure at the dragon hoard. The second reference occurs, in fact, when Beowulf is preparing to meet the dragon, creating a parallel between the two rash actions, both of which result in the death of the lord of the Geats. A third allusion takes place in the same context as Beowulf recounts seeking vengeance— without a sword—against Hygelac’s killer at the Frisian raid. Beowulf asserts he will always show that kind of bravery until his sword fails him, lines thoroughly prophetic of his—perhaps—rash and fateful fight against the dragon, initially alone with little but his sword. The final reference comes after Beowulf ’s death as his people recall the feud begun by Hygelac’s raid, worrying about retaliatory action awaiting them as a consequence. As Hygelac’s rash battle caused the death and destruction of almost all of his fighting troop then, so it may now extend destruction to the rest of the Geats. The narrative thread following Hygelac’s choice thus weaves through the entire text, linked in turn to Beowulf ’s own final fight and his people’s doom. As Leyerle points out, the parallels between the main narrative thread and the episodic thread are striking: treasure, rash action resulting in the death of the lord of the Geats, swords failing and Beowulf standing alone, and consequent destruction resulting for the Geats.24 Leyerle notes a number of other potential interlaced, thematic threads, observing, “The themes make a complex, tightly knotted lacertine interlace that cannot be untied without losing the design and form of the whole. The tension and force of the poem arise from the way the themes cross and juxtapose.”25 Could such intertwining threads of narrative represent “wordweaving”? It is possible; Leyerle himself links Cynewulf ’s “wordweaving” to the interlace analogy. For himself, Leyerle imagines the intertwinings as a different type of weaving than that done with warp and weft, seeing instead the straightforward braiding or interweaving of narrative threads as the correct analogue.26 Both potential analogies thus rely on images of interwoven threads, but with different types of techniques. Either or both could be what the Anglo-Saxon

22 23 24 25 26

John Leyerle, “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf,” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 (Oct. 1967): 1–17, at 1. See Beowulf, lines 1202–14, 2354–68, 2501–9, and 2913–21. Leyerle, “Interlace,” 7–8. Ibid., 13. Such evidence leads Leyerle to argue emphatically, “There are no digressions in Beowulf” because of the “interwoven coherence of the episodes.” Gale R. Owen-Crocker (in a private communication) has pointed out that to today’s craftpersons and textile scholars there is a distinction between “weaving,” which involves the insertion of a weft between the warp threads, and “braiding” or “interlace,” which requires no weft and is constructed only by the manipulation of warp threads; but this verbal distinction might not have existed in the poet’s time.

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature “wordweavers” imagined when using “weaving” as a word to describe their work in Old English and Anglo-Latin. Pauline E. Head argues that further interlace or interweaving of poetic and thematic elements occurs across the entire Old English poetic corpus, not only in the well-attested formulaic phrases, as already discussed, but also in thematic threads and linked cultural symbols such as the beasts of battle or the “hero on the beach” that appear again and again throughout Old English poetry. Head contends that such commonalities create an associative continuity within and between individual poems: They “would have reflected and renewed depictions of carnage in stories previously told, binding the new to the old and drawing the past into the present. The poet’s recollection and repetition of the theme would have signified continuity and the cyclic movement of time.”27 Interwoven sounds, words, lines, events, and themes stretching within and across different texts within the Old English—and perhaps Anglo-Latin—corpus, from Judith and Beowulf to Juliana, suggest links and interconnectedness reminiscent of a “wordwoven” approach to poetics. If such poetic interconnections and intersections were evident to Anglo-Saxon poets, as their own words seem to suggest, Cynewulf and other Anglo-Saxon poets could easily have seen interlacing threads and woven designs as resonant metaphorical ways of describing the composition of Old English verse. LATIN AND ANGLO-LATIN TRADITION

I began this essay with an unusual method of investigating the “wordweaving” metaphor; rather than resorting to Latin references that might have inspired Cynewulf ’s image in Old English, I examined what might have attracted him to such a metaphor in the first place: material and literary poetic resonance within his own native tradition, both elements often neglected in a discussion of this nature. But in addition to this context for the “weaving of words” in Old English literature, there are also examples of the metaphor of “wordweaving” in the other literature of the Anglo-Saxons: ­Anglo-Latin literature. In some ways, that parallel lexis is just as likely to grow from the same factors already discussed, but it also grows from an earlier Latin tradition with its own literary cachet. I will turn now to a discussion of both. Anglo-Latin examples of “wordweaving” in the texts of Anglo-Saxon England date as early as the late seventh century in the writings of Aldhelm, who describes the biblical style of the books of Job and Daniel as prosa contexitur [composed/woven in prose] and texuisse [woven], respectively, the latter reference appearing in his influential prose De Virginitate.28 He uses a related image of weaving chaplets as an equivalent to 27 28

Pauline E. Head, Representation and Design: Tracing a Hermeneutics of Old English Poetry (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 161. Aldhelm, Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Rudolf Ehwald, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919). Job: Aldhelm, Opera, 63, lines 15–16; translation from Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren, eds., Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge: D. S.

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Maren Clegg Hyer constructing text, as in his work De Metris, in which poetic feet “centuplis metrorum frondibus contexuntur” [are woven with the hundred-fold leaves of metre].29 Although Aldhelm very frequently employs textile metaphors throughout his writing, it is not possible to determine if he sees the first two instances as textile metaphors, but it is certain that he envisions composition as an interweaving. He is also clearly drawing on some level of precedent: his first example listed is directly inspired by Jerome.30 Aldhelm did not invent the metaphor he employed. It had a genealogical cachet of its own that may also have contributed to his use of it. A metaphor like “wordweaving” was in currency among the Greeks as early as the day of Pindar, a poet, like Aldhelm, known for using elaborate poetics that included alliteration, rhythm, riddles, and kennings. Pindar describes his work, “I weave for spearmen / my varied hymn.”31 Pindar is not alone among the ancient Greeks in his use of the metaphor,32 and although it is unlikely that classical Greek poetry would have informed the works of Aldhelm, the Romans, whose works were well-known to Aldhelm, likewise inherited the metaphor, evident in the very Latin word conflation discussed at the beginning of this article: texere [to weave] and textum [a web] also meant texere [to compose] and textum [text] from early in the Roman period.33 Representative examples of the metaphor appear in the letters of Cicero, as he describes his prose style, “epistulas vero quotidianis verbis texere solemus” [truly, we are accustomed to weave epistles from everyday words],34 unlike Sophists who, according to Cicero, both “intexunt fabulas” [interweave stories] and incorporate elaborate wording into their writings.35

29 30

31 32

33 34 35

Brewer, 1979), 35. Daniel: Aldhelm, Opera, 251, line 7; translation from Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, 77. For additional discussion of Aldhelm’s use of “wordweaving,” its possible sources, and its descendants, see Maren Clegg Hyer, “Text, Textile, Context: Aldhelm and Wordweaving as Metaphor in Old English,” in Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays in Honour of Gale R. Owen-Crocker, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Jill Frederick (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2016), 121–38, and Hyer, “Woven Words and Spider’s Webs,” chap. 5 in Weaving Wife and Spinning Whorl: Textiles and Textile Imagery in Anglo-Saxon England, forthcoming. Aldhelm, Opera, 77, lines 19–21; translation from Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier, Aldhelm: The Poetic Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 191. Jerome, Santi Eusebii Hieronymi, Stridonensis Presbyteri Opera Omnia, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina 28, 2nd ed. (Paris: Migne, 1890), col. 1141. An image roughly similar to Aldhelm’s examples is found in Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Prudentius, ed. and trans. H. J. Thomson, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 398 (1949; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 154, lines 208–9, but woven crowns are ubiquitous features in Greek and Latin poetry. Pindar, Odes, 1.28–29, 1.115, lines 86–87. According to Scheid and Svenbro, Bacchylides and other choral poets use weaving as a metaphor for their lyric poetic songs; they argue the metaphor may begin even earlier, in the works of Homer, although Homer describes the crafty weaving of spoken political speeches by Odysseus and his companions, rather than poetic weaving. Scheid and Svenbro, Zeus, 21, 117, and 119, and 113, respectively. Ibid., 141–55. “Epistulae ad familiares: ad M. Varronem et ceteros,” in Cicero, The Letters to His Friends, ed. and trans. W. Glynn Williams, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 26 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 262. The translation here is mine. “Orator,” in Cicero, Brutus: Orator, trans. and ed. G. L. Hendrickson and H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library 342 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 352. The translation

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature Cicero’s influence on Aldhelm is not documentable, but subsequent writers in the fourth and fifth century, perhaps influenced by Cicero and earlier generations, also use the metaphor, and those intermediary writers were very well-known and cited by Aldhelm and other writers in the period. One such intermediary writer, Jerome, for example, describes the Psalms as “eiusdem numeri texuntur” [woven/composed with the same number] of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, referring to the acrostics of Psalms 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145 in particular.36 Augustine of Hippo, Prudentius, and Paulinus of Nola use similar expressions, in many instances using texere—and perhaps its rhetorical “cachet” of “weaving the word”—instead of componere [to compose] or compositio [composition] to describe writing; other writers’ use of different phrasing suggests that “wordweaving” for composition was one option of many.37 The use of the metaphor continues into the sixth century with another writer known to have influenced Aldhelm and his countrymen, Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian writing in Merovingian Gaul. In an elegy mourning the death De Gelesuintha, he laments, “quis valet ordiri tanti praesagia luctus? / stamine quo coepit texere flenda dolor” [Who can begin weaving the web of the presages of such great grief? With what thread can sorrow begin to weave what is to be mourned?].38 The example is striking because it is triply textile-related, with the lines not only relying on the double meanings inherent to texere, but also the meanings embedded in ordiri and stamine: Who can bear to watch as the threads are laid out (ordiri), the warp (stamine) ready to weave (texere), when the woven product narrates the death of a beloved person? Who can bear to lay the narrative thread to compose such a poem?39 Fortunatus certainly seems well aware of the play on meanings of texere and ordior, and links that play to poetics. Indeed, in other poetry, Fortunatus compares weaving for women with poetry for poets, “docta tenens calamos, apices quoque figere filo, / quod tibi charta valet hoc sibi tela fuit” [Skilled at holding a shuttle, and also at marking out the patterns in thread, a web was to her what a sheet of paper is to you].40 It is hardly surprising that Aldhelm, writing a century and a half later, would be drawn to a poetic metaphor that was a favorite with many of his favorite authors, a

36 37

38

39 40

is mine. The examples listed here are a small collection of the broader picture. For further examples and for other Latin period authors discussed below, see Hyer, “Text, Textile, Context,” 121–38, and Hyer, “Woven Words.” Jerome, Hieronymi, col. 597. Isidore, for example, does not use texere when discussing composition, preferring componere throughout his discussions of poetics, poetry, or poets in the Etymologiae. See Isidore of Seville, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum: Libri XX, ed. Wallace Martin Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), book 1, chaps. 39 and 40, and book 8, chap. 7, most particularly. Venantius Fortunatus, Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati, Presbyteri Italici: Opera Poetica, ed. Friedrich Leo, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), 137, lines 21–22; translation from Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), 41. That the poem’s “wordweaving” commemorates the death of a woman is compelling, since women and weaving were connected in the world of Fortunatus and his predecessors, as well as in the world of the Anglo-Saxons across the period. Fortunatus, Opera Poetica, 100, lines 9–10; translation from George, Fortunatus, 15.

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Maren Clegg Hyer metaphor moreover that resonated with his own native textile tradition (a tradition he very often draws on for many of his metaphorical ideas), his native poetic tradition, and his inherited (and perhaps blended) Latin poetic tradition. If Aldhelm inherited a metaphor with a powerful literary cachet and applied it to his own work, he appears to have added cachet of his own to the metaphor as it passes over time to later writers well-known to have been influenced, in turn, by him. In discussing rhetoric a century later, another Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin, uses a similar metaphor, advising Charlemagne to memorize arguments “inveneris et disposueris et oratione vestieris” [invented and arranged and clothed in words],41 a reference which John Leyerle argues links the interweaving of Aldhelm with the interlace style Leyerle sees among a number of Anglo-Saxon authors: Stylistic interlace is a characteristic of Aldhelm and especially of Alcuin. They weave direct statement and classical tags together to produce verbal braids in which allusive literary references from the past cross and recross with the present subject. The device is self-conscious and the poets describe the technique with the phrases fingere serta or textere serta (“to fashion or weave intertwinings”). In basic meaning, then, a poetic text is a weaving of words to form, in effect, a verbal carpet page.42

Michael Winterbottom reaches a similar conclusion about Aldhelm at least, noting his “peculiar interweaving of words” and an “interlaced order” of words evident in his use of the alliteration and variation, but he suggests these interweavings are related to the classical traditions of Rome.43 While Aldhelm’s use of “wordweaving” and his Anglo-Latin stylistics bear brilliant witness of his awareness of and interest in the stylistics of Rome, the alliteration, interlaced wording, and variation in one language mirror the same techniques common to the traditions of early medieval northern Europe, his native tradition, as well.44 According to a “book by Alfred” quoted by William of Malmesbury, Aldhelm was renowned for his poetry in both languages.45 Andy Orchard argues, as I do, that no reductive choice is necessary in 41

42 43 44 45

Flaccus Alcuinus, The Rhetoric of Alcuin and Charlemagne: A Translation, with an Introduction, the Latin Text, and Notes, ed. and trans. Wilbur Samuel Howell (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), 66–155, at 70–71. Alcuin draws throughout on Julius Victor’s fourth-century Ars Rhetorica to construct his dialogue on rhetoric; Victor’s work is influenced in turn by Cicero. Leyerle, “Interlace,” 4. Michael Winterbottom, “Aldhelm’s Prose Style and Its Origins,” Anglo-Saxon England 6 (1977): 39–76, at 41, 44, and 61. Indeed, Winterbottom’s avowed object was to argue that features of Aldhelm’s prose were more likely to derive from classical than Irish sources, rather than any more extensive statement. William states, “Litteris itaque ad plenum instructus, natiuae quoque linguae non negligebat carmina; adeo ut, teste libro Eldfredi, de quo superius dixi, nulla umquam aetate par ei fuerit quisquam poesim Anglicam posse factere, cantum componere, eadem apposite uel canere uel dicere.” [Filled full of letters as he was, he did not neglect the poetry of his native tongue either. Indeed, as we are told in the book by Alfred I mentioned before, no one has ever in any age rivalled him in the ability to write poetry in English, to compose songs, and to recite or sing them as occasion demanded.] William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum: The History of the English Bishops, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom with R. M. Thomson, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007), 506–7. William also states that Aldhelm put his

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature this—or perhaps any—case: Aldhelm was an inheritor of two traditions and likely a hybrid author in both; indeed, Orchard credits Aldhelm with having not only made extensive use of Latin compositional techniques, but also of having sown “the seeds for the introduction of vernacular poetic elements into [contemporary] Latin verse.”46 Ultimately, Aldhelm’s extant examples of “wordweaving” appear to describe examples of Latin text; his techniques that seem to employ the “interwoven,” however, are native to both of his inherited traditions. A wide range of Anglo-Latin writers employ similar images of “wordweaving” after Aldhelm and Alcuin, most of them demonstrably connected to Aldhelmian influence. The most elegant among them is Tatwine, the early-eighth-century Archbishop of Canterbury. Like his inspiration, Tatwine wrote a compilation of Anglo-Latin riddles. His opening and closing lines describe how he envisions his process of composition: “Sub deno quarter haec diuerse enigmata torquens / Stamine metrorum exstructor conserta retexit” [Within a threaded warp of metrical verses, the author, turning in different ways, weaves/composes these entwined forty riddles]. Tatwine completes his collection with another clue, stating that he has written all of his riddles “Versibus intextis” [with interwoven verses].47 Michael Lapidge explains that these lines are in fact a riddle: “Aldhelm had prefaced his collection of Enigmata with an acrostic prologue; Tatwine surpassed Aldhelm by linking the first and last letters of each of his forty enigmata in a vast acrostic and telestich.”48 Tatwine has thus “interwoven” his “wordweaving” riddle through the entire collection. Similar images of “wordweaving” occur among other “Aldhelmians” among Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon writers, including many of the Bonifatian circle of the eighth century. The Anglo-Saxon “wordweavers” include Willibald in his vita of Boniface and Hygeburg in her vita of Willibald, and similar images appear in the vita of Oswald by Byrthferth of Ramsey (tenth/eleventh century) and the works of the Flemish circle of authors writing in and for Anglo-Saxon institutions, including Goscelin de Saint-Bertin (eleventh century).49 The latter uses a particularly beautiful image of “wordweaving” to help his former student (now an anchoress) envision the words of the Psalms as a woven texture of meaning as she fills her mind in isolation: “Cum telam psalterii retexeris, ita cane sicut in conspectu angelorum et sicut ipsa uerba saluatoris coram ipso Domino maiestatis” [When you reweave the cloth of the psalms, sing them knowing that you are singing the Savior’s own words under the eyes

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native tradition’s poetic skills to good use, singing traditional poetry to crowds to get them to attend to religious teachings. Andy Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 49 and 52–53. Tatwine, Tatvini Opera Omnia: Variae Collectiones Aenigmatvm Merovingicae Aetatis, ed. Franciscus Glorie, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 133A (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1968), 165 and 208. Translations for both quotations from Tatwine are mine. Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 66. For further specifics on “wordweaving” among the Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, and Flemish clusters of authors, as well as William of Malmesbury, see Hyer, “Text, Textile, Context,” 121– 38, as well as extensive analysis and citation in Hyer, “Woven Words.”

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Maren Clegg Hyer of the angels and before God’s own majesty].50 His use of the metaphor has two striking similarities to Aldhelm’s: first, he uses weaving imagery—in this case, textile imagery in the image of a telam or warp for her texture—in a text devoted to the instruction of a female religious; two of Aldhelm’s examples of “wordweaving”—and several other textile metaphors—come from his prose De Virginitate, usually thought to have been dedicated to the instruction of the nuns at Barking Abbey in Essex.51 Goscelin is wellknown to have been influenced by Aldhelm’s work, and he quotes the poetic version Carmen de Virginitate in the Liber Confortatorius.52 Goscelin is also well-known for his “overwhelming poeticism” and use of difficult poetic vocabulary;53 Aldhelm has been similarly charged. Thus, while their styles are not identical by any means, both men are known for their elaborate poetics. Their use of metaphors so similar hardly seems a coincidence. Similar images of “wordweaving” follow Aldhelmian writers through William of Malmesbury. Does Cynewulf belong to that number, even though his known work is confined solely to Old English rather than Latin poetry? Whether we place Cynewulf in the ninth or tenth century, it is certain that he knew at least some of the early Latin writers, the works of Aldhelm, and probably the works of at least Alcuin and Tatwine. It is not difficult to imagine his having been inspired to borrow and adapt a metaphor that was resonant for his own work in his native language in Elene. Indeed, he may well have considered his style in constructing Elene a natural outgrowth of a hybrid tradition of “wordweaving,” and that hybrid tradition itself may be in play in Elene. Cynewulf ’s discussion of his narrative poetics, his “wordweaving,” appears after the Finit at the end of the traditional poetic narrative of the story of Elene. That final section differs in some respects from what precedes it, with elements that seem related to Anglo-Latin poetics. For one, the final section includes a number of rhyming endwords, a technique not often found in Old English verse, as in the endwords unscynde/gerymde (lines 1246b/1248b) and gewiteð/nimeð (lines 1277b/1279b). Far more half-line endwords and line endwords rhyme, as in fus/hus (line 1236), þreodude/reodode (line 1238), nearwe/gearwe (line 1239), and onband/onwand (line 1249). The rhyming lines end at line 1250, where the poet gratefully reports how God “leoðucræft onleac” [unlocked 50

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Goscelin of St. Bertin, “The Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin,” in Analecta Monastica, ed. C. H. Talbot, 3rd ser., Studia Anselmiana fasc. 37 (Rome: Herder, 1955), 1–117, at 82, lines 16–18; translation from Goscelin of St. Bertin, The Book of Encouragement and Consolation [Liber Confortatorius]: The Letter of Goscelin to the Recluse Eva, trans. Monika Otter (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 98. Scott Gwara makes a compelling argument that Aldhelm’s intended audience may be Hildelith and her fellow abbesses within Wessex. Scott Gwara, “Introduction,” in Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa de Virginitate cum Glosa Latina atque Anglosaxonica, ed. Scott Gwara, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 124 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 41–57, at 51–53. Goscelin, “Liber Confortatorius,” 81 n. 80a; Goscelin, Encouragement and Consolation, 97 n. 68. Rosalind C. Love, “‘Et quis me tanto oneri parem faciet?’: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the Life of St Amelberga,” in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2005), 2:232–52, at 242.

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature (his) poetic skill] (line 1250a). Cynewulf also concludes with an acrostic riddle woven into twenty lines of text (lines 1256b–76a). The acrostic letters are written in runic script, and spell “Cynewulf.” If Aldhelm may be credited with introducing Old English poetic patterns and elements into the Anglo-Latin poetry of his fellow Anglo-Saxons, Cynewulf may be fairly considered to be following an inverse pattern, incorporating elements of Anglo-Latin poetry—rhyme, acrostics—side by side with the elements characteristic of northern European textual culture—Old English poetics and runic script.54 Ultimately, the “wordweaving” discussion in Elene suggests, at the very least, that whatever poetic tradition or traditions Cynewulf considers himself a part of, wordwoven poetics meant skillful interweaving of alliterative sounds, an accumulation and variation—a texture—of phrases and images, all using poetic formulae and a specialized vocabulary to create a heroic narrative. At the end of his work, clearly quite satisfied with himself, Cynewulf extends himself into further elaborate, poetic pyrotechnics, including rare and skillful use of rhyme and a coyly “hidden,” riddling acrostic, all elements in the creation of textile and texture in text. If Cynewulf does indeed belong to the tradition of “wordweaving” of Aldhelm and his circle, we see the Anglo-Saxons potentially taking their place in a long line of Latin “wordweavers,” affected by a metaphor with genealogical cachet, and passing it along to others. The “wordweaving” metaphor thus carries rich layers of resonance in its appearance in Old English poetry. CONCLUSIONS

There are other potential connections and explanations in the discussion of the poetic metaphor “wordweaving.” There is a northern European tradition of similar metaphors attested in later centuries. In the Poetic Edda, for example, we learn that to get revenge, one must know how to “weave” “speech-runes.”55 In the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, written in Latin, but claimed to be based on early Danish sources, in a number of instances, the poet describes the construction of traditional Danish poetry as contextui [a weaving together] of letters.56 Both examples could be evidence of the influence of the Latin tradition; at the same time, like Beowulf, both works are

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These findings agree with Andy Orchard’s as he argues that Cynewulf ’s work in general is a blend of Latinate and Old English methods of composition, with elements characteristic of Anglo-Latin verse—rhyme and acrostics—alongside elements found squarely within the Old English poetic tradition—alliterative lines, predominantly Old English metrical patterns, semantic variation, common poetic formulae, and standard Old English poetic imagery; Orchard, “Both Style and Substance,” 272. Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 168. Saxo Grammaticus, Saxonis Grammatici: Gesta Danorum, ed. Alfred Holder (Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1886), 172, lines 21–22; translation from Hilda Ellis Davidson, ed., and Peter Fisher, trans., Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, 2 vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979), 1:162.

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Maren Clegg Hyer “heritage projects” intended to describe and maintain vernacular traditions of the narrative poetry of the North. It is also worth noting that the style designated as “wordweaving” is not always identical across textual traditions. The poetic traditions described in the Poetic Edda, Beowulf, and even the Gesta Danorum—in spite of its Latin vocabulary—are by far more skaldic stylistically than the polite rhetorical examples of Cicero, the patristic discussions of scriptural style, or the hagiographical and elegiac references in Prudentius and Venantius Fortunatus.57 The same may be said for the majority of the text of Elene as a lengthy narrative poem in the northern European epic heroic tradition. It may also be relevant that many—but not all—examples of northern European “wordweaving”—including the related reference in Beowulf—refer to a gift for oral eloquence. In short, caution is wise before simply equating all occurrences of “wordweaving” metaphors in northern European literatures and languages, not only to one another, but also to Roman references of a millenium or more before. Even in what seems a Latinate section in Elene, Cynewulf constructs his acrostic in a runic alphabet. In the end, whether the northern European metaphors for “wordweaving” are parallels or adaptations, each occurrence has resonances unique to its own culture, time, and writer. Indeed, all metaphors are creatively made and re-made for each use. We also do well to remember how pervasive textile imagery is across the world’s cultures. Although the technologies for textiles differ in the details from culture to culture, a significant number of elements remain the same: thread, warp, weft, interwoven patterns, and artistry akin to the poet’s art. It is less surprising, then, when, in discussing the etymology of “text” as both “text” and “textile,” Scheid and Svenbro comment that the history of the word “could quickly grow to immense proportions given that other Indo-European languages besides Greek and Latin used similar ones,”58 including Irish and Vedic sources59 and African and Persian ones.60 Source study must be approached humbly in the face of such multiplicity. Metaphors do not exist in a vacuum. Examining Cynewulf ’s “wordweaving” as simply a potential borrowing of a Latin metaphor thus limits both the realities and the possibilities inherent to metaphor. It does not examine why he might have been inspired to select a text-textile metaphor. It simplifies and elides differences in the 57 58 59 60

Perhaps significantly, “wordweaving” texere is not used in the Aeneid or any other Roman epic context. Scheid and Svenbro, Zeus, 111. They point out that the etymology occurs in non-­IndoEuropean languages, as well (204–5 n. 1). Moisl, “Early Germanic Poetry,” 98. The article documents efforts of scholars to link a proposed Indo-European word group which explains similarities between Celtic and Germanic words and further connects prophecy, song, and weaving etymologically (98–99). For Africa, see Alan L. Miller, “Ame No Miso-Ori Me (The Heavenly Weaving Maiden): The Cosmic Weaver in Early Shinto Myth and Ritual,” History of Religions 24 (1984): 27–48, at 44. For Persia, see Olga Bush, “A Poem Is a Robe and a Castle: Inscribing Verses on Textiles and Architecture in the Alhambra,” presentation at Textile Society of America 11th Biennial Symposium: Textiles as Cultural Expressions, Sept. 4–7, 2008, Honolulu, available online at Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ tsaconf/84, accessed Dec. 29, 2018.

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“Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature individual and varying traditions of “wordweaving” by culture. Examining Cynewulf ’s metaphor as a creative adaptation, however, one which reflects the resonance of a rich and beautiful material culture of woven art and textual design, the resonance of an intersecting and interwoven native poetic tradition, and the resonance of a metaphor with a powerful and prestigious literary cachet, invites us to observe how rich Cynewulf ’s metaphorical possibilities really are, and were, and therefore, to understand the evocative “why” behind the metaphor. Cynewulf ’s poetic work in Elene displays evidence of influence for all the possibilities discussed. Cynewulf describes composition in ways reminiscent of the rich artistic tradition of interwoven design, in both textiles and other media. He constructs his work through the graceful interweaving of alliterative sound and varying images across word, line, and poem, entirely characteristic of Old English poetry. He includes similar connective tissue in his final passages of the poem, using internal and end rhyme more resonant of Anglo-Latin tradition to draw alliterative passages even more tightly together. He shows his genealogy distinctly, using an acrostic riddle—like his “wordweaving” Anglo-Latin forebears—in runic script—characteristic of his heritage as a poet of the North. Cynewulf ’s “wordweaving” exists at the center of a nexus of resonance. If we look closely, we are likely to see that the same is true for most metaphors. They are created, used, recreated, and adapted to each individual context for all of the resonances, associations, and textures they suggest.

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Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga Elizabeth M. Swedo

In thirty-nine chapters (Aventiuren), the epic Das Nibelungenlied traces Kriemhilt’s1 (Kriemhild’s) love and marriage to Sîvrit (Siegfried) the dragon-slayer; his betrayal and murder by her brothers and her uncle Hagen; her loss of Siegfried’s treasure to Hagen; her subsequent marriage to Etzel, king of the Huns; and her revenge for these wrongs, which results in the annihilation of her family, the Burgundians. Yet among the dramatic action of the tales, the narrative often lingers when, for example, Siegfried the dragon-slayer, Burgundian Prince Gunther, and their company are presented with an exquisite wardrobe: Die arâbîschen sîden,  wîz alsô der snê unt von Zazamanc der guoten,  grüen’ alsam der klê, dar in si leiten steine;  des wurden guotiu kleit. selbe sneit si Kriemhilt,  diu vil hêrlîche meit. (str. 362)2 [They threaded precious stones into snow-white silk from Arabia or into silk from Zazamanc as green as clover, making fine robes, while noble Kriemhild cut the cloth herself.] (NL, 37)3

An early version of this article was first presented in May 2006 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am deeply indebted to Kaaren Grimstad, Ray Wakefield, and Shelly Nordtorp-Madson for their inspiration, encouragement, and suggestions in the development of this piece. Thanks also to Tovah Bender, Rachel Neiwert, Kira Robison, Emily Rook-­ Koepsel, and Aeleah Soine.   1 Personal names have been regularly rendered into well-established English equivalents; after

the initial introduction of the normalized Old Norse and Middle High German names, the reader thus encounters Brynhild/Brunhild, rather than Brynhildr/Prünhilt.  2 Quotations from the Nibelungenlied are based on the nôt-version of the epic in Karl Bartsch, Helmut de Boor, and Siegfried Grosse’s edition, Das Nibelungenlied: Mittelhochdeutsch/ Neuhochdeutsch (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002), and cited by strophe (stanza) number.  3 English translations are from Cyril Edwards, ed., The Niebelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), hereafter NL.

Elizabeth M. Swedo The Nibelungenlied is liberally embellished with this sort of stanza, known as schneiderstrophen or tailor’s stanzas.4 The frequent and exaggerated emphasis on fine clothing here and elsewhere throughout the poem at first appear to be a significant difference between the roughly contemporary Middle High German epic poem and the Old Norse prose rendition—Völsunga saga—a tale about this same dragon-slayer and the downfall of the Burgundian dynasty. Cross-analysis of the texts within the shared Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition, however, reveals clothing was a powerful and versatile signifier in both texts. Clothing allows core elements of the interrelated textual and oral traditions to be preserved while adapting the narrative to suit the cultural and social milieu of different audiences. Unraveling the varied roles played by clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga teases out culturally specific expectations of the audiences from the shared threads of the broader shared narrative. Initially, the Nibelungenlied’s attention to articles of clothing and their social value seems to be explained by setting and society; what was valued in the continental courts of the early thirteenth century would understandably be out of place in the rural homesteads or outdoor assemblies of Iceland. Yet, both narratives use clothing to illuminate key elements of the Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition, with which both Icelandic and Germanic audiences would have been familiar. More importantly, clothing plays a crucial role in both epics by revealing tensions that arise out of the identities, transformations, and deception of the characters. Building on medieval literary conventions, clothing in these epics not only models cultural differences but also unfolds intertextual continuities, particularly in the characters and development of the two queens and the dragon-slayer himself. Medieval German and Icelandic societies interpreted the shared origins of the Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition to create their own meanings through their description and use of clothing. INTERWOVEN TEXTUAL TRADITIONS

Although scholars view the northern and southern variations of the Niflungen/Nibelungen traditions as closely related, these texts are seldom examined intertextually, as belonging to a broad and varied narrative tradition. Allusions to this dragon-slayer tradition are scattered throughout more than thirty sources in Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Middle High German, and Middle Dutch poems and tales spanning from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries.5 The Norse material includes Völsunga saga itself as well as the Norwegian Þiðreks saga (ca. 1226), Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (1220s), Ragnars saga Loðbrókar (1250s), some eighteen heroic lays in the early-fourteenth-­century  4 Sidney Johnson, “Schneiderstrophe,” in The Nibelungenlied Tradition: An Encyclopedia, ed.

Francis G. Gentry, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, and Werner Wunderlich (New York: Routledge, 2002), 225.  5 Kaaren Grimstad and Ray Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates: The Leading Ladies of the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga,” in Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity, ed. Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 235–52, at 238.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (1270s), “Nornagests þáttr” in the late-­fourteenthcentury Flateyjarbók, and various ballads from the Nordic countries.6 Despite the wealth of variant narratives, the Nibelungenlied has hoarded scholarly attention, with much attention paid to establishing the origins of the epic and to defining the interrelationships of the surviving medieval manuscripts (stemmatics).7 Nordic texts and later continental versions are often considered simply derivative or tangential.8 Both texts exhibit certain similarities with other variants of the Niflungen/­ Nibelungen traditions. Edward Haymes, in his book The Nibelungenlied: History and Interpretation, and Joyce Tally Lionarons, in her study The Medieval Dragon, stress the audiences’ knowledge of the expanding Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition.9 Lionarons proposes that this intertextual awareness produced a “horizon of expectations”; the storyteller’s new rendition must intrigue the audience “without violating [their] sense of the ‘rightness’ of the traditional text.”10 Kaaren Grimstad and Ray Wakefield have likewise demonstrated the utility of examining both the continental and Nordic renditions in conjunction with one another, arguing that medieval audiences’ extra-textual awareness of multiple narrative variations—what they term “intertexts”—best resolves otherwise inexplicable details and shifts in plot and character.11 Most convincingly, Grimstad and Wakefield point out that the compiler of the Poetic Edda directly indicated that the thirteenth-century audience had familiarity with variant versions of the legend.12 The Brot af Sigurðarkviðu (Short Lay of Sigurd) asserts that Hér er sagt í þessi qviðo frá dauða Sigurðar, oc vícr hér svá til, sem þeir dræpi hann úti. Enn sumir segia svá, at þeir dræpi hann inni í reccio sinni sofanda. Enn þýðverscir men segia svá, at þeir dræpi hann úti í scógi. Oc svá segir í Guðrúnarqviðo inni forno, at Sigurðr oc Giúca synir hefði til þings riðit, þá er hann var drepinn. Enn þat segia allir einnig, at þeir svico hann í trygð oc vógo at hánom liggianda oc óbúnom.13 [In this poem, the death of Sigurd is related and here it is said that they killed him outside. But some say this, that they killed him inside, sleeping in his bed. And Germans say that  6 Ibid.  7 Winder McConnell, The Nibelungenlied (Boston: Twayne, 1984), xiii–xix; see McConnell’s

discussion of the origins of the epic. See also Karl Lachmann, Über die Ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungenliedes (Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1816), with more recent contribution to the debates found in Theodore M. Andersson, A Preface to the Nibelungenlied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987).  8 Edwards (NL, 219), for instance, suggests that “all in all, the Nordic analogues seem to have developed within an independent oral tradition, until the Eddic poems came to be written down in the thirteenth century. They can cast some light on some motifs in the Nibelungenlied, yet the differences are as apparent as similarities.”  9 Edward R. Haymes, The Nibelungenlied: History and Interpretation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature (Enfield Lock, UK: Hisarlik, 1998). 10 Lionarons, Medieval Dragon, 69. 11 Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 237. 12 Ibid., 238–39. 13 Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn, eds., Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst Verwandten Denkmälern (Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter, 1983), 201, as cited in Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 238–39.

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Elizabeth M. Swedo they killed him out in the forest. And the “Old Poem of Gudrun” says that Sigurd and the sons of Gjuiki were riding to the Assembly when he was killed. But they all say that they treacherously betrayed him and attacked him when he was lying down and unarmed.]14

Acknowledging the possibility of broad medieval audience awareness of these various versions opens up a space to consider deviations as intentional and historically meaningful. Both the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga relate core elements of the same mythic narrative, revolving around a central dragon-slaying hero and his interactions with his in-laws, the Burgundian dynasty. However, the essence of the two stories is a refraction of specifically contextualized values in early-thirteenth-century German and Icelandic social milieus. This essay neither attempts to trace origins nor to establish definitive relationships between and among different renditions of the dragon-slayer legend. Rather, the authors’ details about clothing within both Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied reinforce ties between the texts, enriching the tales for those familiar with other narrative variants. Writing during the Middle High German Blützeit, an extraordinary period of literary creativity, an anonymous poet composed the Nibelungenlied around 1200, apparently intending it to be performed in the southern courts of the Holy Roman Empire.15 More than thirty manuscripts of the poem were produced between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, attesting to its contemporary popularity.16 An anonymous Icelandic author compiled his prose version of the epic in Old Norse, presumably for Icelandic audiences, by the mid-thirteenth century. Although only a single vellum manuscript exists, twenty-one paper copies of Völsunga saga survive from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.17 The legendary material of Völsunga saga clearly draws more broadly on Scandinavian poems as well, primarily the lays in the Poetic Edda. Both of the two narratives incorporate pseudo-historical events that had occurred a half-millennium earlier, during the age of Germanic Migration, from roughly the third through the seventh centuries. The characters also correspond loosely to legendary and asynchronous historical kings, rulers, and conquerors: Burgundians, Huns, Franks, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths. Despite these shared ties to antiquity, the Nibelungenlied is set against the social backdrop of twelfth-century European courts with which its audience was intimately familiar, whereas Völsunga saga adopts as its setting the mythic histories surrounding the age of Germanic Migration, although its characters seem to be held to the social structures and obligations of kinship of the Icelandic Saga Age in the ninth through eleventh centuries. The Nibelungenlied opens with an introduction of Kriemhild, princess of Burgundy, who is under the guardianship of her three brothers, the joint kings Gunther, Gernôt (Gernot), and Gîselher (Giselher), all of whom live at the capital of Worms 14 15 16 17

Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 176. A. T. Hatto, “An Introduction to a Second Reading,” in The Nibelungenlied (London: Penguin Books, 1969), 293. Many scholars suggest that the poet composed for court(s) near the Danube, likely in the duchy of Austria between Vienna and Passau. Werner Hoffmann, “Nibelungenlied,” in Gentry et al., Nibelungenlied Tradition, 22. James K. Walter, “Völsunga Saga,” in Gentry et al., Nibelungenlied Tradition, 44.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga on the Rhine. The first half of the epic is a latent contest of honor, power, and status between Gunther and Siegfried that builds through the wooing of their brides, their marriages, and the quarrels between the two queens, and culminates with the conspiracy against and murder of Siegfried while hunting. A prince of the Netherlands, whose father, King Sigmund, rules from Xanten, Siegfried achieved incredible prestige through a series of youthful adventures, acquiring the priceless hoard of the Nibelungs (a race of dwarves) and supernatural strength by slaying a dragon and bathing in its blood. As Grimstad and Wakefield note, all of these deeds are merely summarized in the Nibelungenlied; the poem relies on the audience’s intertextual familiarity with these deeds rather than retell them.18 Instead of focusing on their exploits, the epic concentrates on the relationships between Siegfried and the Burgundians: his marriage to Kriemhild, his friendship and alliance with her brothers, and Gunther’s reliance on Siegfried’s strength, cleverness, and honor to acquire his own bride: Prünhilt (Brunhild), the Amazonian queen of Isenstein in Iceland, who had vowed to marry none but the man who could best her in a series of physical contests as well as subdue her in the bedroom. Eventually, their deception is revealed, setting into motion a series of humiliations and retaliations within the family. Brunhild’s misery over her humiliation and betrayal incites Hagen to betray and kill Siegfried, authorized by the somewhat reluctant Gunther. Stripped of much of her wealth, power, and honor, Kriemhild grieves for Siegfried for thirteen years, marries Etzel, king of the Huns, and sets into motion a brutal retaliation against her natal family.19 The Old Norse prose rendition of the legend, Völsunga saga, concentrates on the lineage of Sigurðr (Sigurd), rather than that of the Burgundians; it can be divided into five sections and read as the tale of successive, tragic heroes, culminating with Sigurd. The first section establishes the Völsung clan as the progeny of the god Óðinn, describing the heroes of the first three generations: Sigi, Reris, and Völsung. The second part details the betrayal of Völsung and his ten sons by the husband of his daughter Signý (Signy), and the vengeance of the surviving son Sigmundr (Sigmund), Signy, and their child, Sinfjötli. Although no parallel narrative exists in the Nibelungenlied, these episodes contribute to our understanding of the embedded cultural significance of clothing by demonstrating the use of transformative wardrobes in rituals of initiation. The third and fourth sections of Völsunga saga provide parallel but much fuller narratives than what appears in the first section of the Nibelungenlied, including Sigurd’s youthful adventures, particularly the slaying of a dragon, his romances with Brynhildr (Brynhild) and Guðrún (Gudrun), and his betrayal and murder by Gudrun’s brothers (Gunnar, Högni, and Guttorm), as well as the destruction of the Burgundians at the hands of Gudrun’s second husband, Atli. As in the Nibelungenlied, the tragedy unfolds as a result of a confrontation between the two queens, Gudrun and Brynhild, over their husbands’ relative status. Revealing that Brynhild has been deceived about Gunnar’s prowess, Gudrun humiliates and 18 19

Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 239. McConnell, Nibelungenlied, 10–48. For analysis of the characters and their motivations, see chap. 2, “The Major Figures.”

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Elizabeth M. Swedo devastates Brynhild. Inconsolable, Brynhild vows that one of them (Gunnar, S­ igurd, or Brynhild herself) must die to avenge this betrayal. Since Högni and Gunnar had sworn oaths of brotherhood with Sigurd, they persuade their youngest brother, ­Guttorm—plying him with a magic potion to convince him—to murder Sigurd while he sleeps. Brynhild’s torn allegiance and remorse leads her to commit suicide, and her body shares Sigurd’s funeral pyre. The saga concludes by tracing the tragic end of Gudrun’s children. Völsunga saga thus suggests a tripartite structure, coalescing around the ultimately destructive marriages of three women: Signy, Brynhild, and Gudrun.20 FUNCTIONAL FASHION: CLOTHING IN LITERATURE

Before considering the varied cultural contexts and converging intertextual references to clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga, it is important to recognize the functions of clothing in medieval literature more broadly. In her meticulous work on courtly fashion in twelfth- and thirteenth-century German epic poetry, Elke Brüggen stresses that medieval literature can only be understood by reference to social background. Rather than tedious or superfluous details, embellishments about courtly clothing, including those found in the Nibelungenlied’s schneiderstrophen, established aristocratic identity, for which certain precious materials and decorations, colors, fine cut and workmanship were reserved.21 It was not the medieval poet’s intent to provide authentic descriptions of aristocratic attire or accurate depiction of historical reality but to reflect an aristocratic ideal, stylized but recognizable to the noble patrons of courtly literature.22 Excluding mundane details of daily life, courtly literature presents sumptuous displays that both represent and reinforce the aristocratic minority’s hierarchical claims to power and status in medieval society.23 In her studies of twelfth-century French chivalric romances, Monica L. Wright likewise asserts that clothing did not act simply as an ornamental embellishment of the authors’ own fancy. Rather, authors such as Chrétien de Troyes used clothing “to open and close narrative threads, and to inscribe dynamism into their portraits of characters.”24 Clothing serves several expository purposes in medieval literature: It visually establishes a character’s identity, reflects and projects the inner character, signals character growth through changes in clothing, and unfolds tensions in status, in loyalty, and in acts of deception. Building on these established medieval literary conventions, the Niflungen/Nibelungen authors 20 21 22 23 24

Jana Schulman, “‘A Guest is in the Hall’: Women, Feasts, and Violence in Icelandic Epic,” in Poor and Schulman, Women and Medieval Epic, 209–34, at 211. Elke Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode in der Höfischen Epik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter, 1989), 9. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 11. Monica L. Wright, “‘De Fil d’Or et de Soie’: Making Textiles in Twelfth-Century French Romance,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 2 (2006): 61–72, at 61. See also Wright, “Their Clothing Becomes Them: The Narrative Function of Clothing in Chrétien de Troyes,” Arthurian Literature 20 (2003): 31–42.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga use clothing to project the identity of principal characters, disguise identities and uncover deceptions, and signal ritual transformations and personal evolution within the characters. In both the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga, the principal role of clothing is to establish the identity of its characters. The first of the very few detailed descriptions of clothing in Völsunga saga occurs in chapter 3: sa madr er monnum ukunnr at syn sea madr hefir þes hattar buningh. at hann hefir hecklv fleckotta yfir ser sa madr var berfęttr ok hafde knyth linbrokum at beine. sa madr hafde sverð i hende. … ok há[u]tt siðan a hǫfde hann var hár miok ok elldiligr ok ein syn (VS, 82)25 [he was a man not known to the men by sight. He was dressed in this way: he wore a mottled cape that was hooded; he was barefoot and had linen breeches tied around his legs. … He held a sword in his hand while over his head was a low-hanging hood. He was very tall and gray with age, he had only one eye.] (SV, 38)26

In this sequence, Óðinn is not identified by name, but instead by his single eye, which serves as his most recognizable attribute. Nevertheless, the continuity of his clothing also confirms his identity when he reappears later in the saga. In chapter 11, a man appears in the midst of a battle: “þa kom madr i bardagann med siðan hátt ok heklv bla hann hafði eitt avga ok geir i hendi” (VS, 116) [Then a man came into the battle with a low-hanging hat, and a black-hooded cloak. He had one eye and a spear in his hand].27 Clothing signals to both the society within the narrative and to the audience the essential identity of the character. In medieval society, physical appearance was nearly synonymous with personal identity. DISGUISES AND DECEPTION

While the authors utilized clothing to highlight certain constants in the heroes’ characters, they also manipulated states of dress and undress to complicate these identities. In acts of deception and mistaken identity, clothing features prominently in both Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied. Wright reminds us that medieval “society placed a premium on the absolute conflation between appearance and reality.”28 Wright notes that in most French romances, characters typically disguise their identities with 25 26 27 28

All Old Norse quotations of Völsunga saga are from Kaaren Grimstad, ed. and trans., Völsunga Saga: The Saga of the Volsungs: The Icelandic Text According to MS Nks 1824 b, 4° (Saarbrücken, Germany: AQ-Verlarg, 2000), hereafter VS. English translations are from Jesse Byock, trans., Saga of the Volsungs (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), hereafter SV. Translation mine. For further consideration of the garments, see Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1871), s.v. “Hekla,” “Hökull,” “Síðr,” and “Síð-höttr.” Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 43.

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Elizabeth M. Swedo ease, simply by donning garments not associated with their normal identities.29 In the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga, however, deception that relies on a simple exchange of attire typically fails. Literary and social conventions instead seem to dictate that characters cannot disguise internal qualities with incongruous clothing. For instance, Hjörðis, Sigurd’s widowed mother, exchanges clothes and names with a servant woman (VS, 119). Despite Hjörðis’s temporary appearance of poverty, the queen-mother of Alf apparently recognizes her true noble status by her manners and good breeding (VS, 121). Queen Hjörðis’s disguise fails because of the mismatch between her poor clothes and her noble character; her hosts intuit what the audience of the tale already knows, reaffirming the literary synchronization of individual external appearance and internal identity. In both epics, magic and clothing are jointly used to remedy discordant identities; the bridal quest for Brynhild/Brunhild illustrates this point.30 A constant in the ­Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition, Sigurd/Siegfried is the more valiant warrior, the better king, and the ideal suitor. In the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried is the only man strong enough to surpass Brunhild in three contests and to subdue her in the bedroom; and in Völsunga saga, Sigurd is the man who knows no fear and can ride through the flickering flame to claim Brynhild as bride. In both versions, the superiority of Sigurd/ Siegfried necessitates the deception of Brynhild/Brunhild in order for the inferior Gunnar/Gunther to win her as a bride. The conquest of Brynhild/Brunhild in both renditions of the stories involves clothing and magic, but in the Nibelungenlied, the role of the clothing in this deception receives greater emphasis. The subduing of Brunhild, both in the three contests and in the bedroom, depends on Siegfried’s tarnkappe, the cloak that renders him invisible. Sîvrit der muose füeren  die kappen mit im dan, die der helt vil küene  mit sorgen gewan ab eime gewerge,  daz hiez Albrîch … Alsô der starke Sîvrit  die tarnkappe truoc, sô het er dar inne  krefte genuoc, wol zwelf manne sterke  zuo sîn selbes lîp. er warp mit grôzen listen  daz vil hêrlîche wîp. Ouch was diu selbe tarnhût  alsô getân, Daz dar inne worhte  ein ieslîcher man, Swaz er selbe wolde,  daz in doch niemen sach. sus gewan er Prünhilde; (str. 336–38)

29

30

“The fact of disguise, while in every way a real possibility, always seems to take the other characters completely by surprise, as if they cannot bring themselves to admit the potential of clothing to conceal. For the vast majority of characters, it is inconceivable that someone’s appearance does not reflect reality. This denial of possibility once again gives evidence of the prevailing fear among the aristocracy of the disruption of the code, whether vestimentary or otherwise.” Ibid., 65. See Jerold C. Frakes, Brides and Doom: Gender, Property, and Power in Medieval German Women’s Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga [Siegfried had to take with him the cloak which the valiant hero had won with hardship from the dwarf called Albrich … When mighty Siegfried wore the cape of invisibility he had, once inside it, strength in abundance—a good dozen men’s might in addition to his own. He set about the wooing of that most noble woman with great cunning. Moreover the cloak of invisibility was of such a nature that anyone wearing it could do whatever he wanted without anyone seeing him. Thus he won Brunhild.] (NL, 35)

Rather than disguising Siegfried to render him inferior—thereby disrupting the vestimentary code which defines status and identity in courtly culture—magical clothing removes him from the gaze and interpretation of other characters, while simultaneously reinforcing his prowess, by reminding the audience of the perils through which he earned this marvelous cloak. Because of the cultural significance attached to clothing in the courtly context of the Nibelungenlied, clothing frequently is imbued with the additional power of performing the transformative functions reserved for magical potions and shape-shifting in the Mythic Age setting of the Völsunga saga rendition of the story. In Völsunga saga, clothing is only an accessory in the overall deception, which requires magically assuming the entire physical appearance of another individual. In order to deceive and possess Brynhild, “Skipta nv litum sem grimhilldr kende þeim sigurdi ok gvnnare” (VS, 172) [Sigurd and Gunnar exchanged shapes, as Grimhild (Gunnar’s mother) had taught them] (SV, 80). Their identities and physical appearances become so entirely entangled that they are indistinguishable. The result is the same in both traditions: The superior identity of Sigurd/ Siegfried is rendered invisible and Gunnar/Gunther appears to be the only suitor present. In hindsight, Brynhild further realizes that another article of clothing, a veil, had amplified Sigurd’s disguise by obscuring her perception of his eyes (VS, 87). Despite differences in degree and emphasis, the combined presence of magic and clothing in incidents of deception serves to tighten the intertextual elements that tie the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga to the same narrative tradition. Although simple vestimentary disguises are augmented or replaced by magical illusions in both tales, the subversion of clothing signifiers underscores the literary necessity of harmony in appearance and identity. CLOTHES AND CHARACTER TRANSFORMATION

Because clothing is the external reflection of an individual’s identity, changes in clothing accompany changes in identity and status. Personal and social identity are often conflated with and projected through external garments within the narrative, so changes to individual identity seem to mandate a corresponding realignment of physical appearance. Joyce Tally Lionarons suggests that these changes in character identity within the dragon-slayer tradition can be understood through the anthropological lens of ritual initiation, in which the individual experiences both 61

Elizabeth M. Swedo an “inner, spiritual, or psychological change” and an “outward, corporeal change.”31 She identifies a preliminal phase, “during which the initiand is symbolically or physically detached from his or her previous place in the social structure”; a liminal phase “during which the initiand has lost the characteristics of his or her previous social identity but has not yet gained those of the new and thus inhabits a marginal sociocultural space”; and a postliminal phase, “in which the transition is completed and the initiand rejoins society in the role of his or her new social identity.”32 Through this process of initiation, a child becomes an adult and a man becomes a warrior. Likewise, character transformations progress in stages, with each step of the internal metamorphosis signaled through a change of garments that distinguishes and separates the past identity from the new one.33 As identities unfold in Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied, both male and female characters engage in wardrobe changes, marking each stage of these transformations. In Völsunga saga, Sigurd’s half-brother, Sinfjötli, the son of the incestuous relationship between Sigmund and his sister Signy, best illuminates this link between change of dress and status. When her husband, Siggeir, king of Gautland, treacherously kills her father, Völsung, and nine of her brothers, Signy begins assessing her sons’ capacity for avenging her birth family. Through a gruesome change of clothing, Signy tests first her two sons with Siggeir, and later subjects the ten-year-old Sinfjötli to the same ordeal. hun hafde þa raun giort vid ena fyre sono sina adr hun sendi þa til sigmundar at hun saumadi at hondvm þeim med hollde ok skinni. þeir þoldv illa ok kriktu um ok sva giorði hun sinfiotla hann brazt ecki vid. hun flo hann þa af kyrtlinum sva at skinnit fylgdi ermunum hun kuað honum mvndv sart vid verða. hann s(egir) litid munði slikt sart þickia volsungi. (VS, 94). [She had tested them by stitching the cuffs of their kirtles to their hands, passing the needle through both flesh and skin. They withstood the ordeal poorly and cried out in pain. She also did this to Sinfjötli; he did not flinch. Then she ripped the kirtle from him, so that the skin followed the sleeves. She said that it must certainly be painful for him. He replied: “Such pain would seem trifling to Völsung.”] (SV, 43)

An inversion of the needlework that earns elite ladies esteem, Signy’s horrific handiwork instead exposes her own secret and illicit union with her brother, Sigmund, and the true paternity of their son Sinfjötli. Along with his sleeves and his skin, Sinfjötli has been stripped of the identity as Siggeir’s son that he had worn throughout his early childhood. Yet, Sinfjötli’s Völsung nature lies deeper than his princely raiment, which had been only superficially stitched to his identity—like the kirtle to his skin. Both must be peeled away in this preliminal phase so that his underlying nature can be refashioned into his adult identity. Torn apart at the seams, Sinfjötli reveals his potential to become a true Völsung warrior through his almost inhuman endurance of pain.

31 32 33

Lionarons, Medieval Dragon, 60. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 60.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga Bare flesh must be re-clad in new skins: He is sent for further testing and training to his uncle and father, Sigmund. Sinfjötli’s liminal phase includes another article of clothing: magical wolf skins that, once donned, can be removed only every tenth day. Sinfjötli and his father Sigmund dress themselves in these wolf skins and acquire the speech, agility, and strength of wolves, tracking down and killing men in enemy territory. According to Lionarons, ritual initiations often include transformations—usually symbolic—into wild animals, “such as a wolf or a bear.”34 But this wolf-skin wardrobe would have also conveyed culturally specific legal and mythic connotations to an Icelandic audience. First, Sinfjötli and Sigmund physically embody the legal term for outlaws: vargr í véum (VS, 29) [wolf in the sanctuary]. Like a wolf that may be hunted and killed for the safety of the community, an outlaw, ostracized from and threatening to human society, could be killed with impunity. By donning these pelts, Sinfjötli and Sigmund fully embody their outlaw status, becoming werewolves.35 The saga audience might well have had familiarity with Óðinn’s cult of warriors, the úlfheðnar—“wolf-skin wearers”—who, like the renowned berserker (bear shirts), were known as particularly ferocious fighters (VS, 29). After they have defeated—and possibly devoured36—at least eighteen warriors, they remove and burn their wolf skins. With this final change of apparel, Sigmund feels that he has thoroughly tested Sinfjötli, who emerges a full Völsung warrior: fearless and ferocious. Sinfjötli’s transformations demonstrate that if, as Wright asserts, “the primary function of clothing resides in the establishment of identity,” then both the identity and the clothing act as “a venture between the individual and his or her society.”37 Thus, to advance the narrative successfully, the fictive clothing—both as garments and as instruments of character identities—must resonate with the cultural expectations and social experiences of the audience, though it need not accurately replicate their social reality.38 As a category of analysis, clothing contributes to our understanding of medieval perceptions and projections of wealth, class, and social status as well as the construction, performance, and regulation of gender roles. Furthermore, courtly clothing existed within a matrix of courtliness exhibited and reinforced through bearing, movement, gestures, and behavior.39 The desire for precious and formal robes was paired with a keen sense of their appropriate display.40 Although the literal cloth and social fabric of these two societies was distinct, both in Iceland and in continental Europe, production and exchange of cloth defined gender roles, marked social and economic status, and 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid., 59. In another layer of synchronicity, the saga begins with the misdeeds of Sigmund’s greatgrandfather, Sigi, a descendent of Óðinn, who is proclaimed a “vargh i vęium” [wolf in the sanctuary] and banished from his kingdom for murdering a slave, Bredi (VS, 77). In chapter 9, Granmar taunts Sinfjötli: “þu munt lengi hafa fezt a morkum uti vid varga mat” (VS, 109) [you lived on wolf ’s food for a long time out in the forest] (SV, 49). Wright, Weaving Narrative, 43. Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode, 13 and 18. Wright, Weaving Narrative, 44. Ibid., 43.

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Elizabeth M. Swedo created and reinforced social ties and obligations. As Wright suggests, “in a very real sense, therefore, cloth bound society together.”41 The primary role of clothing in the Nibelungenlied is as a display of personal honor, wealth, and status. The centrality of clothing to these sumptuary exhibitions is apparent in aventiure 3. Before they depart for Burgundy, Siegfried and his knights are first well-armored, richly saddled, and given “ze kleiden grâ unde bunt” (str. 59) [grey and colored garments] (NL, 10).42 Everyone at Worms marvels at their clothes; Hagen concludes ez möhten selbe fürsten  oder fürsten boten sîn. ir ross diu wæren scœne,  ir kleider harte guot. (str. 85) [They might be princes themselves or princes’ messengers. Their chargers were handsome, their garments excellent.] (NL, 12)

While their armor and equipment is also recognized, it is their garments that earn them immediate visual recognition, not simply as warriors but princes. In contrast, armor and weapons establish the status of heroes of Völsunga saga. In chapter 9, Sinfjötli wears a “hialm a havfði skygðan sem gler ok brynjv hvita sem snio. Spiot i hendi med agętligv merki ok gvllrendan skiolld fyrir ser” (VS, 106) [a helmet shining like glass on his head, his coat of mail white as snow, his spear in his hand adorned with a magnificent banner, and his shield rimmed with gold before him] (SV, 49). Immediately after this description, the saga notes that “sa kunni at męla vid konunga” (VS, 106) [This man knew how to speak with kings] (SV, 49). His costly armaments reflect a more militant diplomacy than is found in courts of the Nibelungenlied; this particular description serves as a prelude to a display of his skills in the art of flyting, a battle of insults. The details about clothing that embroider these narratives represent distinct, cultural relationships with cloth and yet also reveal overlap between courtly and heroic conventions. While there are far fewer chivalric elements, occasional attention to sumptuous clothing reflects the influence of courtly literature and culture within Völsunga saga and other förnaldur sögur (“sagas of ancient times,” whose narratives were usually set prior to or around the period of the initial Icelandic settlement).43 Seeking Brynhild’s advice interpreting a dream, Gudrun and her ladies all attire themselves splendidly before journeying to Heimir’s court: “þęr bivggvzt med gvlle ok mikille fegurd” (VS, 162) [They adorned themselves with gold and beautiful raiments] (SV, 76). As Agneta Ney

41 42 43

Wright, “‘Fil d’Or,” 62. Edwards (NL, 228 n. 10) notes that the “grey” and “colored” refer to the fur from two parts of a grey squirrel: its white stomach fur, which has black edging, and its grey back or tail fur. Carolyne Larrington, “Völsunga Saga, Ragnars Saga and Romance in Old Norse: Revisiting Relationships,” in The Legendary Sagas: Origins and Development, ed. Annette Lassen, Agneta Ney, and Ármann Jakobsson (Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press, 2012), 251–70, at 257. See Agneta Ney, “Genus och Rumslighet i Völsunga Saga,” in Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society: Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference, 2–7 July 2000 (Sydney: Centre for Medieval Studies, 2000), 363–74.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga and Carolyne Larrington have recognized, Heimir’s court embraces courtly opulence: “herbergit var tialldat af inum dyrstum tiolldvm ok þakit klędum allt golfit” (VS, 160) [The room was hung with the most precious tapestries and cloth covered the whole floor] (SV, 74–75). Obviously, the references to elegant apparel in Völsunga saga are far outstripped by the frequent schneiderstrophen in the Nibelungenlied. But in both of these epics, the sumptuary displays of characters mimic the noble culture of the audience, in which textile gifts buttressed the political order and textile production dictated notions of female refinement.44 In the Nibelungenlied, these displays of male grandeur are very clearly the result of women’s labor: Dô sâzen scœne frouwen  naht unde tac, daz lützel ir deheiniu  ruowe gepflac, unze man geworhte  die Sîvrides wât. (str. 65) [Fair ladies sat night and day, few of them taking any rest, until Sivrit’s garments had been wrought.] (NL, 11)

The creation of textiles and clothing for these gifts was often a shared female experi­ ence.45 Gudrun and the ladies of the court, for instance, cheerfully engage in their needlework and weaving together (VS, 184). Confining women to their chambers, the activities associated with cloth production—spinning, sewing, weaving—were sanctioned in classical and medieval literary and religious texts.46 The embodiment of refined, domestic virtue, Brekkhild (Brynhild’s sister and the wife of Heimir) received her name because “hun hafde heima verit ok nvmit hanvrde enn brynhilldr for med hialm ok bryniu. ok geck a vighum … ” (VS, 156) [she had stayed at home and learned embroidery and needlework. But Brynhild took up helmet and mail coat and went to battle] (SV, 73).47 Whereas the first component in Brekkhild’s name means “bench,” the first component in Brynhild’s name refers to a “coat of mail”; their prowess in their chosen spheres is suggested by the second element in both names—hild, “battle.” Nevertheless, Brynhild, too, is lauded for her textile handiwork: After she has been stripped of her armor, she appears next in a space deemed more “gender-appropriate” according to the ideology of courtly culture: in her chamber (well-endowed with textiles) and engaged in embroidering a tapestry depicting Sigurd’s deeds (VS, 158).48

44 45 46 47 48

Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode, 116–23, 134–35. Wright, “‘Fil d’Or,’” 62. Stephanie B. Pafenberg, “The Spindle and the Sword: Gender, Sex, and Heroism in The Nibelungenlied and Kudrun,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 70, no. 3 (1995): 106–15, at 107. Cleasby and Vigfússon, Icelandic-English Dictionary, s.v. “hannörð” or “hannyrð,” which is used to describe “handiness, skill, fine work, esp. used of ladies’ needlework, embroidery.” However, after the deception wrought against her is revealed, she rejects this domesticated role again; she “slo sinn borda sva at svnðr geck” (VS, 182) [struck her tapestry so that it tore apart] (SV, 85).

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Elizabeth M. Swedo MONSTROUS MATES AND TRANSFORMATIVE WARDROBES

For the female protagonists, wardrobe changes signal not only character transformation, but specifically transgressions of and conformity with normative gender roles. The authors deliberately externalize the transition from monstrous mates to domesticated wives—and the reverse—through changes in clothing. In Völsunga saga, Brynhild is depicted as “svaf madr ok la med avllvm hervopnum … Hun var i bryniv ok var sva faust sem hun veri hollð groinn” (VS, 146) [a man lying there asleep, dressed in full armor … She was in a coat of mail so tight that it seemed to have grown into her flesh] (SV, 67). Sigurd unilaterally initiates her transformation from warrior into wifely woman by removing her helmet (thereby discovering her sex) and then by slitting the armor “or havfvðsmatt og igegnum niðr ok sva vt i gavgnum badar ęrmar ok beit sem klęde” (VS, 146) [down from the neck opening and out through the sleeves, and [the sword] bit [the metal] as though it were cloth] (SV, 67). Brynhild’s coat of mail has nearly fused with her flesh; her external raiment and inner identity as a warrior-maid are fully aligned. Echoing Sinfjötli’s gruesome transformation, Brynhild’s identity must therefore be cut from and out of her, severing armor worn as tightly as a second skin. By explicitly comparing her armor to cloth, the author is complicit in this forcible transformation, shifting the readers’ attention from masculine attire to more acceptable feminine apparel. This emphasis on the conclusion of the transformation reflects a need to accommodate Brynhild’s behavior to the rules of the male-dominated, courtly society of twelfth-century Europe. According to Stephanie Pafenberg, disempowering such women—through violent, male physicality—ensured the primacy of the male warrior culture.49 Such women as Brynhild/Brunhild, Kriemhild, and even to a lesser degree Gudrun otherwise encroached upon the male sphere of heroic action, using male symbols and dress. In the Nibelungenlied, clothing is likewise deployed to emphasize the conclusion of Brunhild’s transformation into a submissive female. Preparing for the series of physical contests, Brunhild dons eine brünne rôtes goldes  unt einen guoten schildes rant. Ein wâfenhemde sîden  daz leit’ an diu meit, daz in deheinem strîte  wâfen nie versneit von pfellel ûzer Lybîâ (str. 428–29) [a breastplate of red-gold and a good shield’s rim. The maiden put on a silken shift beneath her armour, one never slashed by a sword in any battle, made of phellel-silk from Libya] (NL, 43)

Deceived and defeated on the battlefield, Brunhild is then physically subdued in the bedroom, again through an act of deception. Brunhild enters the bedchamber, apparently a demure maiden, dressed “in sabenwîzen hemede” (str. 632) [in a shift of fine white linen] (NL, 61). However, Brunhild obstructs her own transformation from 49

Pafenberg, “Spindle and the Sword,” 111.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga warrior queen to subjugated wife, refusing Gunther conjugal bliss. Stripped of her armor and identity as warrior, Brunhild uses her belt as a weapon, binding Gunther’s hands and feet and hanging him on the wall, after his violent attempt to consummate their marriage and “zerfuort’ ir diu kleit” (str. 636) [to tear her clothes apart] (NL, 61) has failed. Gunther, emasculated in his inability to subdue her, relies once again on the assistance of Siegfried, whose magical clothing proves once more Brunhild’s undoing: He slips on the tarnkappe and violently overpowers her in bed. Although he refrains from sleeping with her, to render her powerless, Siegfried removes and keeps her belt and her ring, tokens of his conquest. Through a series of wardrobe changes, the Nibelungenlied poet renders Brunhild’s wealth, her power, and even her body subordinate to men. Wardrobe changes mark the leading ladies’ integration into and departures from the normative gender roles of the societies of the period. In Völsunga saga, undressing signals Gudrun’s regressive transformation—from the ideal courtly lady into a monstrous mate. Embracing the role of dragonish host50 and wife at Atli’s court, Gudrun “kasta af ser skikkiunne” (VS, 216) [threw off her cloak] (SV, 100) and “for i bryniu ok tok ser sverð ok bardizt med bredrum sinum” (VS, 216) [put on a mail coat, took up a sword, and fought beside her brothers] (SV, 101). In addition to its practicality, this armor separates Gudrun from all the duties she had previously performed as the wife of Sigurd and paves the way for her deception of Atli. Although she does not don armor in the Nibelungenlied, Kriemhild embraces the same vengeful course of action as her counterpart Gudrun. Seizing Siegfried’s sword, she strikes the penultimate blow of the epic, striking down Hagen (str. 2372–73). Hagen, the ruthlessly loyal vassal and kinsman of the Burgundian kings at Worms, repeatedly deceives and antagonizes Kriemhild over the course of the narrative.51 Although Kriemhild strikes down her husband’s murderer and her own repeated betrayer, the narrative is not sympathetic to this act of retribution. Even Kriemhild’s husband, Etzel, whose son, Ortlieb, had that same day been decapitated by Hagen (str. 1961), abhors her actions, lamenting,

50 51

Lionarons (Medieval Dragon, 12) describes a dragonish host as one “who has been defined as monstrous (or ‘dragonish’) within the authoritative discourse of the text because of his or her violations of the codes regulating hospitality between host and guest.” First, he convinces her brother, Gunther, of the threat posed by Siegfried and of the necessity of betraying and eliminating him (str. 993). Then Hagen, to whom Kriemhild had entrusted the secret of Siegfried’s single vulnerability, betrays her confidence, assassinating her husband. Anticipating Kriemhild’s desire for vengeance, Hagen further betrays her by seizing Siegfried’s Nibelung gold, thus denying her access to the war chest that she would have needed to enact her revenge against her own natal family. Suspecting that a sincere reconciliation would never be possible, Hagen alone is reluctant to accept the invitation to Etzelnburg, court of Kriemhild’s second husband, Etzel, even two decades after Siegfried’s murder. The last Burgundian alive after the betrayal and massacre, Hagen continues to thwart Kriemhild, refusing to divulge where along the Rhine he had thrown the Nibelung treasure. For further analysis of Hagen’s character, see Katherine DeVane Brown, “Courtly Rivalry, Loyalty Conflict, and the Figure of Hagen in the Nibelungenlied,” Monatshefte 107, no. 3 (2015): 355–81.

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Elizabeth M. Swedo           “wie ist nu tôt gelegen von eines wîbes handen  der aller beste degen, der ie kom ze sturme  oder ie schilt getruoc! swie vînt ich im wære,  ez ist mir leide genuoc.” (str. 2374) [How is it that the very best warrior that ever entered battle or bore a shield now lies dead at a woman’s hands! Although he was my enemy, I am greatly grieved.] (NL, 213)

A belief in male dominance arguably governed the views of both authors and presumably at least half their audience.52 Vengeful women with prodigious strength are key elements in the Niflungen/Nibelungen narrative, but armored, heroic women appear to present significant gender deviations for both the continental and Icelandic audiences. QUARREL OF THE TWO QUEENS: CLOTHING AS A CULTURALLY SPECIFIC PLOT DEVICE

Clothing assumes prominent but divergent roles in the confrontations between the two queens. The Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition dictates that the queens must fight over the superiority of their respective husbands, and both the German and Icelandic audiences would have expected this hostile encounter. But variation in the deployment of clothing in this core episode allows the Middle High German poet and the Old Norse saga author to convey different underlying socio-political threats. In the Nibelungenlied, convinced that Siegfried is not a king but her husband’s vassal, Brunhild declares that the Burgundian people will not honor Kriemhild as highly as they do their own queen. Preparing for a confrontation at the cathedral, Kriemhild and her ladies dress to outshine Brunhild and her retinue. Intending to secure recognition of her status through elegant attire, she encourages her maidens “ir sult wol lâzen schouwen,  und habt ir rîche wât” (str. 831) [show clearly whether you have sumptuous clothing] (NL, 79). By virtue of her husband’s possession of the Nibelung trove, Kriemhild and her damsels surpass Brunhild’s abilities to present a lavish display, and process into the cathedral ahead of Brunhild’s party. The narrator affirms that: Swaz kleider ie getruogen  edeler ritter kint, wider ir gesinde  daz was gar ein wint. si was sô rîch des guotes,  daz drîzec künige wîp ez möhten niht erziugen,  daz tete Kriemhilde lîp. Ob iemen wünschen solde,  der kunde niht gesagen, daz man sô rîchiu kleider  gesæhe ie mêr getragen, alsô dâ ze stunden truogen  ir meide wol getân. (str. 836–37)

52

Joyce Tally Lionarons, “The Otherworld and Its Inhabitants,” in A Companion to the Nibelungenlied, ed. Winder McConnell (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998), 153–71, at 166.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga [All the clothes that noble knights’ daughters had ever worn before were as nothing compared with her retinue. She was so rich in possessions that thirty kings’ wives could not show such wealth as Kriemhild. Even if anyone wished to do so, he could not maintain that such sumptuous garments were ever seen again as her well-favoured maidens wore on that occasion.] (NL, 79)

Through these luxurious garments, Kriemhild claims social and political precedence over her rival, affirming her desire to be recognized as [ … ] tiwerr,  danne iemen habe bekant deheine küneginne,  diu krône ie her getruoc. (str. 829) [higher in rank than any queen known to have ever worn a crown.] (NL, 79)

Through this exhibition of magnificent attire, Kriemhild seeks to prove her identity as a free noblewoman, the wife not of a vassal but of a royal sovereign. In this instance and in others throughout the Nibelungenlied, opulent clothing serves as the essential medium for establishing noble identity. Such lavish displays, however, would have depended on cultural recognition of these clothing ensembles as markers of honor and status, among the courtly audiences of the northern Holy Roman Empire.53 The encounter between the queens reveals deep-seated tensions that would have been understood by the Nibelungenlied audience, concerning the visual maintenance of status and honor in courtly culture. By the twelfth century, imperial society faced blurring in the ranks of the nobility as a result of the challenges presented by an unfree but increasingly powerful group of knights known as ministeriales, a growing commercial elite, and the continued dynastic instability of the empire itself.54 In the medieval Germanic societies, êre (honor) was “external” and primarily expressed through the visible attributes of the “outer” person, as opposed to modern notions of inner virtue or integrity.55 Honor was entangled with the external concepts of prestige, reputation, and status.56 The leading ladies deploy these costly clothes publicly, in front of a church and before their retinues. The queens’ splendid garments in the Nibelungenlied version of the quarrel are strategic sumptuary displays that jeopardize the socio-political hierarchy. Furthermore, in the Nibelungenlied, the queens’ clothing captures the crux of the deception worked against Brunhild. After violently wrestling her into submission, Siegfried removes Brunhild’s belt and a golden ring from her finger (str. 679–80). Asserting that Brunhild had lost her virginity to Siegfried rather than to Gunther, Kriemhild insults Brunhild, calling her Siegfried’s concubine. Kriemhild dresses herself in Brunhild’s own bejeweled silken belt from Nineveh, which not only augments her sumptuary display but also reinforces the slanderous accusation (str. 850). With 53 54 55 56

See Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode, 47–70. Edward R. Haymes, “Heroic, Chivalric, and Aristocratic Ethos in the Nibelungenlied,” in McConnell, Companion, 94–104, at 95. Francis G. Gentry, “Key Concepts in the Nibelungenlied,” in McConnell, Companion, 66–93, at 67–68. Ibid., 68.

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Elizabeth M. Swedo the jeweled belt, Kriemhild’s garments attest not only to her own status but also to Siegfried’s superior status, as a warrior and as a husband, as well as uncover his role in the deceptions and violence against Brunhild.57 In stark contrast, in Völsunga saga, the queens’ quarrel occurs while they are bathing on the banks of the Rhine. Brynhild asserts her precedence by wading further out into the river, and Gudrun challenges her status as the wife of the better man by displaying Andvarri’s gold ring, which Sigurd, wearing Gunnar’s shape, had received from Brynhild and subsequently given to Gudrun. The queens’ state of undress conveys the intimacy of the conflict; even their respective husbands remain unaware of what has passed between the queens or what has upset Brynhild (VS, 177). Although the confrontation in both tales occurs in an apparently open or public space, the activity and the attire—bathing and nudity—indicate that the conflict in Völsunga saga is both social and deeply personal.58 As described in contemporaneous sagas, bathing was a social activity by the thirteenth century, for which men would typically travel together to hot springs and streams (laugarfǫr or “bath travel”).59 Women accompanied men, attended them as they bathed, assisted with hair-washing, and washed laundry.60 Hair-washing was a female activity, performed outdoors, for men, children, and individual women themselves, but not for other women.61 An activity simultaneously private, public, and unadorned, social bathing practices in Iceland provided a space for confrontation as appropriate as attendance at Mass in the Nibelungenlied. Gudrun and Brynhild must negotiate violations of personal oaths and conflicting ties of kinship, reflecting a set of social and political obligations relevant for the ­thirteenth-century Icelandic audience.62 The sagas suggest that social stability depended on solidarity among kin, marriage alliances, and pseudo-kinship relationships, such as “blood brotherhood and fosterage.”63 Yet, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, 57

58 59 60

61 62 63

Winder McConnell, “The Quarrel of Kriemhild and Brünhild: Mendacity or Self-Delusion?” in The Nibelungenlied: Genesis, Interpretation, Reception, ed. Sibylle Jefferis (Göppingen, Germany: Kümmerle, 2006): 49–59. McConnell raises and pursues the questions of how and when Kriemhilt received both these tokens and the account of the “taming” of Brünhild from Siegfried. Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 100–3. Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 124. Jochens (ibid., 123–25) points out that these bathing scenes occur much more commonly in the later contemporary sagas than in the sagas of the Icelanders (suggestive of an actual change in social practice) and include mainly men, although there is some indication that men and women occasionally bathed together. Ibid., 125. Ibid., 140. VS, 41. “Kinship solidarity was of fundamental importance in the society portrayed by the sagas, a society in which the honor of an individual or a family was constantly at risk through the actions of another party, and often blood revenge was the only or the preferred means of restitution. For this reason, individuals sometimes had to make hard choices about offering support in a conflict, and a blood relative might not always be a reliable ally. Therefore people also depended on other types of alliances in order to secure a reliable support system, chief among them marriage alliances, but also the pseudo-kinship ties of blood brotherhood and fosterage.”

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga an increasingly small number of local chieftains (goðar) consolidated power in Iceland by securing followers through a combination of respect, legal influence, and wealth.64 Thirteenth-century Icelanders would have also been familiar with the consolidation of the kingdom of Norway in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and subsequent realignment of political fidelity and duties. Aristocratic service to kings replaced previous allegiances to kin.65 Larrington identifies an implicit critique in Völsunga saga of this courtly insincerity and deceit, particularly in its “slippery attitudes towards oath-keeping and kin-loyalty and its strategic conversations behind closed doors,” all of which contrast with the “robust heroic north of the fornaldarsögur” [legendary sagas].66 According to C. Stephen Jaeger, a hallmark of court life was an inversion of its values through manipulation and flattery, particularly insincere public behavior, which duplicitously masked private feelings.67 The nakedness, intimacy, and frailty of social bonds found in the confrontation between the queens are later echoed in the betrayal of Sigurd, who is attacked by his brothers-in-law while asleep in bed with his wife, Gudrun.68 As the truth is laid bare in Völsunga saga, it forces the individuals involved to assess their alliances and consider appropriate forms of restitution, which ultimately have repercussions at a societal level. The code of honor to which Brynhild adheres allows no compromises; she must demand the death of the man whom she loves but who has compromised her honor. Embellishment of appearance cannot repair her status nor restructure their relationship. Ostentatious display may secure the esteem of the community in the Nibelungenlied, but in Völsunga saga personal oaths, marriage alliances, and kinship obligations are at stake. Thus, to advance the narrative successfully, the fictive clothing—or its lack—must both accommodate the narrative and resonate with the cultural and social experience of the audience. THE DRAGON-SLAYERS’ DRESS: IDENTITY, TRANSFORMATION, AND DECEPTION

Concluding with a consideration of clothing worn by the dragon-slayers themselves—Sigurd and Siegfried—allows us to appreciate the intertextual threads that tie the different renditions of the dragon-slayer epic together. Reviewing the same narrative functions—clothing as identity, clothing and transformation, clothing 64 65 66 67 68

The saga more or less coincides with the outset of the Sturlung Age, a period of a little over forty years during the mid-thirteenth century in which Iceland suffered from internal strife as a result of power struggles between five leading family clans. Hans Jacob Orning, “Class,” in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Sagas, ed. Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (London: Routledge, 2017), 309. Larrington, “Völsunga Saga, Ragnars Saga,” 265. C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 61–62. As Piponnier and Mane note (Dress in the Middle Ages, 99), in most of medieval Europe, nakedness “seems to have been reserved for intimacy between couples, at night.”

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Elizabeth M. Swedo and ­deception—reveals the specific but evolving cultural milieus already identified. However, the strategic continuities in attire also suggest the audiences’ familiarity with other variants of the dragon-slayer legend. Siegfried’s and Sigurd’s clothing reflects a complicated inner person, signaling an intricate intersection of heroic prowess, courtly virtue, and dragonish cunning and ferocity. Their attire furthermore engages their audiences’ broad awareness of variations in the dragon-slayer tradition. In each epic, the dragon-slayer’s clothing projects his status, signaling his noble bearing, manners, and wealth. In a detailed description of a type rarely given to personal attire in Völsunga saga, the author notes that Sigurd’s shield and all his fighting gear were emblazoned with the figure of a dragon: hans skiollðr var marghfallðr ok lavghadr i ravdv gvlle ok skrifadr a einn dręke hann var davckbrvnaðr it efra enn fagr raudr it nędra ok þann veg var markaðr hans hialmr ok sauðvll ok vopn rokkr. hann hafde gvllbryniuna ok avll hans vopn vorv gvlle bvinn ok þvi var dreke markadr a hans vopnum ollvm at er hann er senn ma vita hverr þar ferr. af avllum þeim er frętt hafa at hann er ðrap þann mikla dreka. er uęringar kalla fafne. (VS, 154) [His ornamented shield was plated with red gold and emblazoned with a dragon. Its top half was dark brown and its bottom half light red, and his helmet, saddle, and buffcoat were all marked in this way. He wore a mail coat of gold and all his weapons were ornamented with gold. In this way the dragon was illustrated on all his arms, so that when he was seen, all who had heard the story would recognize him as the one who had killed the great dragon called Fafnir by the Varangians.] (SV, 72)

Rather than perfect alignment of inner identity and outer persona, Sigurd’s apparel reveals an entanglement of external courtliness and internal ferocity.69 The dragon on his accoutrements presents a genteel veneer, preserving and publicizing his deeds as dragon-slayer. In addition to princely manners and noble birth, these adornments and heraldic devices simultaneously remind the audience that Sigurd, like Siegfried, is distinguished from his courtly peers by his more primal prowess: the internal, dragonish qualities that Sigurd has acquired by eating the dragon’s heart and Siegfried by bathing in the dragon’s blood. Schneiderstrophen showcase Siegfried’s transformation from chivalric prince to dragonish hero through lavish wardrobes. Following his courtly upbringing, Siegfried is knighted at his father’s court, along with four hundred squires, all of whom received sumptuous new clothing, in accordance with feudal customs (str. 30–31).70 Departing from his familiar childhood space in Xanten, Siegfried rides out alone to fight against two princes, twelve giants, seven hundred warriors, and one dwarf, Alberich.71 The end 69

70 71

See also Stefanie Würth, ““The Rhetoric of Völsunga Saga,” in Fornaldarsagornas Struktur och Ideologi, ed. Ármann Jakobson, Annette Lassen, and Agneta Ney (Uppsala: Institutionen for Nordisk Språk, 2003), 101–12, at 106–7; Ney, “Genus och Rumslighet,” 367; and Larrington, “Völsunga Saga, Ragnars Saga,” 256–57. See Piponnier and Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, 33; Joachim Bumke, Höfische Kultur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im Hohen Mittelalter (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1986), 318– 41; Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode, 134–35. Lionarons, “Otherworld,” 154–55.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga of this Otherworldly initiation is marked by Siegfried’s reception of two new garments: the tarnkappe (cloak of invisibility) and the dragon skin.72 einen lintrachen  den sluoc des heldes hant. er badet’ sich in dem bluote:  sîn hût wart hurnîn. des snîdet in kein wâfen (str. 100) [(Siegfried) slew a dragon. He bathed in the blood—his skin turned horny. Therefore no weapon can cut him] (NL, 14)

Siegfried wears this dragon’s blood as a second skin for the rest of his life as a triumphant adult hero. This incident best demonstrates the balance of intertextual expectations by the continental author and his patrons and audiences.73 Both audience and author likely assume that Siegfried’s dragon-slaying feat is pivotal to his heroic identity. Yet, these youthful adventures are not recounted in detail in the Nibelungenlied but presented as hearsay and briefly summarized by Hagen in sixteen strophen (str. 86–101); only a single strophe describes his slaying of the dragon (str. 100). This absence of detail about Siegfried’s adventures and slaying of a dragon does not constitute a flaw or rupture in the narrative, however; rather, it demonstrates the continental author’s assumption that the patrons and audiences of this work would be aware of additional details from the larger Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition. While Sigurd’s heraldic devices and sumptuous attire merge his identities of both dragonish hero and chivalric prince, Siegfried’s heroic ventures are covered by a guise of refinement. Layered over his dragonish skin, he is domesticated in his postliminal stage with the courtly garments, befitting his status in civilized human society. In the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried’s outer layers of clothing affirm his well-established courtly behavior, while concealing his uncouth, dragonish skin and untamed, heroic qualities. The narrator declares that Von bezzerm pirsgewæte  gehôrt ich nie gesagen. einen roc von swarzem pfellel  den sach man in tragen und einen huot von zobele,  der rîche was genuoc. hey waꝫ er rîcher porten  an sînem kochære truoc! Von einem pantel  was dar über gezogen ein hût durch die süeze. (str. 952–53) …… Von einer ludemes hiute  was allez sîn gewant. von houbet unz an daz ende  gestreut man drûfe vant. ûz der liehten riuhe  vil manic goldes zein ze beiden sînen sîten  dem küenen jegermeister schein. (str. 954) [Never did I hear tell of better hunting-garb. He was seen to wear a tunic of black phellel-silk and a hat of sable, which was of ample cost. Ah, what rich 72 73

Ibid., 160, 161. Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 237. See Francis G. Gentry, “Major Trends in Nibelungenlied Scholarship,” in Gentry et al., Nibelungenlied Tradition, 206–9.

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Elizabeth M. Swedo braids he bore on his quiver! A panther’s skin was stretched over it for the sake of its sweet scent. … All his clothing was of otter skin, varied by furs of other kinds from top to tail. Bars of gold in great numbers shone forth from both sides of the bright furs that the bold master-huntsman wore.] (NL, 90)

This fabulous hunting suit reflects Siegfried’s strength, cunning, and agility but also signifies his dominance over the wild beasts he hunts. Most twelfth-century European ideologies about the role of man in the natural world assumed that Homo (“mankind”) was both separate from and superior to Natura (“nature”); Homo “had been created to rule over Nature, the earth, Creation.”74 In courtly culture, hunting à force was a fashionable elite occupation, suitable for demonstrating prowess and human superiority over the natural world.75 In his attire, Siegfried presents behavior at once primal and vicious—befitting his dragonish qualities—and befitting courtly civility. In Völsunga saga, the wolf skins worn by the dragon-slayer’s father Sigmund and his half-brother Sinfjötli provide the closest parallel to Siegfried’s hunting suit. Yet, these skins invert the courtly unity between civility and prowess in hunting. Wearing them, Sigmund and Sinfjötli acquire such ruthless and deadly proficiency in hunting that their ferocity removes them from civilized society. Not only do they prey on men, there is even an implication of cannibalism in chapter 9, in which Granmar taunts Sinfjötli: “þu munt lengi hafa fezt a morkum uti vid varga mat … þu … er mart kallt hrę hefir sogit til blods” (VS, 109) [you lived on wolf ’s food for a long time out in the forest … you … who have sucked the blood of many cold corpses] (SV, 49). Although Sigmund and Sinfjötli’s tale is absent from the Nibelungenlied, juxtaposition of these episodes deepens appreciation of the hunting conventions presented to the Middle High German audience. Whereas the wolf skins worn by Sinfjötli make him appear beastly, the furs in Siegfried’s courtly hunting attire signal that he is a vanquisher of beasts, until he himself falls prey to civilized society. Perhaps the most fascinating component of Siegfried’s hunting ensemble that it is entirely of otter skin—“Von einer ludemes hiute  was allez sîn gewant” (str. 954)— providing an unexpected tie to Völsunga saga and uncovering the deceptions that prove the undoing of both dragon-slayers.76 One of three exceptional sons of Hreidmar, Otr, in Völsunga saga, is a shapeshifter who spends his days as an otter. A benevolent but proficient hunter, Otr becomes the unsuspecting prey and target of the mischievous god, Loki. Eating a fresh-caught salmon with his eyes closed, Otr is fatally struck by a stone recklessly thrown by Loki. To compensate Otr’s father and brothers—Fafnir the dragon and Regin the dwarf—for his death, the gods Óðinn, Hœnir, and Loki must 74

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Richard C. Hoffman, “Homo et Natura, Homo in Natura: Ecological Perspectives on the European Middle Ages,” in Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 1–38, at 11. Susan Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force,” in Hanawalt and Kiser, Engaging with Nature, 63–84, at 69. Edwards (NL, 232 n. 90) notes that the interpretation of ludem as “otter” is somewhat speculative, as the Middle High German word “is only attested here.” Given the medieval Latin for otter was lutra or luter, this choice of translation appears reasonable.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga amass enough gold to fill the otter’s skin and then cover it completely in gold, leading the gods to extort gold from the dwarf Andvarri. Andvarri’s parting curse—“at hverium skyllde at bana verða er pann gvllhring ętti. ok sva allt gullit” (VS, 128) [the gold ring would be the death of whoever owned it, and the same applied to all the gold] (SV, 58)—heralds the violent and tragic events in the remainder of the saga. Otr’s unjust slaying and his excessive ransom precipitates the inevitable deaths of Fafnir and Regin as well as the downfall of the hero Sigurd, and ruin of the Burgundian Niflung lineage. In the Nibelungenlied, the source of the dragon’s treasure remains undisclosed, and Otr is entirely absent. Nevertheless, the poet achieves a subtle but deliberate connection to the broad Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition explicitly through clothing, which serves as the final instrument of betrayal in the death of Siegfried. His final transformation—from hunter to hunted—is achieved by stripping him down to his humanity again. Prior to his race against Hagen to the spring, Siegfried removes his fabulous furry hunting suit and runs wearing only his white silk shift, which marked the location between his shoulder blades of his vulnerable human skin,77 otherwise obscured beneath the fine clothing (NL, 92). Trusting Hagen to protect rather than betray her husband, Kriemhild had declared “mit kleinen sîden  næ ich ûf sîn ­gewant  ein tougenlîchez kriuze” (str. 904) [with fine silk I shall sew a secret cross on his clothing] (NL, 86). Bending over a stream to drink and oblivious to the imminent danger, Siegfried is speared down by the treacherous Hagen of Troneck.78 And just as it was for Otr, an excessive ransom—resulting, in this case, in the death of all the Burgundians—will be paid for the death of Siegfried. Siegfried’s final hunting expedition provides another link between the death scenes of the two dragon-slayers. Like Siegfried, Sigurd is struck without knowing that he had become prey or even that he was the deserving target of treachery, ignominiously stabbed while asleep in his bed rather than making the final stand of a noble quarry.79 The dying Sigurd proclaims that had he been forewarned of this treachery, they would have found him “torvelldra mvnde þeim at drepa mik en en mesta visvnd eda ville gavllt” (VS, 194) [more difficult to kill than the fiercest bison or wild boar] (SV, 195), beasts that were among the quarries of Siegfried’s final hunt.80 These examples suggest again the audience’s intertextual awareness of variants of the legend, a growing Icelandic familiarity with courtly culture, and an overlap between genres of the Old Norse fornaldarsögur and Middle High German chivalric literature. Ultimately, although use of clothing in the narratives cannot attest to certain audience knowledge of variants, 77 78 79 80

Instead of impervious dragon skin head-to-toe, Siegfried retained a single vulnerable spot between his shoulder blades, because a linden leaf had covered this patch of his human skin when he bathed in blood flowing from the wounded dragon (str. 902). Although frequently multipronged, spears were the preferred medieval weapon for hunting otters; see Howard L. Blackmore, Hunting Weapons: From the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1971), 105–7. As Crane suggests (“Ritual Aspects,” 68), the only unpredictable aspect of a hunt à force was the quarry itself, which had not been apprised of the rules and rituals. Before his fateful drink at the spring, Siegfried had killed a lion, a bison, an elk, four aurochs, a fierce buck, and a huge boar, which he slew with a sword (str. 935–939; NL, 88–89).

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Elizabeth M. Swedo the intertextual clothing references suggest that familiarity would have enriched the audience’s experience of the tale. CONCLUSION

These uses of clothing also remind us that neither the Nibelungenlied nor Völsunga saga present pure reflections of the societies for which they were composed. To begin with, these two fullest renditions of this larger body of legendary poems, tales, and images present literary cultures and genres in transition. As Winder McConnell has demonstrated, the Nibelungenlied straddles the genres of continental poetry: older epics and newer romances.81 Haymes has similarly argued that viewing the poem as “essentially courtly with heroic elements” fails to explain the complexity of its ethical patterns, which emerge from the confluence of chivalric service, ritualized courtly behavior, and heroic traditions.82 Similarly, Völsunga saga was composed at the intersection of French courtly romances and heroic fornaldarsögur, as discussed by Larrington. She contends that the leading ladies’ domestic refinement and Sigurd’s courtly manners, gifted conversation, and intellect reflect the influence of romance.83 She and others have argued that the saga, in fact, presents an “ideological confrontation between different types of cultural capital, manifested as different generic feature-sets.”84 The first half of Völsunga saga nostalgically celebrates the heroic, pagan North, embracing generic conventions of the fornaldarsögur; in the second half, the saga adopts and critiques the “trappings of European chivalry.”85 Although medieval patrons and audience might expect a literary work—particularly if commissioned—to replicate their shared aesthetics, social practices, and moral perspectives, as Francis G. Gentry suggests, a poet might utilize “his creation as a critical mirror for the court to view itself and, by implication, its imperfections. For by taking what seems to be familiar, but shifting the perspective just slightly, the poet forces his audience into a dialectic confrontation with its own ideals and their inadequacies.”86 As the genres evolved and ideals shifted, the perspectives of the audience could be manipulated; but to convey an established legend, their narrative expectations had to be met successfully. The inclusion of clothing and textiles allows us to consider this overlap in genres. Despite the prominence of clothing throughout the Nibelungenlied, fashion speaks volumes in both the Old Norse and the Middle High German renditions of the ­Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition. Clothing provides the audience with visual identifiers for characters but also suggests intangible attributes of the characters, 81 82 83 84 85 86

McConnell, Nibelungenlied, 113. For instance, unlike many of the courtly romances of the period, this epic poem relates these actions through stanzas of four verses (Langzeilen), divided into rhyming pairs. Haymes, “Heroic, Chivalric, and Aristocratic Ethos,” 94, 95–98. Larrington, “Völsunga Saga, Ragnars Saga,” 253. Ibid. Ibid. Gentry, “Key Concepts,” 66.

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Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga marks the characters’ transformations, and serves as an instrument of deception. The intertwined concepts of identity and apparel in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga form different threads of the same narrative tradition. Certainly, the Nibelungenlied’s exaggerated emphasis on finery reflects some culturally specific revision made by the poet in response to late-twelfth-century fashions—in both clothing and literature. However, as has been demonstrated, the anonymous author and audiences of Völsunga saga were likely not unfamiliar with this southern courtly culture, and chivalric elements embellish the saga as well. In both the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga, clothing plays a prominent role. In some cases, it is a narrative function: Costume changes signal the unfolding drama of the moment, and narrative expectations dictate the use of particular items of clothing. However, as markers of identity and narrative plot devices, clothing provides several significant reminders about the intertwined Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition. First, it reminds us of the shared narrative tradition: The narrative intertextualities embedded in the clothing of Sigurd/Siegfried would enrich the tale for anyone familiar with its variants. Moreover, the various external projections of the dragon-slayer’s internal qualities and the gendered transformations of the monstrous mates also unveil generic and cultural overlap among Icelandic and Middle High German societies. Second, the diverging deployment of clothing in the quarrel between the queens reminds us that the authors adapted the narrative to suit the audience’s cultural and social milieu. Expanding on the Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition, authors of both the prose and poetic epics forged their own meaning through clothing specific to their own societies, both challenging and appeasing their audiences’ horizons of expectation.

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Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216 Hugh M. Thomas

Historians of clothing and textiles must use many different sources to reconstruct the nature of their subjects in the Middle Ages, including surviving textiles, literary sources, and artistic works.1 Particularly important among these sources, at least for the later Middle Ages, are the records of great households, for textiles were crucial to the lifestyles of royal, princely, and aristocratic courts. Indeed, a classic work in the field, Françoise Piponnier’s history of clothing at the court of Anjou, relied overwhelmingly on such records, and other scholars have used similar records for the royal court in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England.2 For earlier periods, of course, the lack

This article is an offshoot of a book in preparation on the social and cultural history of the court of King John, and draws from research on the material culture of the court.   1 Important works on clothing in the central and later Middle Ages include Michèle Beaulieu and

Jeanne Baylé, Le Costume en Bourgogne, de Philippe le Hardi à la Mort de Charles le Téméraire (1364–1477) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956); Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980); Michel Pastoureau, ed., Le Vêtement: Histoire, Archéologie et Symbolique Vestimentaires au Moyen Age (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989); Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Jennifer Harris, “‘Estroit vestu et menu cosu’: Evidence for the Construction of Twelfth-Century Dress,” in Medieval Art: Recent Perspectives: A Memorial Tribute to C. R. Dodwell, ed. Gale R. OwenCrocker and Timothy Graham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 89–103; Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150–c.1450, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2001), 89–103; Désirée G. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, eds., Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007); Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress and Fashion (London: British Library, 2007); Maureen Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Tina Anderlini, Le Costume Médiéval au XIIIème Siècle (1180– 1320) (Bayeux: Heimdal, 2014).   2 Françoise Piponnier, Costume et Vie Sociale: La Cour d’Anjou, XIVe–XVe Siècle (Paris: Mouton, 1970); Kay Staniland, “Clothing and Textiles at the Court of Edward III (1342–1352),” in Collectanea Londiniensia: Studies in London Archaeology and History Presented to Ralph Merrifield, ed. Joanna Bird, Hugh Chapman, and John Clark (London: London and Middlesex

Hugh M. Thomas or paucity of records is a major obstacle. Sybille Schröder has ably used the financial records known as the pipe rolls to study the use of textiles at the court of Henry II of England to the extent possible, but those records provide only limited information.3 However, the reign of King John, Henry’s youngest legitimate son and his successor (after the intervening reign of John’s older brother, Richard I), saw a tremendous leap in record keeping and preservation, with many new types of records coming into existence. Particularly important for this project are the close rolls, which record the authorization for many purchases, and two surviving misae rolls, which kept the ­records of the king’s chamber/wardrobe.4 These records are varied and incomplete, but cumulatively they are very informative and can provide the earliest possible indepth look at clothing and textiles at a European royal court. It is my intention, in this article, to describe what these records have to teach us. SCOPE AND RANGE OF TEXTILE PURCHASES

Though there is no way to systematically work out how much cloth King John’s court purchased, it was certainly a large amount. In the pipe roll for John’s thirteenth regnal year (1211–12), John fitz Hugh, a major purchaser of goods for the king, bought over six thousand ells of cloth, of which a third was canvas but the rest was more expensive, including 1,283 ells of expensive scarlet, the finest woolen fabric available at the time.5 He also bought 216 pieces of silk cloth. The following year, in a single purchase, Archaeological Society, 1978), 223–34; Kay Staniland, “Clothing Provision and the Great Wardrobe in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” Textile History 22 (1991): 239–52; Frédérique Lachaud, “Les Livrées de Textiles et de Fourrures à la Fin du Moyen Âge: L’Exemple de la Cour du Roi Edouard 1er Plantagenêt (1272–1307),” in Pastoureau, Le Vêtement, 169–80; Frédérique Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes in England, c. 1200–c. 1330,” English Historical Review 111 (1996): 279–98; Benjamin Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011): 1–31; Frédérique Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries: A Study of the Material Culture of the Court of Edward I (1272–1307)” (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1992).   3 Sybille Schröder, Macht und Gabe: Materielle Kultur am Hof Heinrichs II. von England (Husum, Germany: Matthiesen, 2004), 29–41, 212–43.   4 Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1833; hereafter RLC); Rotulus Misae in Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Praestitis, Regnante Johanne (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1844; hereafter Misae 11J), 109–71; Rotulus Misae—Anni Regni Regis Johannis Quarti Decimi in Henry Cole, ed., Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1844; hereafter Misae 14J), 231– 69. The sometimes highly detailed pipe rolls of John’s reign are also important; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the First–Seventeenth Year of the Reign of King John: Michaelmas 1199–1216 (London: Pipe Roll Society, 1933–1964; hereafter cited as PR and by regnal year).   5 For medieval scarlets, see John H. Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, ed. Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), 13–70; John H. Munro, “Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology, and Industrial Organisation, c. 800–1500,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge

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Clothing at King John’s Court John bought 7,680 ells of four different fabrics, none of them cheap, at a cost of £840 15s 6d.6 At his death, John left behind in one of his several castle treasuries, at Corfe, a collection of 119 silk “cloths” from “Hispania,” thirty-one pieces of samite (a thick luxurious silk), and four baldekins (another rich silk fabric); altogether these silks were worth a total of approximately £500.7 Given that John had a regular cash revenue of around £20,000 for much of the reign, though it could go much higher, these were not inconsiderable sums, especially for a king with burning needs for military expenditure to maintain dominance in the British Isles and to retain or recover his continental possessions, the most important of which were seized by Philip Augustus in 1204.8 Textiles were used for a wide variety of purposes, including many purely practical ones, from bags and covers for the various objects the king was using on his constant travels to linen for constructing the pavilions he sometimes slept in, particularly on military campaigns.9 The most important use of textiles was of course clothing, which will be discussed in subsequent sections, but it was one among many. Members of the medieval elite also dressed up their horses, with metal ornaments, highly decorated saddles, and brightly colored cloth.10 In 1206–7 Reginald of Cornhill, a major purchaser for the king, bought seven pairs of horse “covers” (coopertorii—probably caparisons), three decorated with golden lions and four with silk ones.11 More puzzling, but ultimately more striking, the last item on John fitz Hugh’s massive purchase in 1212–13 was 243 ells of blanchet12 dyed with kermes, which were designated for sambucas, most frequently translated as saddle cloths or saddle blankets. Kermes was the most expensive dye available, made with dried insect eggs from the Mediterranean region and usually reserved for luxurious scarlets; one would not normally associate it with saddle blankets. However, related purchases, including palfreys (horses designated for riding), saddles, gilded spurs and bridle reins, and hats with peacock feathers, indicate that the king had a procession in mind—indeed, at least some of the other cloth bought on this occasion may have been for clothing the riders. What is particularly University Press, 2003), 1:181–227, at 212–17; John Munro, “Scarlet,” 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), 477–81; Martha Carlin and David Crouch, Lost Letters of Medieval Life: English Society, 1200–1250 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 42–45.   6 PR 13 John 107–9; PR 14 John 43.   7 Fred A. Cazel, Jr., ed., Roll of Divers Accounts for the Early Years of the Reign of Henry III (London: Pipe Roll Society, 1982), 34–35.   8 Nick Barratt, “The Revenue of King John,” English Historical Review 111 (1996): 835–55, at 841.   9 For example, Misae 11J 168–69; RLC 88a–b, 101b, 119a. For John’s constant itineration, see Julie Elizabeth Kanter, “Peripatetic and Sedentary Kingship: The Itineraries of John and Henry III,” Thirteenth-Century England 13 (2011): 11–26.  10 For metal ornaments, see John Clark, The Medieval Horse and Its Equipment c. 1150–c. 1450, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 43–74.  11 PR 8 John xxvi, 47.  12 Generally blanchet was an undyed or white woolen fabric, though that was obviously not the case here. Later the term was used for blankets. Mark Chambers, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Mark Zumbuhl, “Blanket,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 73–74.

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Hugh M. Thomas striking is that the eighty-nine horses and forty saddles bought on the occasion were described as being for the sambucas (ad sambucas). Probably the horses were chosen because their coloring set off the vividly dyed cloth. In any case textiles formed the heart of this elaborate ensemble of purchases.13 The royal records reveal less about wall hangings than one might expect. Two purchases of twenty-one and ten ells respectively of paonaz, a textile that was bluish-green or purple and was named after the peacock, for the chamber of John’s queen, Isabella of Angoulême, may have been for that purpose.14 Later in the thirteenth century, four silk cloths given by King John were hanging in the choir at St. Paul’s cathedral, London.15 They were described as de aresta, a term interpreted by Donald King as a fishbone weave but by others as a type of cloth of gold.16 Whatever their nature, cloths of this type were purchased in large numbers by John and may well have served as hangings in his palaces, castles, and other dwellings.17 As the reference to the king’s gifts to St. Paul’s indicates, textiles had an important place in religious practices, particularly in the form of hangings, vestments, and altar cloths, and the royal records include a number of purchases for the chapels of the king and queen.18 Table linens were crucial to any royal feast. Indeed, so important were they that Daniel of Beccles, a commentator on proper manners among other subjects, opined that the tablecloth (mappa) was more important than the table.19 The office of naperer, who was in charge of such linens, was of venerable standing in John’s day, and various men held tenancies related to this office. The use of cloth in feasting even had ceremonial aspects, and one man held land for the service of bearing a cloth before the queen at the three great yearly feasts and before the king at his coronation.20 Each year, the royal government bought large amounts of linen for the great yearly feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and records of many of these purchases survive, ranging from

 13 PR 14 John 43–44.  14 RLC 88b, 109a. For paonaz, see Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 9; Lisa Monnas, “Some  15  16

 17  18  19  20

Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 25–57, at 49– 52. W. Sparrow Simpson, “Two Inventories of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London,” Archaeologia 50 (1887): 439–524, at 494–95. For a gift of one silk cloth to St. Paul’s and three each to the bishop of Winchester and Bury St. Edmunds, see RLC 175a. Donald King, “Types of Silk Cloth Used in England, 1200–1500,” in La Seta in Europa: Sec. XIII– XX, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Prato, Italy: Le Monnnier, 1993), 457–64, at 461; Frédérique Lachaud, “Les Soieries Importées en Angleterre (fin XIIe et XIIIe siècles),” Techniques and Culture 34 (1999): 179–192, at 186; Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 11. PR 13 John 109. PR 2 John 190; PR 3 John 89; PR 6 John 94; PR 9 John 30; RLC 27a, 89a, 96a, 103a. Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus Danielis Becclesiensis, ed. J. Gilbart Smyly (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1939), 38, 83–84. Henry C. M. Lyte, Liber Feodorum: The Book of Fees, Commonly Called Testa de Nevill, vol. 1, 1198–1242 (London: HMSO, 1920), 67, 80, 85, 117, 119, 126; Hubert Hall, ed. The Red Book of the Exchequer, 3 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1896), 2:457, 537.

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Clothing at King John’s Court one hundred to one thousand ells for each feast. In addition, the government bought two thousand ells for John’s first coronation feast.21 Finally, luxurious bedding was crucial to the king’s dignity and comfort. Because kings often conducted important business in royal bedchambers with intimate advisers and important visitors, beds were an important symbol of royal authority and wealth.22 The itinerant lives of medieval kings made lavish furniture less important than it would be in later courts, but John’s bed, or at least his bedding, accompanied him about his realms.23 Writers of romances sometimes described lavish beds and bedding, an additional measure of their cultural importance.24 A king like John was expected to have a splendid bed, and it is no surprise that one can find references to silk and scarlet cloth as well as more mundane fabrics such as fustian.25 Thus, a sheriff of Kent spent the considerable sum of £11 for two matracas of silk and fustian bordered with scarlet.26 Royal bedding often used valuable fur, including vair, sable, and ermine. John valued three items of bedding so much that he kept them stored with his jewels: a bedcover of samite lined with sable; a bedcover lined with otter skins; and a culcitra, probably in this context a quilt, embroidered with parrots that a key Poitevin nobleman, the viscount of Thouars, had given him.27 Even if he sometimes kept his best bedding in his treasury, John clearly slept in style. CLOTHING PROVISION: FABRICS, FURS, COSTS, AND PERSONNEL

John’s court purchased many different kinds of fabrics. A number are listed in table 4.1, on the prices of fabrics, and one could add fustian, blanchet, and  21 PR 1 John 169; PR 7 John 161; PR 8 John 181–82; PR 10 John 193; PR 12 John 76; PR 14 John 147; PR

17 John 48; RLC 15b, 25b, 58b, 66a, 75a, 98a, 127b, 157a–b, 180b, 220b; Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 93.

 22 Paul R. Hyams, “What Did Henry III of England Think in Bed and in French about Kingship

 23  24

 25  26  27

and Anger?” in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 92–126, at 93–94; C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 78; Hollie L. S. Morgan, Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations and Realities (York, UK: York Medieval Press, 2017), 94–109. Misae 14J 237, 246; RLC 190a. Marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, ed. Karl Warnke and Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1990), 34–35, 138–39, 200–1; Master Thomas, The Romance of Horn, vol. 1, Text, Critical Introduction and Notes, ed. Mildred K. Pope, Anglo-Norman Texts 9–10 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), 27, 32, 36; Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres Complètes, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 519–20, 536, 874; Albert Stimming, ed., Der Anglonormannische Boeve de Haumtone (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1899), 112. Fustian was a hard-wearing fabric made of more than one fiber, in this case probably flax and wool; Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Fustian,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 222–23. PR 8 John 47. Matracas may have been a layer of bedding rather than a mattress; Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 25–28. Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati (London: G. Eyre and A. Spottiswoode, 1837), 134a. For other references to bedding, see PR 16 John 28; RLC

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Hugh M. Thomas Table 4.1: Prices of fabrics recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216 This table summarizes all entries in which one can determine the price per ell of a given type of fabric. For these purposes, each purchase is treated equally, regardless of the number of ells purchased.

 Fabric   Number of purchases  Average price    Low price     with price listed       per ell

High price

Scarlet

12

6s. 8d.

4s. 7d.

8s. 6.

Burnet

1

3s. 9d.

3s. 9d.

3s. 9d.

Viride

12

3s. 4d.

2s. 3d.

4s. 4d.

Paonaz

3

3s. 1d.

3s.

3s. 4d.

2

2s. 7d.

2s. 6d.

2s. 8d.

5

2s. 4d.

1s. 2s.

3s. 3d.

Caperaco, capereto

a

Russet Irish dyed in kermes

1

2s. 3d.

2s. 3d.

2s. 3d.

Estamford

1

1s. 4d.

1s. 4d.

1s. 4d.

Blou, bleu

2

1s. 2d.

1s. 1d.

1s. 2d.

Burel

1

1s.

1s.

1s.

Linenb

13

5d.

2d.

1s. 1d.

a b

Probably a type of cloth intended for making hoods; see Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project (online database), http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk, s.v. “caperacius.” The figures for linen are drawn from Paul Latimer, “Early Thirteenth-Century Prices,” in King John: New Interpretations, ed. Stephen D. Church (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), 41–73, at 64, no. 520.

haberget,28 for which prices do not survive, and of course silks, which will be discussed separately. Some fabrics seem, at least at first glance, to be designated by color rather than the weave or other factors. However, the consensus for scarlet is that the type of cloth came first and that because of its quality it came to be associated with the rich color produced by kermes dye, and the impression one receives from the records is that viride and russet also referred to types of cloth rather than simply colors. Certainly the

25a, 101b, 103a, 109a, 175a, 184a. Culcitra could also mean cushion; Maria Hayward and Lisa Monnas, “Quilting and Padding,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 439–40. For a modern reconstruction of bedding, see Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 25–36. For a description of a bed and bedchamber contemporary to John, see Alexander Neckam, “De Utensilibus,” in A Volume of Vocabularies, ed. Thomas Wright (Liverpool: privately printed, 1882), 100.  28 For this woolen fabric, probably a diamond twill, see E. Carus-Wilson, “Haberget: A Medieval Textile Conundrum,” Medieval Archaeology 13 (1969): 148–66; Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Haberget,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 260.

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Clothing at King John’s Court term russet could be used for a rough woolen cloth in later periods, and viride seems to be treated as a noun rather than a color adjective.29 Scarlet and viride were by far the two fabrics most commonly mentioned in the sources, but other fabrics could be bought in large quantities, even if more rarely, and the overall picture is marked by an embrace of a variety of fabrics and colors. As the prices in table 4.1 indicate, there existed a hierarchy of fabrics. Setting aside silk for the moment, scarlet was firmly at the top, as one would expect, but there were also clear differences between other fabrics. The figures in this table must be taken with a certain amount of caution, given the small sample size in many cases, the variation in prices, and a surge of inflation early in John’s reign.30 Moreover, the quality of individual fabrics probably varied from purchase to purchase or indeed within one purchase. Thus, in two entries Reginald of Cornhill is recorded as having bought the same fabric—viride in one case, russet in the other—at different prices per ell.31 More concretely, the highest priced linen was described as delicata, a term that could be translated as luxurious or delicate.32 Such factors may explain why when John’s son, Henry III, outfitted his sister, Isabella, to marry the Emperor Frederick II in 1235, paonaz was the most expensive rather than the fourth most expensive fabric, though shifts in taste over time might also have played a role.33 Despite its shortcomings, this list can provide some idea of the hierarchy of fabrics during John’s reign and will be useful in discussing the provision of clothing for different individuals and groups within the king’s court. To keep these prices in perspective, it is worth noting that even a skilled laborer in this period made only two or three pence a day, so that even the cheapest cloth would have cost four days’ labor an ell for a prosperous worker, and an ell of scarlet on average cost twenty days’ labor.34 Silk was, of course, the luxury cloth par excellence, matching scarlet in the quality of manufacture and, as an invariably imported fabric, adding the allure of the exotic.35  29 For the nature of scarlets, see above, note 5. For russet, see Mark Chambers and Elizabeth

 30

 31  32  33  34  35

Coatsworth, “Russet,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 469; Louise Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2014), 389. The editors of the latter work, however, treat viride simply as green cloth rather than a specific type of fabric (397). Paul Latimer, “Early Thirteenth-Century Prices,” in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999), 41–73; Paul Latimer, “The English Inflation of 1180–1220 Reconsidered,” Past and Present 171 (2001): 3–29. Fortunately, most of the prices come from after the period of inflation had taken place. RLC 88b, 97a–b. PR 7 John 161; RLC 4a, 40b, 89a. Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 9–10. For wages in the period, see Paul Latimer, “Wages in Late Twelfth- and Early ThirteenthCentury England,” Haskins Society Journal 9 (2001): 185–205. For important work on silk and its cultural place in the Middle Ages, see Cavaciocchi, La Seta in Europa; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 82–126; Rebecca Woodward Wendelken, “Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 59–77; Sharon Farmer, The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological Innovation, and Gendered Experience (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Robin Fleming, “Acquiring,

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Hugh M. Thomas Prices for individual amounts of silk are even harder to come by than for woolens and linens and cannot be compared precisely because they were not measured in ells, but not surprisingly, silk was expensive. The royal scribes recorded the value of many of the silks at Corfe; those described merely as silk cloths were generally valued at 2½ or 3 marks or a little more (with a mark being two-thirds of a pound), and those described as samites were valued at £5 each, more even than the annual income of a skilled worker who worked every single day of the year.36 Cendal, a lighter silk used for lining clothes among other things, was cheaper; six pieces of cendal cost 9s. each at one point in 1207–8, but even this was hardly cheap, representing over a month’s wages for a skilled worker.37 Silk was clearly well designed to show the wealth and splendor of the royal court. However, it is worth noting that the silk cloths at Corfe seem to have remained uncut, in their original state. Monica L. Wright has noted that silk was used much less frequently, at least as outerwear, than one would expect from the romances of the time, and the records of John’s court bear this out, though we shall see that it was not entirely absent from court clothing.38 The relative paucity of silk garments at court is striking when one observes that great churches were filled with silk vestments and that even parish churches might have them; secular clerics who were rich but not nearly as rich as the king or the greatest courtiers often bought elaborate silk vestments for themselves or their churches.39 For the elites at court, at least, the predominance of wool clothing was a choice rather than an economic necessity. A final important component of clothing was fur, which was sold in panels made up of rows of individual skins. As table 4.2 shows, a variety of furs were used, and to these may be added sable and, on one occasion, genet, a member of the civet family.40 As with cloth, there was a hierarchy of furs.41 Even the cheapest fur panels would have been out of reach of ordinary people’s income, and a panel of ermine would have required a few months’ income for an ordinary knight. Sable was so expensive that it was sold by the individual skin, with prices ranging from 10s. to 4 marks.42 For a substantial part of the twelfth century the bishops of Lincoln made a “gift” of a sable

 36  37  38  39  40  41  42

Flaunting, and Destroying Silk in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007): 127–58; E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Although the evaluations were generally of groups of silks rather than individual pieces, one can often extrapolate the price per piece; Cazel, Roll of Divers Accounts, 34–35. Two other silk cloths were purchased earlier for 13 marks, 2s.; PR 1 John 59. RLC 88a–b. For cendal or sendal, see Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Sendal,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 500. Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 24. Miller, Clothing the Clergy; Hugh M. Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 309–10. Thomas Duffus Hardy, Rotuli Normanniae in Turri Londinensi Asservati, Johanne et Henrico quinto, Angliæ Regibus (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1835), 31. The same qualifications about price and quality apply to table 4.2 as to table 4.1. In addition, prices varied explicitly based on the number of rows in a panel, and lamb and rabbit became much less costly when bought in bulk. RLC 55a, 103b, 104a.

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Clothing at King John’s Court Table 4.2: Prices of fur panels recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216 This table summarizes all entries in which one can determine the price per panel of a given type of fur. For these purposes, each purchase is treated equally, regardless of the number of panels purchased.  Type    Number of purchases   Average price     Low price     with price listed       per panel Ermine

2

96s. 8d.

Red squirrel

18

Rabbit

8

Lambskin

7

6s. 3d.

High price

93s. 4d.

100s.

27s.

18s.

53s. 4d.

8s. 6d.

4s. 9d.

10s.

4s. 6d.

7s. 4d.

coat each year to the king, and according to Gerald of Wales, the coats were each worth £100, the yearly income of a minor barony.43 Not surprisingly, sable and ermine were used very sparingly, though John’s silk and sable bedcover, mentioned earlier, was a major exception. John and his court, however, did make extensive use of squirrel skin in its various forms, including vair, which consisted of the gray backs and white bellies of the red squirrel in its winter coat; gris, which consisted of the backs alone; and bis, in which a certain amount of red fur from the summer remained in the coat.44 It was squirrel fur that probably explains the large expenditures on furs one can find; in 1211–12, for instance, John fitz Hugh spent over £330.45 Where did representatives of the court purchase furs, textiles, and finished clothing?46 The evidence is scattered but provides at least a partial picture. London appears occasionally, and was probably an important center of purchasing, as it was for later kings.47 Until John lost Normandy, Rouen was also an important market for John’s buyers.48 Many purchases were recorded in the Kent accounts, though it is unclear if that was because Reginald of Cornhill, father and son, who purchased many of the king’s goods, were sheriffs there and were using the royal income they collected from Kent for the purchases, or because they were making purchases in the southeastern ports.49 The court may sometimes have gone directly to cloth-producing towns in  43 Gerald of Wales, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, James F. Dimock, and George F.  44  45  46  47  48  49

Warner, 8 vols. (London: Longman, 1861–91), 7:33, 41; Roger of Howden, Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols. (London: Longman, 1868–71), 3:303. Elspeth M. Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 24; Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 10–11. PR 13 John 108. For a somewhat later period, see Staniland, “Clothing Provision,” 239–52. Anne F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 1–20. Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 30, 47; Hardy, Rotuli Normanniae, 14. See, for instance, PR 7 John 112–13; PR 8 John 47–48; PR 10 John 96–97; PR 16 John 17–18.

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Hugh M. Thomas England, as when the king ordered the leading men of York, Beverley, and Lincoln to assist Reginald of Cornhill in buying robes for the king’s Christmas feast of 1214.50 Not surprisingly, the great fairs of England, where merchants came from many countries, were a crucial site, especially for purchases in bulk.51 Finally, late in his reign John acquired cloth in bulk by sending galleys out to plunder French merchant vessels.52 Information on where furs and textiles came from originally is unfortunately quite limited. The best evidence is for linen, which was consistently ordered from Wiltshire, sometimes from Wilton specifically.53 Most silk probably came from Muslim Spain. There are three references to silk cloths from Hispania, two of them involving large quantities of such cloths. Moreover, several of the admittedly few pieces of silk that survive from England in the period can be traced back to Muslim Spain.54 The fragment of embroidered silk from John’s own funeral shroud, however, apparently traveled all the way from China.55 The evidence for the origins of woolens at court is particularly limited. I have noted the circumstantial evidence for purchases from English cloth towns, and presumably a fair amount came from Flanders. However, the only references to origins of woolen cloth consist of two references to Irish cloth, one to cloth from Liège, and one to viride from Ghent.56 As for furs, lambskin could be produced in England and there are a couple of references to ones from Lindsey, which were more expensive than others and probably noted for their quality.57 Rabbits had been introduced to England by John’s reign but were relatively new there, and so it is likely that most rabbit fur was still imported.58 The far north, particularly Scandinavia and Russia, were typically the source of luxury furs in the Middle Ages, because the winters there produced luxuriant coats, but the only evidence for this from John’s records is from an order to two northern royal officials to buy squirrel fur from a Norwegian ship that landed at Tynemouth.59 In general, it is likely that textiles and furs came to  50 RLC 178a.  51 PR 14 John 43; RLC 54a, 154b.  52 RLC 117a; For the practice of plundering, see Beryl E. R. Formoy, “A Maritime Indenture of

1212,” English Historical Review 41 (1926): 556–59.

 53 For example, RLC 15b, 25b, 40b, 58b, 66a, 75a, 98a, 127b, 180b, 220b.  54 PR 13 John 108; RLC 145b; Cazel, Roll of Divers Accounts, 34; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and

 55  56  57  58  59

Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 103, 107–12; Neil Stratford, Pamela Tudor-Craig, and Anna Marie Muthesius, “Archbishop Hubert Walter’s Tomb and the Furnishings,” in Medieval Art and Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, ed. Nicola Coldstream and Peter Draper (London: British Archaeological Association, 1982), 71–93, at 82–83. For a good and lavishly illustrated discussion of Andalusian silks, see Matteo Mancini, ed., Vestiduras Ricas: El Monasterio de Las Huelgas y Su Época 1170–1340 (Madrid: Patrimonio National, 2005). “Worcester Cathedral Embroideries,” Textile Research Center, Feb. 15, 2017, http://www. trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/clothing-undergarment/individual-textiles-and-textile-types/ fragments-and-panels/worcester-cathedral-embroideries, accessed May 24, 2017. PR 13 John 108; RLC 145b; Misae 14J 267. One suspects that cloth was described as being from Ireland because that was so unusual, rather than the reverse. PR 13 John 108. Naomi Jane Sykes, The Norman Conquest: A Zooarchaeological Perspective, BAR International Series 1656 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007), 72–84. RLC 144b.

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Clothing at King John’s Court John’s court from many regions near and far, but the geographic connections involved in supplying the court can only be traced in scattershot fashion. The costs of clothing at court came largely from the materials that went into them rather than the costs of tailoring. Three brief accounts of charges survive from the king’s chief tailor for the later part of his reign, William Scissor, whose byname obviously came from his profession. His charges ranged from 1d. for a linen shirt or a wool supertunic to 2d. for a pair of gloves to 9d. for a pair of hose. Entire sets of threepiece robes or suits (robae) could be tailored for as little as 3d. or 4d., and even the most expensive sets of robes, lined with silk or fur, including ones made for the king for his great feasts, cost no more than 12d. to make.60 Unfortunately, only a handful of the many references in various royal records to the costs of sets of robes say anything about the nature of those robes, but there are prices for five sets of scarlet robes and to two made of viride. Of these, one set of scarlet robes came with a panel of squirrel and one of the viride sets with a panel of rabbit, but fur linings were likely understood in the other instances. The two viride robes cost 20s. 8d. and 24s. respectively, and the prices of the scarlet robes ranged from 56s. to 71s. 8d.61 The scarlet robes were designated for important men, including a Welsh ruler and an envoy of Saladin’s brother, El-Adil, but the robes worn by the king and queen, and perhaps the greatest nobles, would likely have been more costly still. Nevertheless, even the cheapest of the viride sets of robes represented nearly three months’ wages for a skilled worker, and a set of scarlet robes would have been a valuable gift even for a knight. Though the royal records reveal all too little about matters such as the cut or style of garments, one can glean a few things. As was standard in the period, sets of twopiece or three-piece robes were normally worn atop linen undergarments. The standard three-piece robe consisted of a tunic (tunica), an overtunic or surcoat (­supertunica), and a cloak (usually capa but sometimes pallium). In later periods, robes sometimes had more than these three outer garments, but I have found no instances of this from John’s reign. Nonetheless, sets of robes involved substantial amounts of cloth. Scattered references suggest six ells was standard for male robes and seven for those of women. For the queen, one cloak (capa) alone included four ells.62 A reference to lining sleeves with squirrel furs underscores the well-known importance of that part of the garment in that period.63 References to the purchase of laquei (laces, ribbons, or bands) for overtunics, in various colors in one case and containing gold in another,

 60 Misae 11J 170–71; Misae 14J 267, 269. A payment of 100s. in John’s first year for work done for

John between his investiture as duke of Normandy and his coronation in England may suggest coronation robes were a different matter, but it is possible that the tailoring involved clothes for many followers as well; PR 1 John xi, 129.  61 PR 9 John xvi–xvii, 30; PR 10 John 127; PR 12 John 149; PR 13 John 43.  62 Amounts could be less, however, for youths or less important servants; PR 14 John 98; Misae 11J 141; Misae 14J 244, 248; RLC 104a, 109a, 184. See also Carlin and Crouch, Lost Letters, 45.  63 Misae 11J 142.

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Hugh M. Thomas may refer to either laces for fastening or closing garments or narrow bands used for edgings or decoration.64 It is unclear how much production was done by personnel connected to the king and how much was left to the marketplace. On the one hand, William Scissor’s tailoring accounts suggest a fairly small-scale operation, even if one presumes he had assistants. On the other hand, there are the large purchases of cloth noted earlier, and on one occasion John fitz Hugh bought 321 pounds of kermes and 326 pounds of alum—a fixing agent—for dyeing 247 ells of blanchet, almost certainly for more sambucas.65 Dyeing large amounts of fabric and preparing large numbers of robes for distribution at feasts would have required large numbers of workers. However, it is quite possible that much of this work was parceled out to professionals in London and elsewhere or that the king simply distributed cloth rather than finished clothes at feasts.66 Unfortunately, we simply do not know. One notable absence is the lack of evidence for embroidery or other forms of textile production in Queen Isabella’s household. For earlier periods, particularly Anglo-Saxon England, there is a surprisingly large amount of evidence for textile production by elite women and their households, and there is at least some evidence for it in later periods as well, including by John’s sister Eleanor.67 This lack of evidence may be a matter of the sources; the records of Isabella’s household do not survive, and we only know about textiles there through incidental references in the king’s records. However, Sarah-Grace Heller has noted the relative paucity of references to elite women producing textiles in the literature of the central Middle Ages, and this may reflect a decline of such activities among historical women of the period.68 That said, the preparation and handling of clothing was an extremely important task within the king’s household. Late in John’s reign the wardrobe was beginning to emerge from the shadow of the camera as a separate department, and although its eventual institutional greatness had far more to do with financial matters than textiles or furs, its emerging importance nonetheless underscores how important clothing was at court.69 Royal officials in this period tended to be flexible in the tasks they undertook, and already in the middle years of John’s reign, the clothier and furrier Ralph Parmenter, or Pelliparius, explicitly described as a royal servant at one point, was handling both

PR 16 John 28; RLC 128b, 167a. PR 13 John 107–8. For distribution of cloth rather than clothes, see Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes,” 279. Staniland, “Clothing Provision,” 7–8; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 130–31; Frédérique Lachaud, “Embroidery for the Court of Edward I (1272–1307),” Nottingham Medieval Studies 37 (1993): 33–52, at 36–37; Jitske Jasperse, “Matilda, Leonor and Joanna: The Plantagenet Sisters and the Display of Dynastic Connections through Material Culture,” Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017): 523–47, at 532–36.  68 Sarah-Grace Heller, “Obscure Lands and Obscured Hands: Fairy Embroidery and the Ambiguous Vocabulary of Medieval Textile Decoration,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 5 (2009): 15–35.   69 J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955), 256–76; T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals, repr. ed., 6 vols. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967), 1:158–69.  64  65  66  67

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Clothing at King John’s Court clothing and money for the king, from whom he received generous rewards.70 William Scissor was more specialized, though he dealt with arms and armor as well as clothes. His tasks can be followed in some detail in the eleventh and fourteenth years of the reign, as he made clothes, purchased related items such as containers for clothing, polished swords, and traveled about on the king’s business. Though perhaps less important than Ralph, he received ample rewards from the king as well, including houses in Winchester and land near Corfe castle.71 Other figures such as another royal tailor, Alan, remain no more than names.72 However, one noteworthy aspect is the otherwise rare involvement of women in the king’s household in tasks involving textiles. From the beginning of his reign, John paid a pension to a seamstress named Roheise, who had probably served in his brother’s household.73 In 1212, Emma de Hampton held a small manor from the king for the service of cutting the king’s cloth.74 Finally, no type of professional work was more gendered in the Middle Ages than laundering clothes, and the surviving wardrobe accounts reveal several laundresses—Florence, Margaret, Agnes, and Matilda—traveling with the king at various times. One would expect them to be fairly far down the hierarchy within the royal household, and indeed they generally appear receiving allowances for shoes and clothing along with the carters and packhorse men of the wardrobe. However, two laundresses, Florence and an unnamed laundress of the queen, received robes of paonaz and viride respectively, in both cases lined with rabbit fur. This was surprisingly high-status clothing for menial servants. Perhaps the king and queen simply wanted the women in their households to be able to look highly respectable on important occasions, but perhaps instead more status was accorded to the women entrusted with laundering precious royal garments than one might expect.75 CLOTHING THE HOUSEHOLD AND VISITORS TO COURT

If Anglo-Saxon kings were known as ring-givers, later medieval kings might aptly have been called cloth-givers. Like all heads of households, rulers were expected to clothe as well as feed their followers and dependents. For ordinary servants, food and clothing were a major part of their remuneration. In giving clothing to elite followers and visitors, the king was mainly conferring honor and status rather than providing  70 PR 9 John 148; RLC 60b, 82a, 82b, 88b, 101b; Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 263; Veale, English Fur

Trade, 40–41.

 71 Misae 11J, 113, 121, 149, 150–51, 157, 163–64, 170–71; Misae 14J 232–33, 236–37, 241, 245,  72  73  74  75

247, 254–55, 267, 269; RLC 117a, 229a, 279a; Hardy, Rotuli Chartarum, 213a; Lyte, Book of Fees, 77. For Alan, see PR 6 John 131; RLC 152b. PR 1 John 215. However, she is not found elsewhere in the royal records; Lyte, Book of Fees, 103. Misae 11J 110, 118–19, 128, 135, 143, 159; Misae 14J 231, 234, 244, 249, 251, 254, 258. For the gifts of robes, see RLC 109a, 184b. Florence at that point was in the queen’s household, but robes of viride lined or trimmed with lambskin were given to the king’s laundresses early in the reign of Henry III; PR 17 John 21.

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Hugh M. Thomas an alternative form of salary, though for knights, as noted above, if not necessarily for earls or barons, a gift of scarlet robes lined with vair was a very valuable present, so the financial incentive should not be entirely ignored. One of the few positive points the hostile writer of the anonymous Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et Rois d’Angleterre made about John was that he distributed robes generously to his knights at the three great yearly feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.76 This compliment is backed up by the large sums John spent on such robes. An incomplete tally for expenditures on furs and cloth for robes the king gave out at the three great feasts in his ninth year totals at well over £1,000. For Christmas in 1205, there is a single credit of £685 13s. 9d. to a prominent royal official, William of Wrotham, for such items.77 Reginald of Cornhill’s purchase, for a little over £250, of six sable skins, 235 panels of squirrel fur, and eighty-nine panels of rabbit fur for the Christmas feast of 1207, indicates a distribution of robes to over three hundred recipients.78 In deciding what kinds of fabrics and furs to provide their followers and servants, rulers would have had dueling considerations in mind. On the one hand, there was good reason to hand out the richest possible clothing to win loyal service, to earn a glorious reputation for generosity, and to make the royal court as dazzling as possible—hence dressing laundrywomen or (on another occasion) falconers in paonaz.79 On the other hand, furs and fabrics were expensive and, perhaps even more important, there was a strong imperative to reinforce hierarchies at court so that more powerful people stood out from others and would not be affronted by being dressed like a mere servant. This hierarchy is reflected in payments for clothing for different figures or small groups scattered throughout the records: 5s. each for tunics for the king’s greyhound handlers; 7s. 6d. for the clothing of his carters; 10s. for ordinary huntsmen or messengers, 15s. for guards or ordinary crossbowmen; 2 marks (26s. 8d.) for sergeants; 30s. for ordinary chaplains, and so on up to the favored recipients of more costly scarlet robes noted above.80 Unfortunately, by a quirk of evidence, we know little about the precise fabrics bought for distribution at great feasts since only monetary sums were given in the large expenditures, and John fitz Hugh’s purchases of large amounts of specific textiles are not described as being for feasts. However, one can put together a picture of what kinds of fabrics and furs were given to what kind of people from records of individual gifts made throughout the royal records and from the tailoring accounts of William Scissor. The king gave away silk fairly rarely. In the surviving records, silk garments went only to three men being dubbed as knights and to an unnamed but favored knight, perhaps a high-status captive. On June 8, 1215, shortly before the issuing of Magna Carta, John gave three silk cloths to the rebel baron Walter de Beauchamp to improve  76 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d’Angleterre, ed. Francisque  77  78  79  80

Michel, Société de l’Histoire de France (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1840), 105. PR 7 John 11; PR 9 John 31; RLC 87b, 103b, 106a. RLC 103b. PR 14 John 91. RLC 20a, 104a; Misae 11J 112, 122, 127, 130; Misae 14J 222, 232, 244, 246–48; PR 6 John 80, 131; PR 7 John 221; PR 10 John 126; PR 11 John 58.

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Clothing at King John’s Court his robes, perhaps as a gesture of goodwill.81 The tailoring accounts of William Scissor included scarlet robes lined with silk for the king’s illegitimate brother, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury; for two leading royal officials, Hugh de Neville and Brian de Lisle; and for John’s most important mercenary commander, Hugh de Boves. The king’s mistress, Domicella Susanna, received a set of burnet82 robes lined with yellow silk.83 Fuller records would list many more such gifts, but even so, John saved gifts of silk or partially silk garments for special occasions, generally for people high in his favor. The large-scale purchases of scarlet cloth by John fitz Hugh, even if not explicitly for feasts, suggest a much wider distribution of that fabric, and other evidence bears this out, but as one would expect, recipients of this costly textile still tended to be fairly high status. Beyond those recipients noted earlier, one can point to Irish rulers; a nephew of the king of Norway; a Flemish knight who served as an emissary for John; an emissary from John’s nephew, the Emperor Otto; a Spanish knight; the mayor of Queen Isabella’s town of Angoulême with his associates; and a favored esquire, later household knight, Thomas Sturmy.84 On the other end of the social scale, the king’s greyhound handlers got burel, a relatively cheap, coarse cloth.85 The royal court also used fur to display (and thereby reinforce) social hierarchy. Insofar as they can be identified, recipients of vair and gris were members of the elite, figures such as the three men about to be knighted, the emissary of Emperor Otto, and the nephew of the king of Norway. Rabbit and lamb were generally for honorable but lesser guests and figures in the royal entourage, such as Walter and Hugh de Hauville, two of the king’s chief falconers.86 The length of fur panels, and no doubt the associated garments, could also be used to indicate status. On one occasion, Reginald of Cornhill bought a panel with thirteen rows of vair for the queen, two panels each of ten and eleven rows for unnamed members of her household, and four panels of rabbit for her puellas (maidens or maidservants).87 The puellas were distinguished from the others by the type of fur, but distinctions among the elite members of the queen’s household were clearly made by the length of one of their garments, or perhaps its train. As Frédérique Lachaud has argued, fabrics and furs could be used to mark status long before the later development of sumptuary laws, and the royal court clearly had a role in this development.88

 81 RLC 214a.  82 Burnet was a brown woolen fabric (though sometimes dyed very dark, as will be seen below),  83  84  85  86  87  88

often of high quality; Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Burnet,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 103–4. Misae 14J 267. Misae 14J 250, 267; PR 11 John 10; RLC 3a, 121a, 126a, 159b, 186b, 214a, 231a. PR 14 John 58. For burel, see Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Burel,” in OwenCrocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 103. RLC 104b. RLC 103b, 104a. Frédérique Lachaud, “Dress and Social Status in England Before the Sumptuary Laws,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter R. Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002), 105–23.

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Hugh M. Thomas Nonetheless, one should not see too rigid an emphasis on hierarchy, at least when it comes to fabrics. Some of the second tier of fabrics below scarlet saw widespread usage up and down the social hierarchy. In particular, robes of viride and burnet could be provided to figures from the status of nurse, laundress, or falconer all the way up through knights about to be dubbed to the earl of Salisbury and even the king and queen themselves, as we shall see.89 As I shall argue later, a desire for variety and other aesthetic considerations also influenced choice. Lachaud has shown that livery as a kind of uniform, revealing allegiance to a lord through wearing his (or her) colors, was a future development in the thirteenth century, but one with roots going back to this period, if not earlier.90 In 1205–6 the royal government bought seventy-eight ells of viride and bles (probably blue cloth) to clothe huntsmen, and in 1212–13 forty-eight ells of paonaz and eight panels of rabbit fur were bought to clothe falconers.91 Each group would have provided a unified and striking appearance, and one wonders if the same would have been true of household knights and other groups after the great feasts. Certainly one of the earliest records for John’s son, Henry III (which somehow ended up in one of John’s pipe rolls) lists distributions of cloth by group, such as knight or squire. Perhaps this represented a new practice by the regent, William Marshal, whose biography emphasized the importance he placed on his own distribution of clothing to his household, but I suspect that a change in accounting practices for a much smaller court under a boy king caused past practices of systematic distribution by group to be recorded for the first time.92 Livery as uniform did not yet exist, but the elements were being put into place. CLOTHING THE ROYAL FAMILY

When it comes to the royal family, the majority of surviving information concerns the king himself. Very little indeed survives about his children’s clothing. However, records do survive of some of the clothes provided in 1212–13 for a Richard, son of the king, including a cloak; an aketon, precursor of a doublet (for which see more below); two sets of two-piece robes, one of viride and one of russet; hose (hosa and caliga); and linen undergarments. This Richard may have been Richard of Chilham, an illegitimate son with a highborn mother. He could, however, also have been John’s legitimate younger son, Richard of Cornwall, even though he would only have been three to four years of age at the time, since very young sons of kings could receive

 89  90  91  92

Misae 11J 164; Misae 14J 267; RLC 104b, 109a, 184b, 274b; PR 11 John 10. Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes.” RLC 97a–b; PR 14 John 91. PR 17 John 21; B. E. Harris, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Fourth Year of the Reign of King Henry III: Michaelmas 1220 (London: Pipe Roll Society, 1987), 134–35; David Crook, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Fifth Year of the Reign of King Henry III: Michaelmas 1221 (London: Pipe Roll Society, 1990), 99; Anthony J. Holden, Stewart Gregory, and David Crouch, eds., History of William Marshal, vol. 2 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society 2004), 436–39.

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Clothing at King John’s Court adult clothing in miniature, even military gear.93 Earlier, the king’s son Geoffrey, who was definitely illegitimate, received a russet cape lined with lamb, several pairs of hose, some linen garments, and a bedcover.94 More can be learned about John’s provision of clothing for the women in his family, though the lack of any surviving records from their households limits the information. The main royal women for whom material survives are Isabella, John’s queen; Isabella, countess of Gloucester, his discarded first wife, whose lands he retained; and Eleanor of Brittany, his niece and prisoner, daughter of John’s older brother Geoffrey and sister of John’s rival, Arthur, whom John had almost certainly murdered.95 To these family members may be added the daughters and hostages of William I of Scotland, who came to England when they were teenagers. The evidence is scattershot for all of them, often just payments for unspecified robes or for scarlet, viride, and burnet cloth, and it is not always possible to distinguish between clothes for the royal ladies and those of members of their household, but some impressions can be formed at least. On one occasion, William Scissor tailored robes of scarlet for Queen Isabella, King John, and Earl Alberic de Ver, perhaps meant to match. On another occasion, the queen received one set of robes of scarlet and one of black burnet for her own use.96 Robes of viride were prepared for Eleanor of Brittany and the two Scottish princesses in July 1213, and on various other occasions Eleanor received three sets of scarlet robes and one of burnet, along with a rain cape and a cape of “good” black burnet.97 Once again, silk appears surprisingly rarely, but at least one of Eleanor’s sets of scarlet robes was lined with silk, and the lightweight cendal supplied to the queen on one occasion was likely intended as lining.98 Furs for the royal women themselves, as opposed to their maidservants, were almost invariably of squirrel skin, but on one occasion the queen received two panels of ermine. More surprising, panels of lamb were acquired for cloaks for the king and queen, perhaps for very informal occasions. Other clothing for the royal women included shoes, boots, hose, linen undergarments, and on one occasion fur-lined gloves for the queen.99 One item that tends to appear mainly in records concerning the royal women was “delicate” linen (linea delicata), though whether for clothing or other purposes is unclear.100 Another is peplum, a term which unfortunately had various meanings in the Middle Ages, but is commonly translated as veil or wimple.101 One hint of decoration of garments beyond the furs and fabrics comes with reference to limbus, probably an ornamental fringe or hem, purchased for a cloak for the queen,  93 Misae 14J 244, 267. For provision of such clothing to Edward I’s son, Alfonso, at age three or

four, see Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 138.

 94 Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 14.  95 John’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who survived until 1204, had her own large income,  96  97  98  99 100 101

which is probably why nothing survives about clothing for her. Misae 14J 267; RLC 274b. PR 10 John 96; PR 10 John 96; RLC 111b, 144b, 155a, 168b. PR 10 John 97. RLC 104a; Misae 14J 285. PR 7 John 112; RLC 4a, 40b, 89a, 168b. PR 7 John 113, 121; PR 13 John 108; PR 14 John 44; RLC 64a, 106b.

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Hugh M. Thomas which was paired with an expensively lined bliaut, typically an outer garment of fine material that was close fitting, often with laced sides. Between them, the cloak and bliaut had 2s. 6d. additional work on them, far more than the typical tailoring costs, perhaps suggesting embroidery or some other form of ornamentation.102 Was this an unusual ensemble, or is it perhaps a rare suggestion that the queen’s dress could be more elaborate and more personalized than the typical records reveal? About John’s own garments we are better informed. John’s clothing ranged from the mundane to the highly ornamented and ceremonial. One distinctive category of the latter, the clothes explicitly classed as part of the regalia, will be discussed below. Starting with the most mundane, the clothing provided the king shows a concern for practicality and comfort. There are the usual provisions of linen undergarments, shoes, boots, and hose, but also a surprising number of references to leather leggings, perhaps designed for hunting and falconry or for the king’s constant itineration.103 One russet surcoat is explicitly described as being for the king’s riding (ad equitandum).104 John also had cloaks designed for rain (capae ad pluviam).105 Fur-lined shoes, boots, gloves, and perhaps hats would have kept off the cold and felt pleasant on the skin. Sometimes these used high-status squirrel fur, but sometimes the king contented himself with lamb.106 John also had surcoats lined with squirrel or lamb made specifically for “going down” (presumably to bed), getting up, and “getting up at night.”107 John obviously enjoyed a wardrobe designed for comfort. One special type of clothing was associated with warfare. There are several references to aketons, quilted garments stuffed with cotton, then an exotic import; indeed the name of the garment derived ultimately from the Arabic word for cotton. This garment was worn under the armor but could be quite luxurious, perhaps designed to be impressive when the king was arming for battle or disarming, and in at least one case cendal was used. Silk could also be used for tunicas armarias, presumably the surcoats worn over armor for display.108 King John preferred to be stylishly dressed for war. For all his embrace of comfort and practicality, John also clearly dressed to impress on the proper occasions. Indeed, even the overtunics for going to bed and getting up were obviously fine garments, mostly lined with squirrel, and they may have been 102 RLC 14a. For another reference to what was probably a decorative border, see RLC 225a. For 103 104 105 106 107 108

the nature of the bliaut, see Hilary Davidson, “Bliaut,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 74–75. Misae 11J 111, 150–51; Misae 14J 236, 239, 243. References are either to hosa or ocrea described as vaccinea, de cordwain, or de bove. Misae 14J 253. PR 6 John 131; Misae 11J 170–71; Misae 14J 267, 269; RLC 144b, 145a–b. Misae 11J 150–51, 236, 242, 245, 255. Misae 11J 151; Misae 14J 257, 285. I am presuming that a garment called the perpunctus or pourpoint also referred to the aketon, given that they are grouped with surcoats for armor; PR 10 John 96; PR 14 John 44; Misae 14J 269; RLC 109a, 240b; Ralph Moffat, “Aketon,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 29–30. For the surcoats, see Nicholas Vincent, “Leopards, Lions and Dragons: King John’s Banners and Battle Flags,” The Magna Carta Project, April 2015, http://magnacarta. cmp.uea.ac.uk/read/feature_of_the_month/Apr_2015_4, accessed July 3, 2017.

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Clothing at King John’s Court designed not only to keep the king comfortable but also to be fitting dress for the kinds of ceremonial associated with kings even in their bedchambers. As one would expect, John’s formal robes were also fine garments. Nonetheless he embraced variety for himself as for his court. His robes were often made out of scarlet, but he also wore robes of viride (in one case from Ghent), black burnet, Estamford,109 and russet, a fabric which John seems to have favored despite its relatively humble status. John’s choice of various fabrics, it must be stressed, included robes that were made for the three great yearly feasts, so the variation was not simply a matter of scarlet being used for formal occasions and russet for daily use.110 The king’s use of silk outside the category of regalia is somewhat hard to ascertain. There are references to two silk overtunics (one lined with gris) explicitly made for the king, and other references to silk garments and sets of robes that were probably made for him, but even these may have been considered part of the regalia. At the very least the king had some of his robes lined with silk. Even at the maximum estimate of John’s use of silk, however, wool dominated the king’s outer garments, apart from the regalia.111 The king’s formal garments also had fur, as one would expect, mostly squirrel fur but also including one two-piece robe of russet of Sempringham that was lined with ermine.112 One apparent oddity, perhaps matching John’s apparent preference for russet cloth, was the choice on several occasions to use “red” gris or even “burning” gris (gris ardens) which may indicate the very unusual use of the entirely red summer coat of the red squirrel. In some cases, this was paired with russet cloth, which may well have been a striking combination.113 The use of this unusual pairing suggests an interesting conclusion, namely that John was making distinctive choices based on aesthetic considerations. Looking more broadly, I would suggest that the choice of many different fabrics for the king, the royal family, and the court as a whole represented a clear aesthetic preference for variety and color. If the only purposes of clothing at court were to display wealth and show status, the king, queen, and other elite members of the court would have been best served by always wearing the most expensive fabrics and furs possible. The desire for many different fabrics suggest that John, his relatives, and his courtiers also wanted to look stylish. One important book on medieval clothing, by Sarah-Grace Heller, argues that one can detect a fashion system at work in the period and lists a number of criteria by which 109 Estamford, which sometimes appears as Stamford, was probably a high-quality woolen cloth

110 111

112 113

originally produced in or associated with Stamford, Lincolnshire; Sylvester, Chambers, OwenCrocker, Medieval Dress and Textiles, 392. For a different view, however, see John H. Munro, “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c.1290–c.1330,” in Thirteenth Century England 7 (1999): 103–41, at 104. PR 8 John 149; Misae 11J 170–71; Misae 14J 240, 267, 269; RLC 25a–b. Misae 11J 167; Misae 14J 240, 245, 267; RLC 25a–b. In Castile, the ordinary clothing of the king was also normally woolen; Kristin Böse, “Cultures Re-Shaped: Textiles from the Castilian Royal Tombs in Santa Maria de las Huelgas in Burgos,” in Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages, ed. Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 95–105, at 99. Misae 14J 267. Misae 14J 253, 258; RLC 97a–b, 186b.

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Hugh M. Thomas this can be measured. The terse references to clothing typical of the royal records mean that they are not useful for addressing most of these criteria, but as the point about aesthetics indicates, they do provide some basis for thinking about fashion. In certain respects, the provision of clothing at court probably ran counter to the characteristics of a fashion system, for the fact that clothing was given out limited the autonomy of individuals that Heller sees as important; indeed, in many ways the point of clothing at the royal court was to show solidarity rather than individuality. Nonetheless, the king clearly did have the chance to make choices, and no doubt important members of the royal family and household might provide suggestions and ideas or make requests. Moreover, the variety of fabrics indicates a desire to make frequent but limited changes in clothing, which Heller argues is important for seeing a fashion system, and the conspicuous consumption that is a part of fashion was doubtless present. Thus in at least some respects John’s own choices and the general picture of clothing at court provide support for the argument that one can speak of fashion in the High Middle Ages even if certain aspects of court life do not fit the paradigm well.114 When one turns from John’s “ordinary” clothing to the garments described as part of the regalia, which often seem to have been kept in one of the king’s treasuries, one finds a number of shifts.115 There is a shift in terminology: Alongside tunics and cloaks, one finds terms such as dalmatic or sandal that are generally associated with ecclesiastical vestments. Wool and fur disappear. Silk dominates, including samite and diasper, a weave with repeated patterns or textures.116 References to orphreys (gold decorated bands),117 fringes, decorated borders, and other ornamental elements, many of them explicitly of gold, abound. Some of the garments, including gloves, had precious stones and classical cameos attached, and though John owned massive amounts of jewelry, some of which he no doubt wore with his other garments, these garments sometimes had specific brooches associated with them. In short, the garments included among the regalia differed substantially from John’s other clothing. The garments were intended first and foremost for coronations, of which John had two, the second being with his new wife, Isabella of Angoulême. However, there are indications that John used his regalia throughout the reign.118 Indeed, it is possible that he had regular crown-wearings, as his Norman predecessors had.119 No record survives of similar garments for the queen, but she probably had them too. She was depicted on her seal wearing a crown and holding what may be a scepter, suggesting 114 Heller, Fashion in Medieval France. 115 Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli Litterarum Patentium in Turri Londinensi Asservati 116 117 118 119

(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1835; hereafter RLP), 35a, 54b–55a, 77b, 173a; Hardy, Rotuli Chartarum, 134a–b. For diasper, see Sylvester, Chambers, and Owen-Crocker, Medieval Dress and Textiles, 370. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Orphrey,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 400. PR 3 John 259; PR 6 John 120; PR 9 John xi–xii, 50; PR 13 John 107; PR 14 John 43–44, 49; Misae 14J 232; RLC 122b, 125b–126a; RLP 48a–b, 51b, 54b–55a, 77b, 110a, 142a, 173a. Martin Biddle, “Seasonal Festivals and Residence: Winchester, Westminster and Gloucester in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries,” Anglo-Norman Studies VIII (1986): 51–72.

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Clothing at King John’s Court that she had her own regalia, and the expenditure of just under £75 to purchase robes for the second coronation of the king and the coronation of the queen may partly have been used to buy specifically ceremonial garments for her.120 Unfortunately, the appearance of the garments within John’s regalia is hard to reconstruct from the brief statements in the royal records, but they may have been as magnificent as the coronation robes of the Norman kings of Sicily or the funerary garments of Castilian rulers.121 Whereas King John’s woolen garments displayed him as a part of the court, even if atop its hierarchy, the regalia set him apart as a king. Though the Gregorian Reform had undermined the claims of rulers to sacred status, it had not eliminated them, and the similarity to ecclesiastical vestments underscored John’s claims to sacral kingship even as the highly decorated baldrics and swords in the regalia, supposedly including the sword of Tristan, maintained his status as a secular lord, and the crowns and scepters underscored his kingship. Intentionally or not, all clothing conveys messages, but the garments in John’s regalia, far more even than his woolen feasting garments, were clearly designed with political ideas in mind. CONCLUSION

The splendor of textiles and clothing at John’s court could not match that found in some fictional courts of the time. Unlike the fairy lover in Marie de France’s Lanval, John had no covers on his bed worth castles, though his sable and samite cover does have parallels with the cover of sable and Alexandrian silk on the bed of the magical ship in Marie de France’s Guigemar.122 John certainly did not have one thousand nobles sporting ermine serving at his feasts, as Geoffrey de Monmouth claims Arthur did.123

120 Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 4–5; Elizabeth Danbury, “Queens and Powerful Women: Image and

Authority,” in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. Noël Adams, John Cherry, and James Robinson (London: British Museum, 2008), 17–24, at 20. Danbury suggests the queen is holding a flower, but the object looks similar to the scepter John holds in his royal seal. 121 For the Castilian funerary garb, see Maria Judith Feliciano, “Muslim Shrouds for Christian Kings? A Reassessment of Andalusi Textiles in Thirteenth-Century Castilian Life and Ritual,” in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, ed. Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 101–31; Mancini, Vestiduras Ricas; Etelvina Fernández González, “‘Que los reyes vestiessen paños de seda, con oro, e con piedras presiosas’: Indumentarias Ricas in los Reinos León y Castillla (1180–1300): Entre la Tradición Islámica y el Occidente Cristiano,” in Simposio Internacional : El Legado de al-Andalus: El Arte Andalusí en los Reinos de León y Castilla durante la Edad Media, ed. Manuel Valdés Fernández (Valladolid, Spain: Fundación del Patrimonio Histórico de Castilla y León, 2007), 367–408; Böse, “Cultures Re-Shaped,” 90–94. For images of the Sicilian royal garments, see the website of the Imperial Treasury of Vienna, http://www.kaiserliche-schatzkammer.at/en/visit/collections/seculartreasury/selected-masterpieces, accessed July 5, 2017. 122 Marie de France, Lais, 138–39 in Lanval, and 34–35 in Guigemar. 123 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De Gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae), ed. Michael D. Reeve and Neil Wright, Arthurian Studies 69 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2007), 111.

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Hugh M. Thomas But these claims were meant precisely to show the extraordinary nature of Lanval’s lover and Arthur’s court. Even so, discussion of clothing and textiles at John’s court shows how much the imaginary courts and real courts reflected each other, and it is to be hoped that greater knowledge of the use of textiles at one historical court can provide insights into how writers used them to signal the precise status of individuals in fictional courts and the relations between such characters.124 At the same time, luxury clothing and textiles were historically important. Magnificent clothes, hangings, and beddings were an integral part of court life. They were both a perquisite of power and a source of status and prestige, thus reinforcing royal power. Indeed, lightweight but valuable textiles were especially important in the highly itinerant courts that characterized the High Middle Ages. Whatever his shortcomings as a politician, John recognized the importance of display at court and he made sure that his own clothing, the clothing of his family and followers, and his other textiles were worthy of a powerful and wealthy monarch.

124 For some important recent works on clothing in the literature of the high and late Middle

Ages, see E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); E. Jane Burns, ed., Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004); Burns, Sea of Silk; Susan Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Heller, Fashion in Medieval France; Koslin and Snyder, Encountering Medieval Textiles; Andreas Kraß, Geschriebene Kleider: Höfische Identität als Literarisches Spiel (Tübingen, Germany: A. Francke Verlag, 2006); Wright, Weaving Narrative; Nicole D. Smith, Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).

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Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe Tina Anderlini A major scholarly concern in the field of medieval costume history is the origin of the textiles: not only the source of the fiber and where the textile was woven, but also where it was found. For our present study, the final fate of textiles is at issue. Fabrics are very fragile and often survive only as fragments. Indeed, most material remains of medieval furnishings and dress come from two main categories of sources. The first one is the funerary context; the second is composed of objects kept in religious institutions. Of course, such remains provide a great deal of valuable information, but they must be contextualized properly and cannot be considered usual garments. It is clear that albs and dalmatics were far from ordinary people’s clothing. In light of their extraordinary nature, how can we interpret the fabrics—sometimes found in tiny pieces—from tombs and religious treasuries? Are they representative of fashionable fabrics, or could they have had some very specific uses and meanings, even for the wealthy? ORIGINS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

The silks we will consider appear to be of two main kinds of silk fabrics: samite and lampas. Samite, from the glossary of Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain, is defined as a plain silk cloth in weft-faced compound twill. Its appearance has the diagonal lines of a twill weave and a lustrous quality produced by the long weft floats. It was made in various weights, but was usually quite heavy and suitable as background for embroidery

This paper was first presented at the conference “Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages,” March 17–18, 2018, at the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, New York. I wish to thank the following for their help, remarks, support, and inspiration: Catherine Besson-Lagier, ­Gérard Caspar, Marie De Rasse, Adeline Dumont, Laurette Esteve, Patricia Fogli-Iseppe, Marie Fontaine, Karine Oswald, Frédéric Pokrandt Lesniewski, Brother Simeon, Séverine Watiez, Jean Wirth, Magali de la Reina, and of course Sarah-Grace Heller, Robin Netherton, Gale Owen-Crocker, and Monica L. Wright.

Tina Anderlini in gold thread. Monnas notes that though samites were sometimes woven competely in silk, they could also be half-silks, with linen main warps.1

Lisa Monnas discusses variations in samites as well as their popularity and provides a useful definition of lampas: Samite could be figured as well as plain. In the figured version, additional pattern wefts in silk or metal thread, or metal brocading wefts, created the design, but the ground wefts were concealed behind the main warps, and the surface of the textile remained uniform. Weft-faced compound twill silks were enormously successful: versions were woven in China, India, the Sassanian Empire and Byzantium, as well as in Italy and Spain, and were in production for over 500 years. … Lampas is a term applied to a diverse group of figured silks in which the ground is formed by a main warp and ground weft, and the pattern by one or more pattern wefts (with optional brocading wefts) tied by a separate binding warp. Unlike samites, lampas silks have contrasting textures of their ground and pattern, usually a warp-faced ground and weft-faced pattern. The term existed from the fourteenth century, but was only used in the present sense from the nineteenth century.2

Weaving these fabrics demanded skilled weavers. The looms could be more than two meters wide (more than eighty inches) and needed two or more weavers. The materials themselves were expensive, and the weaving method made the fabric even more expensive. Not all the figured silk fabrics we will consider relied on weaving to create the pattern; the designs are sometimes embroidered. Like weaving, embroidery is a way to render fabrics more colorful, but it is additionally a method of incorporating rich materials such as gold threads and pearls into a design. Embroidery also has the advantage of allowing a larger repertoire of subjects to be displayed on one vestment. Instead of one repeating image, embroidery permits the composition of a complete and complex iconographical program. In addition, whereas tailoring woven designs can require one to cut into the images, embroidery can resolve this problem by allowing one to alter a garment before applying the design to the fabric. Albs and dalmatics were not only religious vestments, but were also part of the coronation or enthronement costume of emperors, kings, and other members of the nobility, transforming their wearers into servants of God as well as rulers. Moreover, the study of tombs reveals that the nobility were often buried wearing articles of clothing and carrying artifacts that emphasized their identity when they were alive; rulers crossed into the afterlife in regalia—the items they actually wore for their coronation or reminders of these. From tombs, we can identify not only coronation regalia that was buried with its owner but also items that served as reminders of the coronation regalia (for instance, a bronze crown). Actual coronation regalia was routinely offered

 1 Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval Dress and

Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2014), 390.

 2 Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings

1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 298.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe to a church or an abbey when not reused for the successor’s coronation as a means of marking the continuity of the ruler’s function. Textiles found in churches or tombs are luxury fabrics. Some motifs were in great demand and were woven again and again for centuries. The Byzantine eagle fabrics from the tenth or eleventh century, used for the shroud of St. Germain in Auxerre (fig. 5.1) and for the cope of St. Albuin in Brixen, are closely connected to the so-called Mantle of Charlemagne, in Metz, dating from the thirteenth century, with a few variations in pattern and different colors.3 Among these timeless fabrics, one kind seems more important than any others, judging by its frequency of use: the silk with medallions, or roundels, depicting animals, people, or other motifs.4 These designs originated in the pre-Islamic Middle East, more precisely in the Sassanian empire (224–637 AD). Some of them, such as the ones that show fighting animals, were associated with royalty, as we shall see.5 It is hard to know how long this association persisted. Whether it survived or not, the patterns were quickly copied by the Byzantines, who may have added some new patterns, and were later reproduced in the Muslim world: Egypt, Lebanon, Northern Africa, and Muslim regions in Europe—Al-Andalus, then Italy.6 Our interest here lies in the fabrics that were brought from Asia and Byzantium to Christian Western Europe and were later produced in Spain or Italy, influenced by Oriental designs. The medallions on these silks usually depict animals, fantastic creatures, vegetal or geometrical forms, or people. The animals in the medallions can appear singly or as confronted or addorsed pairs. When it comes to people, the composition often tries to play with symmetry. In an example in Paris, for instance, a charioteer is presented frontally in the center with his horses flanking him inside the medallion.7 The borders of the medallions may be large, plain, or decorated. The most remarkable ornamentation consists of white circles (which evoke pearls) or heart-like forms. The borders can also be filled with geometric, animal, or vegetal frieze; smaller medallions; or Arabic script.

 3 St. Germain: Musée de l’Abbaye de Saint Germain, Auxerre. St. Albuin: Brixen,

 4  5

 6

 7

Diözesanmuseum. “Charlemagne”: Metz, Trésor de la Cathédrale. For more information about Auxerre and Brixen, see Anna Muthesius, Studies in Silk in Byzantium (London: Pindar Press, 2004), 228. Color images are available for view online at the author’s website, https://parolesdarts.blogspot. com/2018/12/medieval-clothing-and-textiles.html. Steven Wagner, “The Impact of Silk on Ottonian and Salian Manuscripts,” in Silk Roads, Other Roads: Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, September 26–28, 2002, Northampton, Massachusetts (n.p.: Textile Society of America, 2002), 4, available online at Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ tsaconf/426, accessed Oct. 22, 2018. Originally these patterns had been used for noble riders’ garments in the Middle East and in many parts of Asia. Silks had traveled along the Silk Road in all directions for centuries and were of great economic importance; subsequently, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian developed sericulture in his empire. Musée National du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny), Paris, no. CL 13289, dating from the eighth century. It can be viewed at http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/collection/oeuvre/tissu-auquadrige.html, accessed July 20, 2018.

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Fig. 5.1:  Shroud of St. Germain, Byzantine silk (tenth or eleventh century; Musée-Abbaye Saint-Germain, Auxerre). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe The size of the medallions varies between ten and more than fifty centimeters (about four to twenty inches or larger), the very large ones being rather rare.8 Medallions on the fabric can be connected to each other by smaller medallions or quadrilobes, or they can be independent. Most of the time the space between four medallions is filled, again sometimes by smaller medallions or geometric or vegetal patterns. The St. Colombe and St. Loup shroud (fig. 5.2), from Sens, is a complete fabric that was cut for two bodies.9 The intervals are filled with a tree and four animals, identified as two foxes and two black dogs, with cintamani—three dots forming a triangle—appearing on the dogs’ bodies. The fabric is supposed to be of Persian origin. Although similarly patterned fragments of this fabric are held in a number of museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, only the Sens shroud is complete and features the cintamani pattern on the black dogs. The colors of medallion silks are also very important: Each has at least two colors and sometimes five or more. The colors are vivid and often contrasting, with a richness comparable to that of medieval sacred bookbindings embellished with enamel, semiprecious stones, and pearls. The sacred words in these codices were surrounded by bright ink colors and the light produced by gold, just as color and light enveloped dead saints’ bodies and living servants of God. Of course, the dyeing of such fabrics demanded, once again, special gifts, rendering the fabrics even more expensive and valuable. There are in fact monochrome medallion fabrics. An example in the Sens Treasury, probably derived from a liturgical garment, features a scene of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven repeated in medallions. But, while the form of the design is similar to the multicolored medallion silks, this fragment is in fact a stark white brocaded linen from the seventh century. In its way, this exceptional fabric shows the impact of medallion silks. The date of the arrival of medallion silk in Western Europe is difficult to determine, due to the interval of time between the point when the fabric was woven in the Orient or Byzantium and the moment it was used in Europe, but some sixth- or seventh-century examples do survive. One, from the Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, is now in the Vatican Museum. Another is the shroud of St. Fridolin, who died in 583 in Säckingen, Germany.10 Moreover, one must not forget the design on Justinian’s pallium in the San Vitale mosaic in Ravenna, also dating from the sixth

 8 The charioteer example is one of the largest. The whole fragment is 73 by 72.5 centimeters

(28¾ by 28½ inches). The medallion is incomplete on one side and occupies almost all the surface of the fragment. We will return to this one later.  9 Dimensions of the fabric: 240 by 118 centimeters (94½ by 46½ inches). The medallions vary in size: 25–30 centimeters (9¾–11¾ inches) high by 30–32 centimeters (11¾–12½ inches) wide. 10 Both can be found in Roger Gilman and Jane Bowler Gilman, “Byzantine Textiles,” Art and Archaeology 13 (1922): 179–83, at 180 (St. Fridolin) and 181 (Sancta Sanctorum); available online at https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/articles/gr1_txtl.pdf, accessed May 5, 2010.

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Fig. 5.2:  Shroud of St. Colombe and St. Loup, Persian silk (eighth century; Musée de Sens, Treasury, Inv. TC B 2). Photo: Musées de Sens, J.-P. Elie.

century. It is possible to find examples of medallion silk associated with imperial power in Western Europe, due to the fact that some of its regions were part of Byzantium. Numerous large fragments of medallion silks survive, as do complete garments made from them, although virtually all examples of such clothing are either regalia or religious vestments. Tiny pieces of extant fabrics present additional problems, as 106

Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe we do not always know their origin, but those fragments for which the history can be traced also come from tombs or churches. The silks sometimes cover coffins, like that of Fernando de la Cerda, son and heir of the king of Castile, Alphonso X.11 The main motif on Fernando’s cloth is a pair of addorsed lions looking back over their shoulders at each other, with a tree between them. Between the big medallions are smaller ones, connecting them. Each vertical connection contains a single rosette, while each horizontal one contains a pair of birds. Confronted peacocks fill the empty spaces. Other silks serve as shrouds for saints, bishops, princes, or kings, such as the shroud of King Ottakar of Bohemia, who died at the end of the thirteenth century, or the funeral garment of Edward the Confessor, who died in 1066.12 Interestingly, silk fragments of different kinds have been discovered in non-religious contexts in places such as London, Prague, Perth, and Montpellier, but we know of no examples of medallion silks among those remains. Of course, as there are numerous fragments of unknown origin in museums and private collections—a point we must not forget—perhaps some of these originated from a lay context. Nevertheless, considering the contexts we do know, we might conclude that these medallion silks were considered particularly special among all the different kinds of designs. In Christian iconography the round shape is highly symbolic: It is connected to Heaven, to God, and, in Roman iconography, to the emperor—a living god for the pagans, and the one favored by God for the Christians. Moreover, in iconography, the circle, the perfect geometric figure, is the shape of Heaven, as opposed to the imperfect Earth, which is represented as a square. The circle is also related to death, surrounding the head and torso of people from the Other World, an image often found on Roman sarcophagi and in Christian iconography; this image of a face in a circle is devoted to saints and emperors as a way to show a special link to Heaven. The almond-shaped nimbus, or mandorla, is another strong shape that often surrounds the whole body of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. Almond-shaped designs in textiles do exist, such as in the eighth-century shroud of St. Victor in the Sens treasury, so it would seem that the same symbolic value was also attributed to them. There are ogee-shaped designs as well, but they are more difficult to identify in texts and more complicated to interpret. Some imperial or religious medallion fabrics are embroidered, as discussed above. On the fourteenth-century imperial dalmatic in Vienna (fig. 5.3), the eleventh-century imperial mantle and alb in Bamberg, and those in the papal city of Anagni, the embroideries are in circles, often imitating the medallion silks. The Anagni ensemble of copes, dalmatics, and other pieces is one of the most stunning examples. The collection was a gift from Pope Bonifacio VIII (ca. 1235–1303), and the garments are worked in opus ciprense—embroidery made with Cyprian gold threads (fig. 5.4). In all these 11 12

Fernando (1255–75) is buried in the Royal Monastery of Las Huelgas, Burgos. Hero Granger-Taylor, “Silk from the Tomb of Edward the Confessor,” in Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, exhibition catalog, ed. David Buckton (London: British Museum Press, 1994), 152. For reconstruction of the fabric, see 152; for fragments, see 153. The fabric found in his coffin is fragmentary, but the presence of seams point to it being part of a funeral garment.

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Fig. 5.3:  Detail of imperial dalmatic, embroidery on Chinese silk (beginning of the fourteenth century; Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, Imperial Treasury). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

embroidered fabrics, wherever they come from, we can find repetitions of designs—as in woven fabrics—or different religious or astrological scenes, this kind of expansive subject matter being possible in embroidery. The repertoire of embroidered subjects inside medallions grew in the fourteenth century, but, whether they were woven or embroidered, these fabrics were used by the same kinds of people for the same kinds of purposes, that is, high-ranking ecclesiastics and rulers for church ceremonies. The exotic origins of these fabrics offer another reason they were seen as so special. Regardless of where they originated in the East, they traversed the Holy Land on their journey to Europe, which likely conferred upon them a kind of magic. Examples abound of various sacred objects coming from the Levant that garnered a very particular treatment in the West. One striking illustration is the soil from Golgotha, which was rumored to possess magical powers. In Pisa’s famous Camposanto, the cemetery beside the cathedral contained some of this soil and was thus believed to prevent a long period of decay, instead allowing dead bodies to become skeletons in only one night. Also, linens originating in the Middle East were used to wrap relics. Indeed, anything from the East could be a relic, whether that relic was a true or false one. This set of superstitions that assigned magical properties to anything from the Levant is evidenced by the biography of William Marshal (ca. 1146–1219), composed in the 108

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Fig. 5.4:  Detail of cope in opus ciprense (end of the thirteenth century; Museo della Cattedrale, Anagni). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma.

thirteenth century, in which the Greatest Knight possessed precious silks he brought back from the Holy Land.13 In fact, William kept two pieces of the fabric for thirty years to be used only for his funeral. Immediately after his death, the fabrics were used to cover his body and his bier but were then passed on to the friars of Temple Church, who could use them as they wished—perhaps to cover other biers or to make religious garments.14 As nothing remains of these two pieces of cloth, we cannot know if they had a roundel design, but this story clearly demonstrates how prized fabrics from Outremer were in Europe and how they came to be imbued with special meaning. And, as we shall see, it is not a unique case. It seems obvious that objects from the Levant had a wide range of meanings, and even categories of objects that had originally been created in the Levant but had begun to be produced in Byzantium, or even imitated in Spain and Italy, also came to carry special significance. Even if these were made in Europe, most Spanish and Italian silks were made under Arabic rules, and even by Arabic weavers. In Northern Italy, the raw material was still imported from the Middle 13 14

Nigel Bryant, trans., The History of William Marshal (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2018). Ibid., 216–17.

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Tina Anderlini East until the late Middle Ages.15 Medallion silks were therefore precious for a number of reasons, and not simply because of their presumed eastern origins, as crucial that connection to the Levant might be; the combined effects of eastern origin, exquisite material, fine dyestuff, and beautiful and significant design on these silks’ desirability was greater than any one factor. The roundel shape, which is connected to Heaven, is not the only part of the design to have associations with Christian symbolism: The designs inside the shape, which vary considerably—vegetal, animal, geometrical, and human—can carry an apologetic meaning, which is to say, they can participate in the Christian Revelation through Christian iconography. Particularly noteworthy are the animals, which have strong symbolic meanings, according to medieval bestiaries. Louis Réau asserts that to the medieval Christian imagination, the whole of nature is a religious symbol.16 Everything is a sign. There is therefore no need to make a distinction between aquatic or earthly animals, between birds and reptiles, between wild beasts and pets, between real creatures and fabulous ones. The same bird, the eagle, is both real and chimeric (in the case of the bicephalous eagle). As St. Augustine wrote, what is important is to meditate upon the meaning of things and not to discuss their authenticity.17 When it comes to bestiaries, what is important is not the species but rather the sénéfiance, or interpretive meaning. The bestiary is thus separated into two parts: the Good (God’s Bestiary) and the Evil (Devil’s Bestiary), with some animals appearing in both, depending on the context. The animals of God’s Bestiary are commonly depicted in medallion silks. Despite a non-Christian origin for the Middle Eastern fabrics and their designs, often copied in Byzantium and Italy, most of the animals are iconographically connected to Christ and, what is even more interesting in relation to our subject, with Heaven, resurrection, and eternal life.18 This is the case for the deer, the peacock, the eagle, the griffin (a hybrid creature, symbol of Jesus Christ, God, and Man), and the lion. Other animals often featured inside the medallions can relate to the virtues, like the camel (humility), the cock (watchfulness), and the elephant (baptism, thus leading of course to the resurrection of the soul—the elephant can also symbolize chastity and temperance). Byzantine emperors also used medallions to convey this association with the virtues: The peplos (mantle) was embroidered with griffins made of gold and pearls. The griffin as well as the eagle can fly to Heaven, and both are images of the imperial majesty, while the pearls are images of purity.19 In fact, round white circles that seem to represent pearls on the medallion border are not rare. Gold is a symbol of eternity, 15 16 17 18 19

David Jacoby, “Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian West,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 197–240, at 201. Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’Art Chrétien (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), 1:78. Regarding Augustine: Vincent Giraud, “Signum et Vestigium dans la Pensée de Saint Augustin,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 95, no. 2 (2011): 251–74. Ibid., 1:76–141. Christiane Elster, Die Textilen Geschenke Papst Bonifaz’ VIII (1294–1303) an die Kathedrale von Anagni (Petersberg, Germany: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018), 82. The eagle even appeared on the Emperor’s shoes, making the entire ensemble symbolic from head to toe.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe as it retains its color and shine through the ages. Occidental imitations of imperial Byzantine traditions can be seen in, for instance, Empress Künigunde’s tunic, which includes beautiful examples of griffins embroidered in pearl medallions.20 The eagle, of course, is a common motif inside medallions. As mentioned above, it has strong Christian associations, but since Roman antiquity, it has carried imperial ones, making the eagle a Christian symbol associated with an image of power. The lion itself, an image of Christ, was a royal symbol for the Sassanian kings and, before them, Persian and Assyrian kings.21 In Iran, The lion, symbol of kingship, power, prestige and protection of sacred spaces, was a dominant motif on both silverware and silks, either as the dying lion which confers status on its royal hunter or as the guardian lion of the empire.22

Another image of royal power is the senmurv, a hybrid creature that is part dog or lion and part bird, thought to have originated in Iran but possibly in Byzantium.23 The Silk Road seems to have been a vector to convey new images of power even if it is not certain that the original Sassanian symbolism of power remains intact in these images. Yet, it seems that this symbolism was absorbed into Christian iconography in a new example of syncretism. Anna Muthesius has observed this phenomenon in her analysis of the symbolic correspondence between the lion and the Emperor: The striding lion and panther/leopard motifs of classical antiquity were not the only motifs to appear on Byzantine silks. Other ancient motifs, such as griffins, eagles, eagles attacking quadrupeds, and so on, occurred upon Byzantine silks of the 10th/11th centuries. All these ancient images were absorbed into Christian allegory. The eagle rending a deer was interpreted as a symbol of the gathering of Gentiles at the Body of Christ, or of the faithful before the Body and Blood of Christ. John Chrysostom associated the eagle and the carcass with Communion and with the Resurrection of the Son of Justice. Another commentator interpreted the image as Christ’s Victory over Evil.24

A very rare silk that is supposed to have come from Charlemagne’s tomb and is now in the Musée de Cluny (Musée National du Moyen Âge) in Paris could also be an image of power.25 This Byzantine fabric, showing a crowned charioteer, could be interpreted as an ancient emperor on his four-horse chariot. Indeed, the motif makes a perfect shroud for an emperor. Many of the patterns are, as already shown, connect-

20 21 22 23 24 25

First half of the eleventh century, Bamberg, Diözesanmuseum. Until the eleventh or twelfth century in Western Europe, the king of beasts was the bear, not the lion. The bear was a “pagan king” and ultimately became associated with the Devil. Michel Pastoureau, Bestiaires du Moyen Âge (Paris: Seuil, 2011), 63–66. Heleanor Feltham, “Lions, Silks, and Silver: The Influence of Sasanian Persia,” Sino-Platonic Papers 206 (Aug. 2010): 4. Jacoby, “Silk Economics,” 212. Muthesius, Studies in Silk, 114. See note 7, above.

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Tina Anderlini ed to power, virtues of the rulers, Heaven, and the Resurrection. The circular shape emulates and reinforces the sacred aura and gives more sénéfiance to these fabrics. There are of course exceptions. A subject like parrots does not have a positive meaning in the Christian tradition. Despite that, fabrics with parrots were used as shrouds, religious clothing, or wrappings for relics, but perhaps these parrots were confused for eagles. The design of the Lower Austrian “five eagles” arms is supposed to have come from a fragment of the so-called Mantle of Leopold III (1095–1136) in Klosterneuburg Abbey, which has golden parrots (not in medallions) on blue silk.26 During the second half of the thirteenth century, parrots became popular among aristocracy.27 The fact that they appear in fabrics at the same time can be connected with this fashion. Leopards are also not usually regarded in a positive way, but appear in the heraldry of noble families, as leopards, bearing some similarity to lions, were also symbols of power. Having formerly been associated with evil, leopards became the symbol of strength and power for the nobility. Much silk found in churches or in tombs is not medallion silk, such as the St. Germain shroud. We must therefore consider what kind of silk was available when needed. It depended mainly on diplomatic gifts and trade, as the fabrics came from the East or Spain.28 The western sovereigns who received gifts of silks from Constantinople or Baghdad in turn made donations to churches, cathedrals, or abbeys. The Byzantine silk trade was strictly regulated, particularly for high-quality silks and large quantities.29 Economic and political factors determined which silk fabrics and raw materials arrived in Western Europe from elsewhere. Due to increased interactions between the West and the East, it is not surprising that silk fabrics began to appear in greater quantities after the Crusades.30 For large fabrics used for palls or shrouds, there seems to be a marked preference for motifs of sacred eagles, whether in medallions or not. It bears repeating that all these silks were rare and precious, and by touching the body of a saint, they became relics themselves. Shapes and motifs that were reminiscent of Heaven, Christ, or the Resurrection added even more power to these new relics. To complete our picture of these medallion silks, especially to gain an understanding of how they were used and on which occasions, we turn our attention to

26

27 28 29 30

For an image, see “Die Wahre Geschichte von Leopold III,” ORF, Nov. 14, 2014, https://noe. orf.at/radio/stories/2679168, accessed Jan. 9, 2019. The first known image of the five eagles is indeed on a window in Klosterneuburg abbey, where the fabric is. However, the fabric dates from the thirteenth century and can therefore not be connected with Leopold III. Pastoureau, Bestiaires, 11. Muthesius, Studies in Silk, 257–73. Marianne Vedeler, Silk for the Vikings, Ancient Textiles Series 15 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014), 102. For more on the regulations, see 102–4. Rebecca Woodward Wendelken, “Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 59–77, esp. 65–77.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe non-archaeological sources and examine the depictions of roundels in textual and visual evidence. TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

In a few texts we find references in Latin to palla rotata and in Old French to paile roé, both of which literally mean “silk fabric with wheel.” This description seems to refer to our medallions, as we shall see in some literary examples. Upon close examination of inventories and accounts, one fact is striking: There are many silks in royal accounts, but most of them, such as cendal, are mainly used for lining or furnishing. Cloth of gold31 and samite32 were relatively common for noble clothing from at least the twelfth century on, as was velvet, beginning in the fourteenth century.33 However, palla rotata or paile roé never appears in conjunction with attire for the nobility. Such silks, as well as many other kinds, were most often given to priests, in addition to the gifts of fabric for furnishing the chapel. Thus, an analysis of the written sources shows that the largest proportion of silks was not used for dressing the nobles or even kings. David Jacoby associates medallion silks with the medieval fabric term siglaton, based on a derivation from the Byzantine Greek σἱγλᾶτος, “sealed.”34 But other possible etymologies point to a different meaning for siglaton: the Arabic siqlatun, meaning a gold brocade silk fabric (σἱγιλλᾶτον in Byzantine Greek), and the late Latin sigillatus, “adorned with figures.”35 In Western sources paile roé seems thus to connect textual evidence to iconography, whereas siglaton does not. It is of course possible that siglaton carried different meanings in Western Europe and Byzantium. From Old French, paile evolved into poile, or poèle, in the sixteenth century, and in the Middle Ages all three terms were used to refer to the veils or fabrics used to cover the couple during a wedding or for covering coffins, which brings us back to our examples of Fernando de la Cerda or William Marshal.36 In Les Etoffes du Deuil, Françoise Piponnier points out that we find luxurious fabrics mentioned in wills for use at funerals, adding that dying people who ordered cloth of gold or of silk for their 31

32

33 34 35 36

Benjamin L. Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011): 1–31; Louis Douët-D’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil de Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France (Paris: Renouard, 1874), 140–50. Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995), 204, sec. 94. Samite is wrongly translated as satin in the modern French version; 205, sec. 94. Samite was also discovered in some Merovingian graves, such as that of queen Aregonde (sixth century) or tomb S 118 in Louviers (late fifth to early sixth centuries). Douët-D’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil, 140–50. Jacoby, “Silk Economics,” 212. But see also note 44, below. Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, www.cnrtl.fr/definition/siglaton, accessed Nov. 5, 2018. There seems to be a common Latin origin, sigillum, referring to seals, embroidery, and small figures. Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française (Paris: Hachette, 1873–77), https://www. littre.org, accessed Dec. 2, 2018, s.v. “paille.”

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Tina Anderlini funerals very often would not have owned, during their lifetimes, clothing made from these precious textiles, even if, as she emphasizes, these were wealthy people. Bien souvent, le moribond qui ordonne l’achat d’un drap d’or, ou de soie pour ses obsèques ne possède, et n’a jamais possédé, de vêtement taillé dans ces textiles précieux.37

Piponnier adds that these fabrics are sometimes recorded as being in the possession of hospitals, citing a gift of a silk cloth “à mettre sur les morts” [to cover the dead], made by the famous Mahaut d’Artois (1268–1329) to the Hesdin hospital.38 Piponnier affirms that this was a way to honor people who died in this hospital far above their social rank.39 Although we do not have more precise information about what kind of silk Mahaut gave, colorful fabrics were used at that time for this purpose, with black not becoming the main color associated with death until the end of the fifteenth century.40 Marie de France, one of the most renowned authors of the twelfth century, uses paile roé for funerary purposes in her Lai de Yonec:41 Une tumbe troverent grant, Coverte d’un paile roé, D’un chier orfreis par mi bendé. (lines 504–6) [They found a great tomb covered with medallion silk that had a band of precious orphrey down the middle.]42

Medieval literature is full of marvelous descriptions of fantastic silk fabrics.43 These sartorial details enhance their wearer’s status, but authors use medallion silk to elevate status not necessarily through wear but also through the display of uncut lengths of the fabric for various purposes. We find this kind of use in two very interesting examples from the thirteenth-century writer Jean Renart. In L’Escoufle,44 the emperor decorates his hall with medallion silk for a special occasion in order to impress his guests: 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44

Françoise Piponnier, “Les Étoffes du Deuil,” in A Réveiller les Morts: La Mort au Quotidien dans l’Occident Médiéval, ed. Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Cécile Treffort (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1993), 135–40, at 135. Jules-Marie Richard, Une Petite-Nièce de Saint Louis: Mahaut, Comtesse d’Artois et de Bourgogne, 1302–1329 (Paris: Champion, 1887), 404. Piponnier, “Les Étoffes,” 135. For examples of such palls, see Colum Hourihane, “The Development of the Medieval English Pall,” in The Age of Opus Anglicanum, ed. Michael A. Michael (London: Harvey Miller, 2016), 147–85. Marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner (Paris: Champion, 1983), 102–19. Here and elsewhere, the English translations are my own. There are many recent studies of textiles in French medieval literature. See for example: E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007); and Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). Jean Renart, L’Escoufle: Roman d’Aventure, ed. Paul Meyer and Henri Victor Michelant (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1894). These verses are also interesting when it comes to Jacoby’s hypothesis of the medallion fabrics as siglatons, as line 1408 clearly points out that roés and siglatons are two different fabrics.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe L’emperere par gentillece Fist faire une grande largece, Qu’il fist portendre son palais, C’on peüst faire grant eslais, Je cuit, entre les .ij. pignons, De dras roés, de siglatons Estoit bordés et portendus. (lines 1403–9) [Kindly the emperor generously adorned his palace with hangings; a galloping horse could have jumped between the two pinions, hung and bordered with medallion cloth and siglaton.]

Displaying expensive and exotic fabric constitutes an effective way to demonstrate wealth and power. Crucially, this highly prized fabric is not transformed into clothing, where it would be degraded with wear, but remains intact, as does its great worth. If we dare to find a modern equivalent, we can compare hoarding the uncut medallion silks to the collecting of precious artworks for status, such as the private ownership of Old Masters paintings, which potentially keeps them out of museums. Moreover, we must remember that silk was indeed an important diplomatic gift and even a type of currency in China.45 In the Byzantine Empire silk was also used for “diplomatic gift-giving, imperial use, or ritual purposes.”46 In Galeran de Bretagne, another work attributed to Jean Renart, silk also plays an important role.47 A lady is able to identify her long-lost daughter, the heroine, Frêne, due to a fine cloth of gold that she had placed with her baby in order to indicate the child’s noble origin to the nuns who would find her. Later in the story Frêne makes a robe of the fabric and is thus recognized by her mother. Jean Renart, if he really is the author, borrowed this story from Marie de France. In her Lai Le Fresne, the baby girl is left near the convent door not with a cloth of gold but with a paile roé from Byzance:48 En un chief de mult bon cheinsil envolupent l’enfant gentil e desus un paile roê ; sis sire li ot aporté de Costentinoble u il fu ; unques si bon n’orent veü. (lines 121–26)

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46 47 48

Mark A. Norell, Denise Patry Leidy, and Laura Ross, eds., Sulla Via della Seta: Antichi Sentieri tra Oriente e Occidente (Turin, Italy: Codice, 2012), 237; James C. Y. Watt and Anne E. Wardwell, When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), 18. Dagmar Schäfer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Molà, eds., Threads of Global Desire: Silk in the PreModern World (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2018), 9, with a citation to Heleanor B. Feltham, “Justinian and the International Silk Trade,” Sino-Platonic Papers 194 (Nov. 2009): 1–40. Jean Renart, Galeran de Bretagne: Roman du XIIIe Siècle, ed and trans. Lucien Poulet (Paris: Champion, 1971). Marie de France, Lais, 44–60.

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Tina Anderlini [The noble-born child was wrapped in a fine linen cloth, and she was covered by a medallion silk that the lord had brought back from Constantinople, where he had been. Such a beautiful fabric had never been seen.]

Interestingly, the fate of the fabric varies in the different accounts. In Marie’s version, when Galeran, whom Frêne loved, married her twin sister, the heroine saw that the bedspread was of poor quality. To remedy the situation, she offered her own precious silk instead, deeming it a more appropriate covering, and so was identified by her mother (lines 407–50). She then married Galeran in a beautiful medieval happy ending (except for the twin sister). The use of the paile roé for a wedding bed cover could echo the use of paile (although it is not roé) placed on couples’ heads for weddings. The difference between Jean’s and Marie’s versions is rather interesting. It is unclear why Jean Renart would change the kind of silk. Moreover, he chose to have Frêne wear a robe of the silk instead of using it to prepare a marital bed. I would argue that a lay robe could not be made with the paile roé. Archaeological remains provide us with no examples of clothing in paile roé for laypeople, apart from coronation and burial garments, and inventories and other accounts likewise provide no evidence of medallion silks used for casual or even festive costume. Perhaps it would be suitable for the bed of a married couple, as Marie’s text seems to suggest. However, as we have seen, the most interesting examples of medallion silks provided by literature concern furnishing and not clothing. ICONOGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE

It is worth looking at sacred images to see if they provide us with different clues from what we have seen in written records. The marriage charter from April 14, 972, of Emperor Otto II and his Byzantine wife Theophanu provides us with a marvelous example of a wedding contract between two powerful people, and its three pieces of parchment were painted to look like silk woven in a medallion pattern. This particular artefact certainly joins roundels in silk to nuptial practices and rituals.49 Pictorial renderings of medallion silk can also figure on decorated pages in sacred books, as, for instance, in the Codex Aureus made in Echternach, a masterpiece of Ottonian art.50 Stephen Wagner asserts: The Codex Aureus Epternacensis in Nuremberg, a Gospel book dated to around 1030 contains the most textile-inspired pages of any manuscript and is a real codicological achievement. A wide variety of designs painted on openings between each Gospel text analogically wraps and protects the sacred text much the same way that silk fabric protects relics and silk vestments cloaked bishops and kings. For example, in comparing a tenth-century silk fragment associated with the relics of St. Siviard, a seventh-century

49 50

Wolfenbüttel, Germany, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, 6 Urk. 11, viewable at https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Urkunde01.jpg, accessed Oct. 30, 2018. Dating from 1030–35; Nüremberg, National Germanisches Museum, Hs. 156142, 17v–18.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe bishop, with the opening that divides the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, a comparison to the cut style51 in silk weaving is evident.52

Wagner compares this image of medallion silks, whose roundels touch each other with no intermediary link, that protect a sacred text to the fabric of a shroud that protects a saint’s body. Entrances to cathedrals have occasionally featured sculptures that imitate textile medallions, such as the ones along the façade of the cathedral in Lucca, and the columns at the cloisters in Monreale in Sicily, both important regions for Italian silk.53 Medallions also appear in various media inside cathedrals: sometimes a single circle, with a cross,54 a bird, astrological signs (fig. 5.5),55 or the labors of the seasons or months,56 all subjects bearing a connection to the silk designs or with ancient allegorical subjects.57 One must wonder if this motif really represented protection, as Wagner thinks, or if instead it signified a sacred place, as a sacred text and a sacred body do, or even perhaps both. Twelfth-century mosaics with roundels also appear in Italy, mainly in the south and in Sicily. Apulia and Sicily were in close contact with the Orient and were sometimes occupied by Muslims; Sicily especially is famous for its silk production, a precious Muslim heritage. The medallion motif that we have seen rendered in silk is also prevalent in the floor design of the cathedrals in Bitonto (fig. 5.6), Brindisi, and Otranto (all in Apulia), among others. Unfortunately, with the exception of Otranto, these cathedrals have suffered later renovations that have obscured the medallion flooring. Cosmatesque (including circle designs) and more recent floors cover the original ones, which now exist only in fragments. Such fragments are also visible in Verona, in Pesaro, in Prato, further in the north, and in Venice, another city that was in frequent contact with the East and had deep associations with the Orient. Roundel pavements from the same period also exist in France, but almost all the churches have suffered the same fate as the ones in Southern Italy.58 Nonetheless, the fact that there were so many medallion decorations in the twelfth century should invite us to think about a possible connection to the Crusades. The silk trade between Europe and the Middle East existed well before the First Crusade, as is attested by the numerous surviving silk fragments in Europe, such as the fragments of the textile belonging to Edward

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58

Cut silk, or kesi, is a technique of weaving tapestries in which a slight slit, or relais, is left due to a lack of interlocking when the weaver changes colors. Wagner, “Impact of Silk,” 11. For examples of Lucchese silks and sculptures from the cathedral, see Ignazio del Punta, Lucca e il Commercio della Seta nel Medioevo (Pisa: Pacini, 2010), 14 and 17. Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, imitation of fabric. Choir of Ourjout, in the French Pyrénées mountains. Tournus cathedral, floor mosaic. See Paul Deschamps, “L’Imitation des Tissus dans les Peintures Murales du Moyen Âge,” Comptes Rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 98, no. 3 (1954): 320–26. Deschamps points out that the paintings can be connected with a growing scarcity of fabric importations (326). It seems that the exact opposite is true. The case of Brindisi’s cathedral being unique as the city suffered from an earthquake in 1743 during which the cathedral was heavily damaged.

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Fig. 5.5:  Apse of the church of Ourjout, Bordes-sur-Lez, with astrological signs in medallions and, at the very bottom, painted imitations of hangings with what appears to be medallions (beginning of the twelfth century). The paintings were rediscovered in 2012. Photo: J.-F. Peiré, Drac Occitanie.

Tina Anderlini

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Fig. 5.6:  Griffin in the remains of the original pavement at the Cathedral of Bitonto, Bari, Italy (twelfth century). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

the Confessor. The ornamentation of the Nuremberg Codex Aureus is evidence of the influence of fabrics on the arts before the Crusades. At any rate, the Latin kingdoms of Outremer opened new possibilities and more stable trade routes and posts.59 This could explain the rise in the twelfth century of silk-like ornamentation as more fabrics came to Europe and thus into regions far removed from Byzantine or Islamic areas of influence or royal and imperial courts. Otranto offers another point of interest: The area in front of the altar, the most sacred part of the church, is decorated with medallions. But like the labors of the months in Tournus, some of the subjects cannot be connected with fabrics. Nevertheless, the recurrent circular shape in church decoration seems to have some connection to medallions, and we can certainly imagine a kind of evolution in Romanesque iconography, initially inspired by the fabrics. We can speculate that first they were trompe l’oeil, then became Western designs of their own, enlarging the repertoire of 59

David Abulafia, “Trade and Crusade, 1050–1250,” in Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Graboïs on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache, and Sylvia Schein (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 1–20.

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Tina Anderlini subjects offered by the traditional fabrics of Oriental origin but only for very specific subjects like bestiary, astrology, and allegory. Yet, these Oriental fabrics also feature subjects more unusual and elaborate than the beasts, such as the so-called shroud of Charlemagne with its charioteers, or the St. Lazarus shroud, embroidered with a falconer.60 We shall return to the preserved floor mosaic of Otranto later. Medallion mosaics inspired by fabrics also hang on the walls and ceiling of cathedrals in Sicily. Once again, we can deplore the later renovations that destroyed many roundels, but the palatine chapel of Palermo and the cathedral of Monreale have been preserved and provide us some precious examples. Is it possible that in these cases the artworks were less costly than silk and were a permanent way to display, even at a degree of separation, the splendor of the most precious fabric? This could be the case for some paintings, although some mosaics contain gold foils, which are themselves very expensive. So, which was more expensive, medallion silks or precious mosaics? It is difficult to determine, since both have potentially less costly alternatives. Other, cheaper materials for mosaics cover whole floors, such as in the Apulian cathedrals, places where it is difficult to imagine someone laying rare fabrics, where they would be impossible to care for. Similarly, cheap replacements were also possible for hangings to protect the originals or in the absence of real silk. We also find examples of medallion paintings in some of the few remaining palaces from the period, such as the medieval palace in the Vatican.61 Roundels figure prominently at Bonifacio’s palace in Anagni where there is a repeated design of two birds, in different colors, on a wall (fig. 5.7). This beautifully decorated palace boasts different patterns, but the bird design appears on only one wall. If we consider the orientation of the building, that wall is the one closest to Jerusalem, although this may be pure coincidence. On the same wall, in the neighboring room, we also find roundels oriented the same way. King Roger’s apartments in the Norman Palace of Palermo offer another lay example of rooms that feature a roundel motif. The beautiful mosaic room has a golden ceiling adorned with lions in medallions, griffins in octolobes, and an eagle in the center, which seems to take its inspiration from medallion silks. This is, of course, a royal palace. Medieval literature provides many examples of royal pavilions of silk and cloth of gold,62 and the ceiling in Palermo could reflect this trend by suggesting that the occupants of the room were housed in a beautiful pavilion. In this room we also find designs depicting lions, which are themselves reminiscent of the imperial mantle featuring twin lions attacking two camels; this was originally Roger’s mantle,

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Charlemagne, see note 7, above. Lazarus shroud: Musée National du Moyen Âge, Paris, no. CL 21865, http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/collection/oeuvre/fragment-suaire-saint-lazare.html, accessed July 20, 2018. Elster, Textilen Geschenke, 132–33, illustrations of griffins, 133. Not to mention the Field of the Cloth of Gold (known as the Camp du Drap d’Or in French) of many pavilions, where François I met Henry VIII in Ardres in 1520.

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Fig. 5.7:  Fresco showing medallions with eagles in the Palazzo Bonifacio VIII, Anagni (end of the thirteenth century; property of the Congregazione delle Suore Cistercensi della Carità). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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Tina Anderlini made for an unknown occasion (see fig. 1.1 in this volume). In these cases, images of power coming from the Middle East again travel from cloth to wall. One of the oldest remaining painted ceilings, dating from the first half of the thirteenth century, was removed from the chapter of the Collégiale de Notre-Damela-Ronde and is now on exhibit in the Musée de la Cour d’Or in Metz (figs. 5.8 and 5.9). Its iconography is a bestiary and astrological signs, mostly in circles.63 Some of the animals depicted can definitely be connected to fabric design.64 But, once again, this is a building that belonged to wealthy, religious people, whose taste would have coincided with a program similar to the sculptures from a religious building. The exact meaning of the Metz bestiary is unknown, but it has been linked to a Sicilian wood canopy that appeared on the art market.65 The similarity of designs could be the result of the same influence, that is, silk medallions. This brings us to consider a possible new iconography for the medallions. FUNERARY FUNCTIONS AND ARCHAISM

In the thirteenth century, the stabilizing force of the newly established Pax Mongolica and its beneficial effects on trade along the Silk Road led to the biggest influx of Chinese fabrics ever to arrive in Europe. Meanwhile, the rise of the Italian silk industry meant continued growth in production and circulation of Italian imitations of eastern silks. It is at this time that we see the European interest in medallion silks begin to decline.66 They appear less and less in medieval art from the fourteenth century on. We can still find late medieval examples, however, such as the predella of an altarpiece now in the Cloisters Museum in New York. In this fifteenth-century painting, produced in Perpignan and representing the Life of St. Andrew, we find two examples of medallion silks, both in depictions of stories from the Golden Legend. The first medallion silk appears as a bedspread, bringing us back to the decorative function of roundels, and the second appears on a coffin, in a scene representing the resurrection of a young man (fig. 5.10).67 The predella images illustrate what we know from texts and archaeological evidence. 63 64 65 66

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Its design is sometimes in alternating squares and circles, sometimes in a succession of roundels. Unfortunately, there are no extant medieval textiles in the treasury of Metz Cathedral except the so-called cope of Charlemagne. I would suggest that the ceiling is evidence of the presence of such fabrics in the thirteenth century. Jérôme Fronty, L’Étrange Bestiaire Médiéval du Musée de Metz: Un Poisson dans le Plafond (Metz, France: Éditions Serpenoise, 2007), 19, illustration of the Sicilian canopy, 18. Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Le Moyen Âge Fantastique: Antiquités et Exotismes dans l’Art Gothique (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 176–84; Luca Molà, M. Ludovica Rosati, and Alexandra Wetzel, “Dialogo tra Oriente e Occidente,” in Norell, Leidy, and Ross, Sulla Via della Seta, 116–22. Moreover, the fourteenth-century Eagle Dalmatic is made of Chinese silk; such silk was extremely rare before the second half of the thirteenth century. Jacques de Voragine, La Légende Dorée, trans. Teodor de Wyzewa (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 10–11, sec. 3.

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Figs. 5.8 and 5.9:  Paintings from the ceiling of the chapter of the Collégiale de Notre-Damela-Ronde (first half of the thirteenth century; now at Musée de la Cour d’Or, Metz). Fig. 5.8 (top): Griffin. Fig. 5.9 (below): Pair of panthers or lionesses. Photos: © Laurianne Kieffer, Musée de la Cour d’Or–Metz Métropole.

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Fig. 5.10:  Detail showing a fabric-draped coffin, from the predella of an altarpiece with scenes from the life of St. Andrew, attributed to the Master of Roussillon (ca. 1420–30; The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1906, 06.1211.1–.9). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

Medallion silks seem to have gone entirely out of fashion by the fifteenth century. Lisa Monnas offers an explanation of this in her interpretation of these fabrics in a number of paintings. Whether they appear in a hanging behind the Virgin in an anonymous Northern French Epiphany or in Simeon’s cope in Giovanni Bellini’s Circumcision, they are archaic at this point and convey a specific meaning:68 68

The Epiphany is in a private collection. The Circumcision, from Bellini’s workshop, is in the National Gallery of London.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe The archaic textile behind the Holy Family [in the Epiphany] alluded to Christ’s ancient royal lineage while reinforcing the message of the architecture. ( … ) The accuracy not only of the drawing but of the choice of colouring for this silk [in Bellini’s Circumcision] makes it likely that this fabric was based on real textile seen by the artist, possibly preserved as a church vestment. The textile shown in this painting belongs to a family of silks datable to between the late thirteenth and the mid-fourteenth centuries. ( … ) It is debatable whether Bellini simply chose an example of a suitably old ecclesiastical textile or whether in his mind this type of diasper was associated with the Holy Land.69

I agree with both her interpretation of the archaism of these fabrics and her proposed association of them with the Holy Land. We could make the same observation about the Perpignan predella. Another fifteenth-century example, this time from Germany, also points to a representation set in the past but does not evoke the Holy Land.70 In the Kamp-Bornhofen Triptych, St. Clare wears as a mantle a colorful fabric figured with animals inside medallions (figs. 5.11 and 5.12). The richness of the silk is far from the monastic brown garments in which Clare is usually dressed. All the female saints of this altarpiece are painted wearing dresses or mantles in wonderful silk fabrics, in various designs, but Clare wears the only garment featuring medallions. These silks are a sign of holiness and of the power of the Christian faith. Images of royal and noble funerals from the fifteenth century and later are not rare,71 and they tend to depict kings and queens uncovered by cloth and without a coffin.72 In contrast, images attest to a preference for princes to lie in state in coffins draped with huge lengths of fabric, often black or red heraldic cloth of gold. Such is the case for the bier of Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy, whose cloth of gold cost the extravagant amount of 576 écus in 1467.73 By comparing these funerary practices with the Perpignan altarpiece, we can see that the resurrection scene from the Life of St. Andrew must have been read as an anachronistic element in the fifteenth century, as with the Epiphany and the Circumcision. Archaeological evidence confirms this archaism: The latest surviving fragments of woven medallion silks are from the end of the thirteenth century, such as the pall of St. Anthony of Padua, a Lucchese samite with parrots.74 When we find medallion patterns in later periods, they are embroidered rather than woven.

69 70 71 72 73 74

Monnas, Merchants, Princes, 228–30. I must emphasize that Simeon’s cope in Bellini’s painting contains huge drops instead of medallions; we also find the drop pattern in conjunction with the medallion pattern on the aforementioned Cloisters altarpiece. Triptych of Kamp-Bornhofen, 1415, Bonn, Landesmuseum. Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, “La Mort en Images: Les Funérailles des Princes au Bas Moyen Âge dans le Royaume de France,” in Des Images dans l’Histoire, ed. Marie-France Auzépy and Joël Cornette (Saint-Denis, France: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2008), 57–74. The exception to this is Charles VI, whose body was decaying and was replaced by a wood and wax effigy on the bier. Ibid., 66. Ibid., 65 n. 32. Padua, Treasure of the Basilica del Santo, end of the thirteenth century.

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Fig. 5.11:  St. Clare, from the Kamp-Bornhofen Triptych (1415; LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn). Photo: LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, Jürgen Vogel.

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Fig. 5.12:  Detail of fig. 5.11. Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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Fig. 5.13:  Detail of the Majesté Batlló [Batlló Crucifix] (twelfth century; Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona). Photo: Catherine Besson.

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The marvelous work of Giovanni Bellini brings us back to costume. Even before Bellini there are representations of laypeople wearing clothing made of medallion silks. In the cathedral of Otranto, we find depictions of the allegory of seasons or months wearing medallion cloth and medallions figuring on the attire of important historical people such as Solomon and Alexander. Alexander is wearing medallion silk on a twelfth-century Mosan enamel in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.75 Medallion silk can also be seen on the colobium, the luxurious dress worn by the crucified Christ on some twelfth-century sculptures, a way to show His royal and divine character (fig. 5.13). And, of course, medallions often adorn the attire of emperors, bishops, popes, and saints. Although this article focuses on Western Europe, we should bear in mind that some Bulgarian and Byzantine frescoes or mosaics show “real” people wearing these silks, all of them connected to imperial families. In her doctoral thesis about the medallion motif in the Byzantine empire, Maddalena Pellizon demonstrates that these precious fabrics were among the possessions of the Imperial Treasure, reserved for use on specific occasions following a rather rigid protocol.76 This Byzantine protocol seems to have had some influence on Occidental art, as well as perhaps on Occidental practices concerning clothing. We find confirmation of this influence in a twelfth-century manuscript of the Gospels of Henry the Lion.77 This high-quality codex provides examples of medallion silks being worn both by sacred people and also “real” people, meaning people who were alive when the manuscript was painted or not long before its production. In addition to the sacred and biblical people (fol. 20, fol. 111), a number of bishops and the deceased Richenza of Nordheim, who was the Empress of Emperor Lothar II and the grandmother of Henry the Lion, are all shown wearing palla rotata. Richenza, Lothar, and other dead or living family members appear in the representation of Henry’s wedding to Mathilda, the daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine (fol. 171b). Henry himself is shown wearing medallions when he is in presence of sacred people (fol. 19). Once again, we find the fabric on special people on special occasions. We should also note the presence of medallion patterns in some of the illuminations’ backgrounds (fol. 112). Rather than provide a catalogue of similar personages wearing medallion silks as I mentioned above, I would prefer to focus on exceptions, which brings us back to Anagni. Inside the wonderful crypt of the cathedral, there is, among many other paintings, a fresco displaying members of the nobility in the front row, which could provide us with the evidence we seek of laypeople wearing paile roé on occasions not 75 76

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Ca. 1160; no. M.53–1988. Maddalena Pellizon, “I Tessuti Bizantini con Motivo Decorativo a Rotate: Analisi e Viluppo Storico-iconografico” (Ph.D. diss., Università Ca’Foscari, Venice, 2011–12), 73–77. This fascinating work focuses on the Byzantine and Venetian worlds and studies the different patterns as well as pavements. Munich, Herzog August Bibliothek, Bayern National Library, Codex Guelf. 105 Noviss 2° Clm. 30055, dated 1188.

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Fig. 5.14:  Fresco depicting the arrival of the body of St. Magnus in Anagni (thirteenth century; Crypt of St. Magnus, Anagni Cathedral). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma.

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Fig. 5.15:  Tomb effigy of Heinrich II (1270–1280; Maria Laach Abbey, Germany). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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Figs. 5.16 and 5.17:  Details of fig. 5.15.

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Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe connected to emperors or to sacred events (fig. 5.14).78 Unfortunately, this example is problematic: The painting dates to the thirteenth century but depicts a scene set in the ninth century. There are at least two possible explanations for the presence of the medallions in the fresco, which cannot be considered as exceptional. First, we could interpret the use of the medallion fabric as a conscious attempt to denote the past. Second, the subject has special significance because it is the translation of St. Magnus, the protector of the city.79 The saint’s body is clearly visible in the coffin, which is undraped, on the left side of the painting. Here again we find a solemn situation involving death and a funeral associated with medallions, and one might suggest that the fabrics worn by these nobles in the crowd are allusions to medallion silk that should rightfully be on the saint’s coffin. Our last example may be the most significant and, like the Anagni fresco, involves a funeral representation, this time in Germany. On his funeral effigy, dated 1270–80, Heinrich II, first Count Palatine of the Rhine (ca. 1050–95), wears a beautiful white silk cote covered with architectural elements inside gold and red medallions (fig. 5.15). Heinrich, who was the founder of Maria Laach Abbey, where he is buried, holds a replica of his abbey in his hand, and it appears also in the roundels of his funeral costume, even on the wide cuffs of his sleeves above the bands of orphrey (figs. 5.16 and 5.17). This strong symbolic association between his endowment of the abbey and how he appears on his tomb forms a unique image that prepares him for what comes after his death. His posthumous representation identifies him clearly as the abbey’s benefactor, and he goes clad in this ideal garment to face his Creator. The larger-than-life Maria Laach funeral monument provides two additional examples of medallions. Under Heinrich’s head lies an orange funerary cushion with eight-petal rosettes within red medallions (fig. 5.18). More interesting are the richly decorated black shoes, adorned with orphreys, representations of pearls, and a rank of medallions whose contents alternate between two heraldic animals, a lion and an eagle (fig. 5.19). The lion rampant identifies Heinrich as a member of the family of Luxemburg through its heraldic motif, and the eagle evokes the imperial eagle. When the monument was erected, the family of Luxemburg did not yet have the imperial power—it would soon after—so we can interpret the eagle as a reminder of the close relationship between Heinrich II and Emperor Heinrich IV (1050–1106), who actually named the former Count Palatine around 1085. His regalia on the monument, from his garment to his shoes, thoroughly symbolizes his position in life: He is represented as the founder of an important abbey, as the first Count Palatine, and as someone connected with imperial power. The use of the color gold in the medallions on the cote and on the shoes is moreover a sign of eternity, as gold is the heavenly color. Few funeral sculptures are in such a good state of conservation with their original colors and designs.

78 79

Gioacchino Giammaria, Un Universo di Simboli: Gli Affreschi della Cripta nella Cattedrale di Anagni (Rome: Viella, 2001), plate 49. Ibid., plate 48.

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Fig. 5.18:  Detail of the cushion from the effigy of Heinrich II. Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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Fig. 5.19:  Detail of the heraldic shoes from the effigy of Heinrich II. Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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The fact that we cannot know the origin and purpose of all the extant fragments of medallion silks in Western Europe is a problem. However, it is clear that these fabrics are, one way or another, connected to the sacred and to the Other World. No textual testimony suggests a lay use of the medallion for usual costumes. By cross-examining the available sources, even with a quick incursion in the Byzantine world, it is obvious that this fabric was special—so special that, more than other silk patterns, it became a source of inspiration for other arts and a strong sign of sanctity, honor, power, and wealth.80 Our study always returns to the same situations and people: the Other World, saints and other biblical figures, personifications of all kinds, emperors, kings, members of the clergy, weddings, and death. The medallion silks may indeed be the greatest display of the cultural importance and meaning of this textile during the Middle Ages.

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Other connections between silk patterns and major arts may be made, such as the influence of Chinese bat patterns on the representations of demons, as was demonstrated by Baltrusaitis, Le Moyen Âge Fantastique, 156–75. Moreover, there are also the imitations of Arabic writing on the mantle of Roger II and similar ornamentation on some Sicilian Christian churches; see Isabelle Dolezalek, Arabic Script on Christian Kings: Textile Inscriptions on Royal Garments from Norman Sicily (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). The fact is that the medallions are the most striking examples, and, in this particular case, it is obvious that the motif travels from textiles to other arts.

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Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders Alejandra Concha Sahli

On February 21, 1241, Pope Gregory IX sent a bull to archbishops and bishops alerting them to … some women who wander in your cities and dioceses, they falsely pretend to be from the Order of San Damiano, and in order that others may comply, with the false faith of unfounded trust, to what they assert, they go barefooted, wearing the habit and the belt or the thin ropes (cordulas) of the nuns of this order, whom some call discalciatas or cordularias or minoretas … .1

The purpose of this letter was to deal with groups of women who apparently had taken to dressing up in a similar way to the nuns of the Order of San Damiano, founded by Clare of Assisi some decades earlier.2 The bull thus instructed the ecclesiastical authority that these women had to give up their belts, ropes, and habits. The complaint of scandal from the Franciscans and the nuns of San Damiano about these women not only drew attention to the fact that these women were “fooling the trustful pious” with their attire, but also that, with the Damianites being strictly cloistered nuns, the religio simulata of these wandering women reflected poorly on the virtuous disciples of St. Clare, who did observe the norms of claustration.3 Yet, as Herbert Grundmann has asserted, there was more to the conflict. These women seemed to have a genuine desire to enter the Order of San Damiano, but had   1 Johannis H. Sbaralea and Conradus Eubel, eds., Bullarium Franciscanum (Rome, 1759;

hereafter BF), vol. 1, no. 331, 290; Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 115.   2 Literature on Clare of Assisi and her order is extensive, but see for example: Maria Pia Alberzoni, Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2004); Lezlie S. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares Between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013).   3 Grundmann, Religious Movements, 110, 115; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 37–38. On claustration of religious women, see Eileen Power, English Medieval Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535

Alejandra Concha Sahli not found a way to do so since, at least between 1228 and 1245, the order was neither accepting new members nor building new convents to accommodate this demand.4 Therefore, these women might have been more than just impostors, wandering around the cities and trying to trick the devout by appearing to be Damianites. Perhaps they were yet another group representing the wider movement of lay piety that had started to materialise throughout Europe by the end of the twelfth century and which expanded especially among women during the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, despite the possibility that their actions were indeed founded on pious intentions, Innocent IV repeated the tone of Gregory IX’s bull, twice in 1250, and again in 1252, with harsh words for these mulieres who went around in a habit similar to the one of the Order of San Damiano.5 As Grundmann skilfully presented it in his now classic study, new ways of religious devotion and life were flourishing throughout Europe during this period. Even though it was not a welcoming world for the women who could not find a place to live the kind of novel religious experience that the Damianite order offered, the women targeted by Gregory IX’s bull were not the only laypersons adopting the habits of the religious. These women formed a notorious subset, and female movements took many different forms, but the longing to embrace a more virtuous way of life outside the traditional religious orders was shared by groups of both men and women. Paradoxically, for these people, who could not—or did not want to—take religious vows in the traditional way, wearing uniform clothes that resembled religious habits seemed to be essential, as the number of sources related to dress in Gérard Gilles Meersseman’s Dossier de l’Ordre de la Pénitence demonstrates.6 It became, indeed, a common feature of the extra-religious groups that started to spread during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as an act that placed their choice of lifestyle immediately within their social and cultural context. To “take the habit” was equivalent to entering a religious order. It was not only a symbolic act to mark an individual’s option and the start of a new way of life, but it also had immediate practical consequences, signifying a new status.7 The robing of a (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 341–93; Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, “Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience,” in Medieval Religious Women, vol. 1, Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 87–113; Elizabeth M. Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997); James A. Brundage and Elizabeth M. Makowski, “Enclosure of Nuns: The Decretal Periculoso and Its Commentators,” Journal of Medieval History 20 (2004): 143–55.   4 Grundmann, Religious Movements, 115–16. However, Sbaralea mentions that the Damianite convent of Salamanca, to which Innocent IV addresses one of his bulls in 1250, had been founded in 1238. BF, 1:556, note d.   5 BF 1, Cum harum rector Sathanas, April 20, 1250, no. 322, 541; Ex parte dilectarum, Sept. 30, 1250, no. 345, 556; Petitio vestra nobis, July 8, 1552, no. 419, 619. Grundmann, Religious Movements, 116 and n. 167.   6 Gérard Gilles Meersseman, Dossier de l’Ordre de la Pénitence au XIIIe Siècle (Fribourg, Switzerland: Editions Universitaires, 1961).   7 For a general overview about the use and symbolic meaning of monastic habits, see Barbara F. Harvey, Monastic Dress in the Middle Ages: Precept and Practice (Canterbury: William Urry Memorial Trust, 1988).

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation new monk or nun “made” them into a religious person and it therefore was a public act. Thus, it is worth taking a closer look at this phenomenon of “habit envy,” particularly the one represented by beguines and penitential groups who, standing outside the traditional religious orders, still wanted their share of religious praxis.8 And this praxis, just as with monks, friars, nuns, and canonesses, started with their clothes. MULIERES RELIGIOSAE, HABITUS BEGHINARUM: RELIGIOUS DRESS, LAY PIETY, AND THE FORMATION OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES She dashed to a recluse’s nearby cell, threw off her own garb, wrapped herself in a despicable piece of fabric, draped a shabby cloth over it as a mantle, and wound a filthy rag around her head so that only her face was visible. She looked disgusting, but in that manner she walked the busiest streets and squares of the town, especially those where she had previously appeared in grand style and had haughtily dazzled the public with her fashionable appearance. Now she walked the same route as a horrible spectacle, a crazy fool.9

The passage narrates the conversion, towards the end of the twelfth century, of the Belgian noblewoman Ida of Louvain, to a life dedicated to God and poverty. Like her more famous counterpart, Marie of Oignies, she was one of the forerunners of the movement of mulieres religiosae, which in time would be known as beguines.10 Despite   8 On the so-called via media, see Ernest W. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval

Culture with Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New York: Octagon, 1969), 120–40.

  9 Vita Idae Lovaniensis, in Acta Sanctorum Quotquot Toto Orbe Coluntur, vol. 11 (April, vol. 2),

ed. Jean Bolland, Godefroid Henschen, and Jean-Baptiste Carnandet (Paris: V. Palmé, 1866), 156–89, at 163. Fragment translated by Walter Simons in Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 66. However, this conversion and change of clothes also meant that Ida was thought by her family to have gone mad and was put in chains; Katrien Heene, “Gender and Mobility in the Low Countries: Traveling Women in Thirteenth-Century Exempla and Saint’s Lives,” in The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries, ed. Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. Suydam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 31–49, here 35.  10 As beguines were not always distinguished as a clearly defined category within the wider movement of mulieres religiosae, and because these extra-religious women could receive many other names, for example Swestriones/Suestriones or bizoche, I will be using the term also as synonym for the entire phenomenon. This seems to be, in fact, the approach also taken by authors such as McDonnell in Beguines and Beghards, Jean-Claude Schmitt in Mort d’une Hérésie: L’Église et les Clercs Face aux Béguines et aux Béghards du Rhin Supérieur du XIVe au XVe Siècle (Paris: Mouton/École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1978), and Gordon Leff in Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250–c.1450 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967). Furthermore, this seems to have also been the practice in the Late Middle Ages, as, for example, in 1374, Lambert, bishop of Strasbourg, made reference to “the women commonly called beguines, sisters or swestriones among other names” (“profane multitudinis mulieres, que vulgariter etiam Begine, quedam ex eis Sorores seu Swestriones, vel aliis nominibus appellantur”); Michael Bihl, ed., “De Tertio Ordine S. Francisci in Provincia Germaniae Superioris sive Argentinensi Syntagma,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 14 (1921): 138–98, 442–60; no. 21, 183. On the name, see also McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 430–38, and Letha Böhringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane,

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Alejandra Concha Sahli the uphill challenge of finding themselves in an ambiguous terrain—as they opted for a way of life that resembled the monastic one but which had neither the religious vows nor the privileges of the religious status—these groups of extra-religious women started to multiply rapidly. From the thirteenth century onwards they were a steadily growing presence in Europe, especially in the Low Countries, followed by France11 and Germany. Loosely organised, they usually put themselves under the spiritual guidance of a confessor, generally a Cistercian early on, and later a Dominican or Franciscan.12 Theirs was a new kind of conversio, led by their personal choice to follow the evangelical precepts but detached from traditional monastic regulations.13 This brought them both the admiration of their contemporaries but also distrust from many in the ecclesiastical establishment, so they oscillated between being considered saintly women and heretics, with often ill-defined distinctions between “good” and “bad” beguines. In fact, at the beginning they quickly gained advocates, like Jacques de Vitry, Lambert le Bègue, John of Nivelles, and Jacques Pantaleon, who promoted their extra-regular way of life.14 With friends in high places, this vita religiosa was, at first, recognised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy and even orally endorsed by Honorius III to Jacques de Vitry.15 Similarly, Gregory IX’s bull Gloria virginalem of May 30, 1233, although not recognising them as a religious order, indeed put the “continent virgins of Germany (Teutonia) who vow perpetual chastity to God” under the protection of the Holy See and authorised them to live in communities.16 As Ernest McDonnell points out, “although living among laymen, [they] were often considered by the contemporary mind superior in charity to those who professed the triple monastic vows.”17 Nevertheless, the goodwill towards these mulieres religiosae never got much further than that. Their champions did not draw them into an organised body under a rule, and thus they never won official recognition as a religious institution.18 As a result, Grundmann observes, “beguines constituted a strange transitional form between the ecclesiastical orders of the day, never belonging to the monastic community of

 11  12  13  14  15  16

 17  18

and Hildo van Engen, eds., Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014). For a fascinating and more recent study for the case of France, see Tanya Stabler Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 170ff; Grundmann, Religious Movements, 143; Simons, Cities of Ladies, 35ff. McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 59. Grundmann, Religious Movements, 140. Jacques de Vitry, Lettres de Jacques de Vitry (1160/1170–1240), Évêque de Saint-Jean d’Acre, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 74; Simons, Cities of Ladies, 48; Grundmann, Religious Movements, 140; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 157. Lucien Auvray, ed., Les Registres de Grégoire IX (Paris, 1896), vol. 1, no. 1361, col. 762. On June 4 that same year the beguines of Cambrai obtained the same bull; A. Potthast, ed., Regesta Pontificum Romanorum inde ab a. post Christum Natum 1198 ad a. 1304 (Berlin: Rudolf de Decker, 1873), vol. 1, no. 9281, 789. Simons, Cities of Ladies, 48; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 6, 157; Leff, Heresy, 19. McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 121. Grundmann, Religious Movements, 140.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation r­ eligiosi, since it was not an approved order.”19 Yet, he adds, they “belonged just as little to the lay world of saeculares, since beguines had left the saeculum, sworn chastity, and led a vita religiosa.”20 However, despite the beguines having found themselves in this religious no man’s land, the statutes for beguine communities demonstrate how their organisation and life, in fact, did not differ much from any other female religious house of the time. In this context, as McDonnell asserts, securing a habit “was contingent on the acceptance and continuous observance of such prescriptions.”21 As it was also the case with fully approved religious orders, beguines positioned themselves within what could be understood as the system that governed medieval religious dress, looking to shape their group identity by distinguishing themselves visually in order to indicate their chosen status. The fact that the biographer of Ida of Louvain did not let her clothing options pass unnoticed shows that those seeking to maintain the beguine tradition were very well aware of the meaningful subtleties of sartorial gestures. They understood how attire was an essential element for any group that wanted to purport itself as a religious community—or, at least, as a community wanting to live a religious way of life. Although their dress was not, of course, a proper religious habit, but rather a “distinctive dress,” the sources usually referred to them as habitus, showing that the garments worn by beguines were assumed by many of their contemporaries to be intended as a religious form of dress. Therefore, the use of these habits certainly did not go unnoticed. As a matter of fact, at times they played a role that could be either favourable or detrimental to the beguines’ own interests as communities, thus reflecting the very ambiguous status in which these mulieres religiosae found themselves. For the more conservative elements of both the Church and the wider society, the problem with beguines and other groups of mulieres religiosae was that, although lacking the essential elements of religious profession, they still acted and, especially, looked like true religious women, largely thanks to their habits. It should not be much of a surprise, then, that these habits were a prominent topic among the reasons given for their persecution, sometimes triggering the criticisms made by many of their detractors. And although the reproaches frequently applied to both male and female communities, beguines seemed to have been under greater scrutiny and to have received harsher censure.22 William of St. Amour, for example—the champion of the secular clergy in  19  20  21  22

Ibid. Ibid., italics in the original; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 157. McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 86. However, it must be noted that female communities in general, including the traditional ones, were usually under close examination for sartorial deviances, with visitors and those in their pastoral care paying extra attention to these kinds of trespasses. The diary of visitations of Bishop Eudes of Rouen, for instance, is full of examples of these faults; The Register of Eudes of Rouen, ed. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, trans. Sydney M. Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964). Likewise, as Eva Schlotheuber has shown, similar concerns about the lack of observance in nuns’ attire, as well as their use of secular clothes, were shared in the synod of Trier of 1237, and confirmed again in 1277; Eva Schlotheuber, “Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Late Medieval Nuns,” in Fashion and Clothing in Late Medieval Europe / Mode und Kleidung im Europa des Späten Mittelalters, ed. Rainer Christoph Schwinges and Regula Schorta

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Alejandra Concha Sahli their fight against the mendicants at the University of Paris in the mid-thirteenth century—certainly did not hold the beguines in high esteem. In his Responsiones, written to defend himself from the accusations made by the Dominicans,23 he addressed (or was made to address) the matter. According to him, some of the beguines said that they could not wear expensive clothes without great danger. However, he replied, there could be arrogance in cheap habits just as much as in costly clothes.24 A man or a woman, whether secular or religious, was not permitted to change the habit of their profession into the habit of another profession. For St. Amour, if a man or a woman took to wearing a coarser habit in order to be seen as different from others, and to be considered holier than others, they were guilty of the sin of hypocrisy.25 St. Amour, however, was not alone in his reproaches. The Council of Mainz of 1261 had also issued a prohibition according to which neither the “foolish women” (mulierculae) who had made a vow of continence and changed their secular habits nor others who had adhered to certain rules were to wander through the villages.26 Similarly, in 1299, the Provincial Council of Narbonne drew attention to beguines and their clothes, saying that sometimes, under the appearance of good, evil slipped into the Church. It was not without a good reason, the council said, that the Holy Fathers had forbidden the variety of orders and of habits assigned to religious not approved by the Apostolic See (referring to canon 16 of Lateran IV). The beguines, moreover, were, among other things, suggesting new ways of penitence, abstinence, and colours of clothes for people of both sexes, so the council instructed the bishops to lead inquiries regarding these practices.27 By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the luck of the beguines and beghards (broadly speaking, the male counterpart to beguines) had begun to turn for the worse. In many parts of Europe, especially in the territories of the Empire, they started to be

 23

 24  25  26  27

(Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 2010), 139–54, here 141. On Eudes Rigaud, see Adam J. Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). See also Susan M. Carroll-Clark, “Bad Habits: Clothing and Textile References in the Register of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 81–103, as well as Kristi Upson-Saia, Early Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (New York: Routledge, 2011). I would like to thank the reviewer of this article for pointing out these works to me. The critical edition of this text is Edmond Faral, ed., “Les ‘Responsiones’ de Guillaume de Saint-Amour,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 18 (1950–51): 337– 94. See also Michel-Marie Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la Polémique Universitaire Parisienne, 1250–1259 (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard, 1972), 283–91. Faral, “Responsiones,” no. 10, 343. Ibid., no. 12, 344; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 463; Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 18. Giovanni Domenico Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio (Venice, 1779; hereafter Mansi), 23:1089; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 95. Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, eds., Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum (Paris, 1717), 4:226– 27; Pierre Péano, “Les Béguins du Languedoc ou la Crise du T.O.F. dans la France Méridionale (XIII–XIVe Siècles),” in Atti del 2e Convegno di Studi Francescani Roma, 12–13–14 Ottobre 1976: I Frati Penitenti di San Francesco nella Società del Due e Trecento, ed. Mariano D’Alatri (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1977), 139–59, here 143–44.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation viewed with suspicion and to be deemed unorthodox. In the worst cases, they were considered downright heretical, especially when associated with the heresy of the Free Spirit.28 Perhaps unsurprisingly, their habits were repeatedly mentioned among the accusations made against them. As Jean-Claude Schmitt observes, through a complex game of associations of ideas, texts, and people, the habit of beguines and beghards became the quintessential clothing of heretics, and those wearing it were treated as such. It was their apparent desire to single themselves out that seemed to be particularly threatening, because it was not an individual but a collective initiative: Their habit seemed to express the threat of a body constituted for the sole purpose of disturbing the immutable order of the Church.29 Thus, in February 1307, the archbishop of Cologne, Henry II of Virnebourg, attacked both groups, and one of the charges was their disobedience of the Lateran IV’s canon against the formation of new orders with their own habit. He therefore threatened them with excommunication if they did not give up their habits and way of life within a month.30 As Gordon Leff points out, the archbishop’s accusations ignited a chain reaction, and in 1310, the synod of Trier condemned “‘false Beguines,’ who, dressed in the long tunics of their namesakes and despising work, formed conventicles and spread false doctrine among simple souls.”31 To make things worse, the resistance that some beguines started to generate in their immediate communities, along with their denounced deviation from orthodoxy in certain places, gained them the condemnation of Clement V, with his bull Cum de quibusdam, issued in 1311 at the Council of Vienne.32 The bull proved to be a tragic development for beguines and, as Elizabeth Makowski observes, it was used “to authorize cycles of indiscriminate persecution,” in

 28 Leff, Heresy, 315–19. Around the same time, they became also associated with the dissident

 29  30

 31  32

Franciscan faction of the Spirituals and the sect of the Fraticelli. See Raoul Manselli, Spirituali e Beghini in Provenza, Studi Storici, fasc. 31–34 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1959), and David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 109, 120. Schmitt, Mort, 110–11. Paul Fredericq, Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis Haereticae Pravitatis Neerlandicae: Verzameling van Stukken Betreffende de Pauselijke en Bisschoppelijke Inquisitie in de Nederlanden (Ghent: J. Vuylsteke, 1889), vol. 1, no. 161, 153; Leff, Heresy, 318; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 517. However McDonnell points out that the decree seemed to leave out “real beguines,” as it was directed against “Beggardos et Beggardas” under the name of the Apostolici (518). Fragment translated by Leff, Heresy, 318; the original text appears in Fredericq, Corpus Documentorum 1, no. 163, 155; Mansi, 25:261. The text of the bull appears in Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2nd. ed. (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1959), 2:1169. Elizabeth Makowski offers a full translation of the bull into English in “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”: Quasi-Religious Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 23–24; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 524. Jacqueline Tarrant has convincingly argued that the decree was not the blanket condemnation of beguines that, from its contemporaries to modern scholars, it has been thought to be; Jacqueline Tarrant, “The Clementine Decrees on the Beguines: Conciliar and Papal Versions,” Archivum Historiae Pontificae 12 (1974): 300–8; Makowski, Pernicious Sort, 26.

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Alejandra Concha Sahli which “‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ beguines, along with those quasi-religious women who resembled them, would be caught up,” and which lasted for over a century.33 Both the Council of Tarragona (1317) and the one of Mainz (1318) issued proscriptions against the beguines and banned their habit.34 Likewise, in August 1317, John of Dürbheim, bishop of Strasbourg, issued a decree calling the “bad” beghards and beguines (begging sisters or “Swestrones,” also nicknamed brod durch gott, “bread for God”) to give up, within three days, their way of life and the habits that, in their “perversity,” they had been wearing. They could neither wear garments that were open below the navel, nor small hoods, especially if attached to the tunic.35 Moreover, although its closing clause supposedly protected both the “good” beguines and the penitents of the third Franciscan order, the Strasbourg chronicler observed in his entry for 1318 that some ecclesiastical authorities in Germany, interpreting Clement V’s bull indiscriminately, and executing it unjustly, had forced devout and humble women to give up their coarse and poor habits, to wear undergarments (camisia), and to resume their use of lay and coloured clothes.36 Hence, in the face of the growing harassment experienced by both “good” and “bad” beguines, John XXII sought to clarify the terms of Clement V’s earlier condemnation with his bull Ratio recta of August 13, 1318. Although he explicitly did not grant official approval (nullatenus ex praemissis intendimus approbare), he stated that the Clementine document was not aimed at “good” beguines, and that those leading a perfectly orthodox life should not be persecuted.37 Still, John of Dürbheim issued a second decree, about eighteen months later, to repeat the censure on beguines, expressing that “as experience had taught us,” they brought “scandal and danger to the people.”38 In this document from January 18, 1319, beguines were instructed to effectively abandon their status within fifteen days. So that this renunciation would be openly visible, they had to cast away their clothes or habits, which, in consideration of said status, they had hitherto carried, under threat of excommunication.39 The close attention paid to beguines’ attire is again made evident in the decree issued by the same bishop within a month, on February 17, 1319, to repeat the ban, which again seemed to be particularly punitive for women. As a sign of their change of status, the beguines had to make the following alterations: The veil that, until then, they used to wear attached to their cloak, now had to be worn separated, as was the secular use (more secularium); they had to put their scapulars entirely aside;  33 Makowski, Pernicious Sort, 27.  34 Leff, Heresy, 331; for Tarragona: Mansi, 25:627–28; for Mainz: Mansi, 25:638.  35 Bihl, “De Tertio Ordine,” no. 14, 173; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 525–26; Robert E.  36

 37  38  39

Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 93. Leonardus Lemmens, ed., “Chronicon Provinciae Argentinensis O.F.M. circa an. 1310–27 a quodam Fratre Minore Basileae Conscriptum (1206–1325),” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 4 (1911): 671–87, here 683; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 529; Lerner, Heresy of the Free Spirit, 48. The text of the bull appears in Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2:1279–80. H. Haupt, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sekte vom freien Geiste und des Beghardentums,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 7 (1885): 503–76, no. 2, here 560–61. Ibid.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation neither their outer tunics nor their mantles could be made of grey (­pregrissio), of camel hair (kembelino) cloth, or of similar colours. They could wear other colours, as long as it was clearly the will of one single person and not for the purpose of dressing in one uniform colour to distinguish themselves.40 With these events, one aspect closely linked to the resistance generated towards beguines was made plain: that they were perceived to be seeking, as a group, the development of a collective identity through their clothes, which showed obvious signs of religious status, in a behaviour that became increasingly rejected by the more conservative elements of the Church. Still, and despite the voices that came to their defence, things did not stop there, for some fifty years later Lambert von Brune, bishop of Strasbourg, renewed the persecutions. In August 1374, he instructed that all beguines found at fault had to give up their habits within six days.41 This went directly against Gregory XI’s bull Ex injuncto nobis issued in April of that same year (addressed to the ecclesiastical authorities of the Empire, Brabant, and Flanders),42 which meant that the pope had to resend the bull on December 30, to the bishop of Strasbourg.43 This was seemingly not enough, however, as in December of 1377, the pope sent yet another bull to the German archbishops of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz, as well as to the bishops in other parts of Germany, Brabant, and Flanders, instructing them to stop the inquisitors who were improperly and unjustly persecuting those practising a life of poverty within orthodoxy because of their clothes. They were harming these honest poor faithful people, the letter said, when making them cut, transform, and change their garments. Therefore the pope instructed that these “good” beguines should not be disturbed because of their simple and honest clothing, and that those excommunicated or deprived from the sacraments should be rehabilitated.44 Even though, according to McDonnell, their “distinctive habit and profession of chastity, while setting the beguines apart from the world, were not sufficient to confer true religious status,”45 the use of special attire could still play in favour of the beguines. In fact, as Makowski has shown, it could help them obtain religious immunity, as a decision of the Roman Rota made in 1374 demonstrates. While Decisio CCCXXII had to do with right of patronage and the appointing of a benefice, some of its clauses are noteworthy in relation to beguines and their use of “distinctive clothes.” The decisio stated that even though beguines were seculars, they did not seem to be merely laypersons: they lived as religious and wore religious habits, and they were also allowed to form associations for religious reasons. Likewise, since beguines were able to bring their causes before an ecclesiastical judge, they did not appear to be mere seculars,  40 Ibid., 561–62; also in Bihl, “De tertio ordine,” 175–76; Leff, Heresy, 338; Schmitt, Mort, 107;

McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 533. Bihl, “De tertio ordine,” 183–84. The text of the bull in Fredericq, Corpus Documentorum 1, no. 220, 228–31; Leff, Heresy, 339–40. Leff, Heresy, 339–40. Camille Tihon, ed., Lettres de Grégoire XI (1371–1378): Textes et Analyses, vol. 3 (Brussels: Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1964), no. 3992, 500–1; Leff, Heresy, 347; Schmitt, Mort, 111.  45 McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 409.  41  42  43  44

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Alejandra Concha Sahli especially seeing that they wore habits. Thus anyone who harmed them was liable to receive a canonical sentence.46 THE CLOTHES OF POPULAR PIETY: RELIGIOUS HABITS AND THE LEGITIMATION OF PENITENTIAL MOVEMENTS

Around the middle of the thirteenth century, Cardinal Hostiensis wrote in his Summa Aurea that, in a broad sense, someone who lives a holy and religious life in his own house, although not professed, is called religious, not because such a person is bound by any determined rule, but because they lead a stricter and holier life than other secular people—who are entirely worldly and live laxly—and also a more honourable life than the one they used to live before, both in habit and in food.47 As mentioned above, the mulieres religiosae were not alone in their search for a way of life that could combine a life “in the world” and intense religious fervour. In fact, beguines should be understood as part of a much wider movement clearly in existence from the second half of the twelfth century. During the first decades of the thirteenth century, the movement started to expand, largely thanks to the impact of the mendicant orders and their call to perform penitence within lay society, especially with the example of St. Francis and his companions, who had started as a group of penitents themselves.48 The existence of conversi and lay penitents was not, however, a novelty in the history of the Church. Institutionalised expressions of both public and private penance can indeed be traced back to late Antiquity and the early and High Middle Ages.49 Yet,  46 Decisiones Rote Nove et Antique cum Additionibus Casibus Dubiis et Regulis Cancellarie

Apostolice, Diligentissime Emendate (Lyon: Etienne Gueynard, 1507), no. 332, fol. 141; also in Decisiones Antiquae et Novae Rotae Romanae, a Variis Auctoribus Collectae et Editae (Rome: Georg Herolt and Sixtus Riessinger, 1483), no. 332, fol. 88; Makowski, Pernicious Sort, 108–9; Elizabeth Makowski, “‘Mulieres Religiosae,’ Strictly Speaking: Some Fourteenth-Century Canonical Opinions,” Catholic Historical Review 85 (1999): 1–14, here 10–12.  47 Hostiensis, Summa Aurea (Lyon: Apud hæredes Iacobi Iuntæ, 1548), book 3, fol. 174(1)v, “De regularibus et transeuntibus ad religionem.” Also in Meersseman, Dossier, 308–9; see as well Makowski, Pernicious Sort, xxvii; Alison More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules, and Canonical Legitimacy,” Church History 83 (June 2014): 297–323, here 300; André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 113.  48 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 113, 119; Ingrid Peterson, “The Third Order of Francis,” in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael J. P. Robson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 193–207, here 199; Grundmann, Religious Movements, 31–58.  49 Raffaele Pazzelli, St. Francis and the Third Order (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989), 7–42; Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Penitenze nel Medioevo, Uomini e Modelli a Confronto (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1994), 98; Marie-François Berrouard, “La Pénitence Publique durant les Six Premiers Siècles: Histoire et Sociologie,” La Maison-Dieu 118 (1974): 92–130, here 102–7; Robert M. Stewart, “De Illis qui Faciunt Penitentiam,” in The Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order: Origins, Development, Interpretation (Rome: Istituto Storico Dei Cappuccini,

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation around the thirteenth century the physiognomy of the penitent started to change. In contrast to the early conversi, who belonged to a monastery, or to the public penitents, who had their expiatory penance imposed upon them or had voluntarily sought a life of individual asceticism,50 we see a new phenomenon emerging: These laypeople had now begun to gather together and to form communities, even if in a rather spontaneous and loose way. They formed “groups or fraternities which, without living in common, adopted the same propositum of penitential life”51 and which provided them with “mutual spiritual and material support.”52 The main novelty they presented lay precisely in that these penitents were no longer isolated individuals or families who took a humble habit as an external sign of their renunciation or penance but were instead part of larger associations. In entering the movement, they promised to give alms and to aid the poor, to give up worldly pleasures and luxuries, to fast, and to recite the divine office. However, perhaps the most central element to mark this devotional change was the adoption of the penitential habit.53 In a certain way, as Augustine Thompson observes, in this unstructured way of life, the habit indeed “made the penitent.”54 This penitential habit was, in turn, re-signified with this sense of community: It not only announced the desire for penance sought by its users but also established a new identity, both individually and collectively, within their social surroundings. Consequently, their penitential attire played a major part in helping them gain a place as a recognised ordo within the Church, making them distinguishable from their contemporaries and also distinguishing them in their new status. Since the movement initially appeared with local variants rather than as a unified phenomenon, it is difficult to provide a cohesive picture of its development. This is especially true considering that their denominations and categorisations also varied significantly, whether they were called an ordo, a fraternitas, or a confraternitas, penitents, disciplinati, continentes, conversi, bizzocchi, mantellatae, pinzochere, vestitiae, or even beguines in certain cases. However, what emerges as the common denominator was their collective scope, which originated from the shared desire of attaining eternal salvation whilst living in domibus propriis: not only in their own homes, but also in the

 50  51  52

 53

 54

1991), 91–105; Rob Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 600–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). On some legal aspects, see Cassiano Carpaneto, “Lo Stato dei Penitenti nel ‘Corpus Iuris Canonicis,’” in D’Alatri, I Frati Penitenti, 9–19. For confraternities, see Gérard Gilles Meersseman, Ordo Fraternitatis: Confraternite e Pietà dei Laici nel Medioevo (Rome: Herder, 1977), vol. 1, and Gennaro Maria Monti, Le Confraternite Medievali dell’Alta e Media Italia (Venice: La Nuova Italia, 1927), vol. 1. Meersseman, Ordo, 1:267–68. Pazzelli, St. Francis, 63. Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 70. For a general survey of the renewal of the penitential movement and its various manifestations in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Stewart, “De Illis,” 107–23. Alfonso Pompei, “Il Movimento Penitenziale nei Secoli XII–XIII,” in L’Ordine della Penitenza di San Francesco d’Assisi nel Secolo XIII: Atti del Convegno di Studi Francescani, Assisi, 3–4–5 Luglio 1972, ed. Ottaviano Schmucki (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1973), 9–40, here 35. Thompson, Cities of God, 82.

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Alejandra Concha Sahli secular world.55 As they did not take vows and make a traditional religious profession, they did not receive canonical recognition. Therefore, during the early stages, understandably, they retained their status as laypeople for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in the ill-defined status of quasi-religious persons that also described the beguine movement. Nevertheless, these new penitents sought to take some of the elements that distinguished religious from laypeople, starting with their external appearance.56 Although it is true that, as Thompson argues, the habit taken by the penitents “represented no separation from the daily work of earning a living, but rather the self-discipline by which individuals sought to overcome sins and vices,”57 penitents nevertheless performed what André Vauchez calls a professio in signis: “All it took to be recognized as a penitent was to wear a certain habit, for the exterior would bear witness to the interior.”58 Indeed, this had been the intention behind St. Francis’s dramatic initial change of clothing before the bishop of Assisi.59 The movement was also an intrinsically urban phenomenon: It was in the fabric of the cities that the association through fraternities was made possible, contrasting with the old practice of public—but individual—penance known until then in the Church.60 From then on, the movement grew at a fast pace, thanks especially to the encouragement of Franciscans and Dominicans for the formation of these lay communities, though the groups maintained their institutional autonomy at least until the end of the thirteenth century. This endorsement also helped the communities to secure protection and privileges from the ecclesiastical hierarchy.61 The importance of the penitential habit as the external sign of internal conversion appears in early official documents involving penitents. In the first known papal document acknowledging the existence of the movement—a bull from Honorius III  55 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 114. As Meersseman (Dossier, 92) explains, the expression

 56  57  58  59

 60

 61

in domibus propriis existentium referred to those clerics, conversi, and penitents who lived in their own houses, in contrast to those living in a monastery and those who did not have a fixed residence (vagantes). More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 299. Thompson, Cities of God, 84. Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 113. As it appears in both the Legenda Maior of St. Bonaventure and in the Vita Prima written by Thomas of Celano; see Bonaventura, “Legenda S. Francisci,” in Opera Omnia, vol. 8 (Ad Claras Aquas [Quaracchi], Florence: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1898), 504–64; particularly 508–9; and Thomas de Celano, Vita Prima S. Francisci Assisiensis et Eiusdem Legenda ad Usum Chori (Ad Claras Aquas [Quaracchi], Florence: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1926), vita I, particularly 18. On Francis’s action of stripping before the bishop of Assisi, see Damien Boquet, “Écrire et Représenter la Dénudation de François d’Assise au XIIIe Siècle,” Rives Nord-Méditerranéennes 30 (2008): 39–63. The juridical meaning of Francis’s change of clothes is briefly discussed by Meersseman, Ordo, 1:355–57. Marco Bartoli, “Gregorio IX e il Movimento Penitenziale,” in La “Supra Montem” di Nicolo’ IV (1289): Genesi e Diffusione di una Regola: Atti del 5° Convegno di Studi Francescani, Ascoli Piceno, 26–27 Ottobre 1987, ed. Raffaele Pazzelli and Lino Temperini (Rome: Analecta TOR, 1988), 47–60, here 52–53. On the different types of public penance in French cities during the thirteenth century, see Mary C. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 92–129, 248–87. Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 122; More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 298.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation to the bishop of Rimini dated to December 18, 1221—the pope asked the latter to intervene in favour of the penitents before the civil authorities of the city of Faenza and of other “certain cities.” He urged the bishop to prevent the cities’ imposition of military service on those who, inspired by the Lord, had converted themselves to a penitential life, “exhibiting in their habits the sign of humility and penitence.”62 In 1251, Innocent IV granted exemption from interdict to the “Virgins and Continents” of Milan, who lived under a religious life and habit (sub vita et habitu religioso).63 Likewise, the Italian brothers and sisters of Penance of St. Dominic, “who were serving the Lord under a religious habit,” were also exempted from interdict by Honorius IV on January 28, 1286.64 A year later, the apostolic legate in Germany, Jean Buccamazzi, granted a similar exemption to “the persons of the Penance of St. Dominic who had changed their secular habit” (i.e., entered the penitential status) in Germany to be admitted to the divine offices during the time of interdict.65 The relevance of the habit is also underscored in the first major papal approval of the beginnings of the penitential order: the Memoriale propositi fratrum et sorores de Poenitentia in domibus propriis existentium, issued by Honorius III in 1221,66 probably composed around 1215, and attributed to Cardinal Hugolino, the future Gregory IX, by most authors.67 The kind of clothes that the penitents were advised and allowed to wear received detailed attention, and, in fact, they head the prescriptions given in the document, which opens with the chapter De vestibus. Here the type, colour, and price of the cloth used for their habits was precisely delineated—“undyed humble cloth, that does not exceed the price of six soldi of Ravenna per arm”—and the forbidden garments, materials, and accessories were clearly indicated as well, such as furs, silk, and coloured laces.68 However, it is also important to emphasise that even though official documents addressing penitents during the thirteenth century show a growing tendency towards  62 Meersseman, Dossier, 41; Meersseman, Ordo, 1:363; Bartoli, “Gregorio IX,” 52; Giovanni  63  64  65  66

 67  68

Odoardi, “L’Ordine della Penitenza di San Francesco nei Documenti Pontifici del Secolo XIII,” in Schmucki, L’Ordine della Penitenza, 79–115, here 111. Meersseman, Dossier, no. 27, 60. Ibid., no. 45, 70. Ibid., no. 46, 71. Even though this is the year stated in its title, the four earliest extant copies only date back to 1228; see Pazzelli, St. Francis, 133–37. As Meersseman and Temperini explain, memoriale means “chart” or “document,” and propositi relates to “a public promise of consecration,” “a programme of life”; therefore, the Memoriale was not a religious rule, as Alison More also asserts. Meersseman, Dossier, 92; Lino Temperini, Carisma e Legislazione alle Origini del Terzo Ordine di S. Francesco (Rome: Editrice Franciscanum, 1996), 94; Alison More, “Canonical Change and the Orders of ‘Franciscan’ Tertiaries,” in Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, ca. 1420–1620: Discourses and Strategies of Observance and Pastoral Engagement, ed. Bert Roest and Johanneke Uphoff (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 69–85, here 70. However, scholars have never definitely established its authorship. See Stewart, “De Illis,” 183– 84; Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 121; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 130–33. On the role of Gregory IX in the development of the penitential movement, see Bartoli, “Gregorio IX,” 47–60. Meersseman, Dossier, 93–95. Lino Temperini offers a Italian translation of the text in Carisma e Legislazione, 94–97; Stewart offers an alternative translation in “De Illis,” 188–89.

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Alejandra Concha Sahli normative guidance, they remained mostly relevant only to local communities, without yet indicating the existence of a cohesive ordo as such.69 In this context, the keen attention paid to dress in the Memoriale propositi makes particular sense at a time when giving the appearance of orthodoxy could sometimes literally mean the difference between life and death. The careful observation of the Church’s regulations regarding religious clothing became an important element in gaining status as an ordo. In a period that grew increasingly convulsed with heresy, persecution, and the fear of being considered heterodox, the devil was in the details. Making the orthodoxy of lay piety as openly visible as possible could have a crucial role, especially for a group that was always under scrutiny. It was only by the end of the thirteenth century, as Vauchez explains, that third orders started to obtain a fuller canonical and juridical recognition from the ecclesiastical authorities. This not only answered the wishes of the pious penitents to be acknowledged in their status, but also granted the Church hierarchy the ability to exercise greater control over the otherwise loosely defined groups.70 Nicholas IV’s bull Supra montem, issued on August 18, 1289,71 came to change this undefined situation to some extent, as it represented a universal and official rule for penitents approved by the Holy See,72 this time with St. Francis indicated as founder of the movement. Although strictly speaking the rule did not institute the movement as a recognised canonical order, it provided the penitents, as Alison More observes, “some claims to legitimacy, a saintly founder, and a nominal connection with the Franciscan order.”73 The Supra montem depends largely on the Memoriale propositi and does not introduce substantial changes regarding the way the penitents should dress.74 The main sartorial changes introduced by the Supra montem, in contrast to the Memoriale propositi, relate to the specification of the colour and to the price of cloth, which now ceases to establish a fixed price and indicates only that the fabric should be cheap in a broad sense, probably aiming to a more universal diffusion. Antonio García y García identifies the more general call for simplicity present in the rule with the prescriptions

 69 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 302–3.  70 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 122.  71 In BF 4, no. 150, 94–97. A bilingual edition in Latin and Italian, in Temperini, Carisma e

Legislazione, 111–55; see also Mariano D’Alatri, “Genesi della Regola di Niccolò IV: Aspetti Storici,” in Pazzelli and Temperini, Supra Montem, 93–107. For a comparison between the Memoriale propositi and the Supra montem, see Stewart, “De Illis,” 373–88.  72 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 302–3. However, Edith Pásztor points out that the bull was written and registered upon request rather than initiated by the papacy itself, as it does not appear registered ex officio in Nicholas IV’s register of curial letters; Edith Pásztor, “La ‘Supra Montem’ e la Cancelleria Pontificia,” in Pazzelli and Temperini, Supra Montem, 65–92, here 66–67. Still, as Stewart (“De Illis,” 202) remarks, the 1289 bull became universally recognised and, in fact, used as the Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order until 1883.  73 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 302–3.  74 Meersseman, Dossier, 130–1, 128–38. Also contained in BF 4, no. 50, 94–95; Temperini offers a Latin transcription and an Italian translation in Carisma e Legislazione, 135–6; see also Stewart’s own translation in “De Illis,” 376–77.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation stipulated in canon 16 of Lateran IV.75 Servus Gieben puts the directions of the Supra montem in line with those given in the Exposition of the Four Masters76—the clarification of the Franciscan Rule made in 1241–42 by Alexander of Hales, Jean de la Rochelle, Robert de la Bassée, and Eudes Rigaud.77 The Exposition stated that the vilitas of the clothes prescribed by Francis related to its value (pretium) and appearance (colore),78 which would translate into the humili panno prescribed in Nicholas IV’s rule.79 This correlation probably also sought to endorse symbolically the claim of St. Francis as founder of the movement that Nicholas IV—a Franciscan himself, ex minister general of the order as Jerome d’Ascoli—approved to be inserted in the bull, which thus made this statement official for the first time. However, the Franciscans were not the only ones offering guidelines to the movement. The Dominicans had already provided a rule for their penitents a few years before the Supra montem, as both orders started to look to mark affiliations through dress. The set of norms, attributed to the Dominican minister general, Munio of Zamora, and probably written in 1285,80 also prescribed in some detail the clothes to be worn by the Dominican penitents, albeit with fewer minutiae than the Memoriale propositi and the Supra montem. Its second chapter, De habitu fratrum et sororum, indicated that the brothers and sisters of the fraternity had to wear garments of white and black cloth—the Dominican colours—which should not appear to be excessively expensive either in colour or price, as befit the modesty of the servants of Christ. The cloak was to be black, as was the hood of the brothers, whereas the sisters were to wear veils of white linen or hemp. The tunic, however, had to be white, the sleeves of which had to be closed and extend up to the fist. They had to have leather belts (which the sisters were to fasten under the tunic), and as for their purses, shoes, and other accessories, they were required to cut short any worldly vanity.81 These indications, as well as the ones contained in the Supra montem and the Memoriale propositi, reveal a degree of specificity not shared with any other religious  75 Antonio García y García, “La Regla de Nicolao IV: Aspectos Jurídicos,” in Pazzelli and

Temperini, Supra Montem, 109–31, here 120–21.

 76 Servus Gieben, “L’Iconografia dei Penitenti e Niccolò IV,” in Pazzelli and Temperini, Supra

Montem, 289–304, here 293–94.

 77 Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden:  78  79  80

 81

Brill, 2004), 105; Rosalind B. Brooke, The Image of St. Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 77–78. Livarius Oliger, ed., Expositio Quatuor Magistrorum Super Regulam Fratrum Minorum (1241– 1242) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950), 136. Gieben, “L’Iconografia,” 293–94. Although only approved officially by Innocent VII in 1405 with the bull Sedis apostolicae (June 26). See Meersseman, Dossier, 143. Munio of Zamora, however, did not have a happy career later on. Elected as general of the order in 1285, he was deposed by Pope Boniface VII in 1292 after a couple of decades tainted with controversy for his, apparently, not very saintly relationships with the nuns of a local convent in Zamora, Spain. See Peter Linehan, The Ladies of Zamora (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); Michael A. Vargas, Taming a Brood of Vipers: Conflict and Change in Fourteenth-Century Dominican Convents (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 292–95. Meersseman, Dossier, 144–45.

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Alejandra Concha Sahli rule. From the Benedictine Rule onwards, the prescriptions covering the matter of clothing were fairly general, putting most of the emphasis on the humbleness of the attire and usually just itemising the garments and maybe specifying colour and material. Perhaps to the eyes of the ecclesiastical hierarchy the fact that penitents were living in the world made them more vulnerable to “sartorial trespasses,” thus requiring more detail in their normative directives—especially for women, it seems —but also more flexibility, hence the attention to local usage. As the status of penitents became progressively more defined and started moving towards a certain clericalisation—which could be seen, for example, in the privileges they received or in the increased professionalisation of their participation of the movement82—they also sought to attain some special rights over their habits. This started to be made explicit, for instance, in certain regulations concerning penitents. Such is the case of the rule given in 1284 by bishop Guidaloste to the Vestitae of St. Francis of Prato in which, besides prescribing in detail the garments they should don,83 he threatens to excommunicate any woman who, not being part of the congregation, should dare to use the order’s habit, lest a dishonourable woman damage its reputation.84 Likewise, if any of the sisters were being disobedient or rebellious, leading a dishonourable life, or causing scandal to their neighbours, they should have their habits and status removed and be expelled from their association.85 The prohibition of illegitimately wearing penitential attire was also present in the threat of excommunication given in July 1286 by Giacomo Cavalcanti, bishop of Città di Castello, to anyone who dared to take the seal and habit of the Order of the Penitence without the licence of its minister.86 The same zeal for the exclusivity of the habit appeared as well in the constitutions of the provincial chapter of the penitents of Bologna in November 1289, which established that no one should wear the habit of the brothers or sisters of the Penitence unless they had previously made their profession according to the rule of Nicholas IV.87 The injunction was repeated in the subsequent publication of the acts and statutes of the general chapter of the penitents of Bologna that same year with the addition that in no way should the brothers go beyond their district or move more than a stone’s throw away from their house without wearing their

 82 For instance, in the restatement of the ancient restriction for penitents to “return to the

 83  84  85  86  87

world” after entering the fraternity (see for example, Meersseman, Dossier, 109, 141, 147, 257; Thompson, Cities of God, 84), or the ceremony of blessing of the habit and vestition that started to accompany the entrance of the novices (for example, Meersseman, Dossier, 145–46, 159; Meersseman, Ordo, 2:643; Temperini, Carisma e Legislazione, 108–9). Even if one agrees with Thompson’s assertion that this ceremony of the blessing of the habit had no resemblance to the monastic vestition (Cities of God, 84), I believe that the development of a more solemn ritual is still very telling about the existent desire to professionalise the elements that marked the penitential life. Meersseman, Dossier, 139. Ibid., 140. Ibid. Ibid., no. 19, 203–4; Thompson, Cities of God, 84. Meersseman, Dossier, 168–69.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation cloaks.88 Similarly, statutes given to the penitents of Tuscany in 1298 forbade a­ nyone who did not belong to the fraternity, or who had been expelled from it, to use its garments and signs.89 Analogous instructions were given to the grey sisters (identified as Franciscan Third Order) of the hospital of St. John of Ghent in 1397, who were to be deprived of their mantle and scapular for an entire year if they punched someone, stole something, or committed a “carnal crime” with a man.90 As was the case for canonical religious orders, for the penitential movement habits were a mirror of their users’ virtue and piety—both internal and external. Thus, they were not only garments for the exclusive use of their legitimate owners, but they also had to be earned and respected in the solemnity of the promise they symbolised, as they were the sign of this particular kind of profession. Likewise, the development of a collective identity linked to the use of religious-like dress became more evident as the penitential movement increased in popularity: Just as religious orders did, fraternities gained rights of exclusivity over their habits and started to pay disciplinary attention to whether they were being used legitimately. Consequently, the groups sought to maintain these identities not only to establish distinguishing attributes among different penitential associations, but sometimes also to assert their secular autonomy from religious authorities. In this context, as the importance of the habit in the formation of distinctive identities for the penitential groups increased, it seemed almost inevitable for them to encounter controversies relating to their habits. This was, indeed, the case of the “black” and “grey” penitents of Florence during the last decades of the thirteenth century. The penitents had been established in the city since around the end of the decade of the 1220s, probably under the influence of the first mendicants who settled in the city.91 Although they were especially close to the Dominicans during the first stages—helping them to administer their possessions and donations92—by the mid-thirteenth century they appeared to have distanced themselves, in a process apparently sought by both sides, and had gained an autonomy which was zealously defended from then on.93 While the tensions between grey and black penitents appeared only towards the end of the century, it is possible to assume that a differentiation among the penitents of the  88 Hieronymus Golubovich, ed., “Acta et Statuta Generalis Capituli Tertii Ordinis Poenitentium  89  90  91  92  93

D. Francisci Bononiae Celebrati an. 1289,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 2 (1909): 63– 71, here 69. Meersseman, Dossier, 157–58. This instruction was probably linked to the long-standing conflict between two factions of penitents in Florence, discussed below, who wore habits of different colours. Hieronymus Goyens, ed., “Monumenta Historica inde ab Anno 1397 circa Vetus Hospitale Sancti Iohannis Gandavi III Ordinis S. Francisci,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 7 (1914): 511–26, here 517. Anna Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza nella Società Fiorentina del Due-Trecento,” in D’Alatri, I Frati Penitenti, 191–220, here 191; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 149. Anna Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi per la Storia dei Penitenti a Firenze nel Secolo XIII,” in Schmucki, L’Ordine della Penitenza, 279–301, here 285–90, and Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 191–94. Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 293–94.

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Alejandra Concha Sahli city went back at least a couple of decades: In 1275, the Florentine citizen Cittadino, son of Bonasere de Passignano, made his testament, specifying that he was a married brother of the Penitence, habitus nigri,94 a qualification that was absent in previous documents involving the group.95 However, as Anna Benvenuti Papi points out, the fact that it appears as a completely normal aspect of the document suggests that it was not an entirely new development.96 Whatever factions were involved here, or whichever reasons may have influenced this appeal for distinction,97 it seems that the “black” penitents rapidly developed a strong sense of individuality, distinguishing themselves from the group of “grey” penitents that now appeared in the sources—seemingly associated with the Franciscans.98 This zeal for autonomy and differentiation was made evident when, in 1284, the Franciscan Caro of Arezzo, guardian of the Friars Minor of Florence and allegedly the appointed apostolic visitor for the penitents of Tuscany, tried to impose a unique grey habit on all the penitents of the city.99 A conflict exploded when a black penitent, Mainettino di Cambio, refused to make such a change unless the Franciscan showed the papal document that conceded him the faculty to visit and reform the Florentine brothers of the Penitence. Friar Caro not only did not produce the letter, but also excommunicated Mainettino, who in turn appealed to Pope Martin IV. The appeal was accepted and the pope requested an inquiry to be made by two prelates from Lucca.100 The results of the inquiry, as well as the outcome of the confrontation, are unfortunately unknown, but the fact that the matter got the attention of the Holy See is quite telling of the status that penitents had gained within Christian society and the place that the habit held for them. Moreover, despite papal involvement, the conflict was far from over: After the promulgation of the Supra montem—with its imposition of greyish habits—the black penitents continued to wear their now distinctive garments. As a matter of fact, the black penitents seemed to have been backed up in their refusal to change their clothes by the Florentine bishop, Andrea de’ Mozzi, apparently a supporter of the faction, who, in September 1291, received a letter of reprimand from Nicholas IV for opposing the union of grey and black penitents.101 Indeed, Bishop de’  94 Meersseman, Dossier, 196–98; Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 293; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati

della Penitenza,” 199 n. 28, 201.

 95 See the chapter “Cartulaire” in Meersseman, Dossier, 179–85.  96 Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 207–8 n. 55.  97 Benvenuti (“Fonti e Problemi,” 294) states, in discrepancy with Meersseman, that the choice

 98  99 100 101

of the black colour may have corresponded to the ties of the confraternity with the secular clergy of the city—also shown in that they had a secular visitor, Bindo Montanini—rather than to their dependency on the Friars Preacher, a fact that would make, in turn, more evident the confraternity’s autonomy. Benvenuti (ibid., 295) suggests the possible influence of the Spiritual Franciscans, and their accent on absolute poverty, in the adoption of a grey habit by a party of Florentine penitents. Meersseman, Dossier, 241; Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 295. Meersseman, Dossier, 69–70; Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 296; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 209; Temperini, Carisma e Legislazione, 114–15; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 150. Meersseman, Dossier, 77–79. Also Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 209–10.

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Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation Mozzi, probably in an attempt to back the claim for independence made by the black penitents, became “indignant” with the obedient grey penitents and, withdrawing his protection, seized the chest containing the rule, as well as their privileges, instruments, and books, among other things. Furthermore, he started calling all those who were following the new rule of Nicholas IV apostates—a telling aspect of the role that habits started to have in the religious observance of penitents and in their changing canonical status.102 The pope warned the bishop that those brothers who had accepted the rule and habit given by him (probably referring to the Supra montem) had by no means seen their status changed and should not be deprived of their rights and privileges because of this.103 We do not know how this controversy concluded, but the fact that de’ Mozzi was transferred to Vicenza by Boniface VIII in September 1295, and immediately replaced by Francesco Monaldeschi, suggests that the former failed to put an end to it.104 The new bishop sought to unify both groups who, “with so much discord and scandal,” were bringing no small danger to the souls of other Florentines in their disunion of both their vows and will, as well as of their habits, showing also a pernicious example to other religious people.105 The process, nevertheless, proved to be no easy task. The bishop tried to impose upon the union a statute from November 4, 1296, which prescribed one rule and one habit, which should not differ notably in colour and for which the material would be assigned, consisting of a humble cloth without colour, between black and white, that the brothers would be responsible for acquiring.106 However, the bishop was unable to reach an agreement with the recalcitrant penitents, and the union was finally only achieved by the arbitration of the papal legate, Matthew d’Aquasparta, who in April 1298 imposed the observance of Nicholas IV’s rule onto all the brothers and sisters of the Penitence in Tuscany.107 D’Aquasparta— probably having in mind the obstinate black penitents still reluctant to change their clothes—threatened to excommunicate all those who, having being expelled because of their disobedience and incorrigibility, dared to wear the habit and signs of the fraternity.108 Nevertheless, it seems that long traditions die hard, for the statute of the podestà of Florence for the year 1325 protected the exclusivity of the habit of the penitents (pinçocherorum), which was defined as a cloak, black up to the border of the hood (clamidem nigram ad becchettum), showing that the stubborn Florentines were

102 On the topic of apostasy and the abandonment of religious habits, see F. Donald Logan, 103 104 105 106 107 108

Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c.1240–1540 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25ff. Meersseman, Dossier, 78; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 209–10. Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 298; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70. Meersseman, Dossier, 242. Ibid., 242–45, no. 2, no. 10, and no. 16. Meersseman, Dossier, 262–64; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 211; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70. Meersseman, Dossier, 157–58.

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Alejandra Concha Sahli not going to give up the ultimate symbol of their autonomy so readily.109 After all, as with the rest of the extra-religious movement, their very identity as a community was fundamentally anchored in the use and zealous defence of their habits. The way in which penitential groups and beguines displayed the nature and scope of their communities was indeed through the adoption of their own “habits,” with which they could define their collective “brand.” Thus, the fulfilment of this “habit envy” could grant a certain air of holiness, ecclesiastical privileges, and a hope for eternal salvation, but it could also bring accusations of heresy, excommunication, and even, in the worst-case scenario, death at the stake. In both cases, however, as extra-religious groups made their way into the system that governed religious clothes with these habits, they brought about an enduring change in not only lay but also clerical attitudes towards popular piety. The legitimised use of clothes that resembled religious dress by extra-religious groups was the first and foremost vehicle to announce these new ways of understanding and performing lay devotional practices.

109 Romolo Caggese, ed., Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, vol. 2, Statuto del Podestà dell’Anno

1325 (Florence, 1921), 371; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 203 n. 42, 208.

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The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art Joanne W. Anderson

In a late-fourteenth-century depiction of the Annunciation, painted around the apex of a triumphal arch, we see the Virgin Mary and Angel Gabriel kneel opposite one another with a vase of lilies placed in between (fig. 7.1). Their diaphanous robes are adorned with geometric patterns on the hems and necklines, down the seam from the elbow to the wrists, and on the cuffs themselves, with an additional rectangular panel attached to Gabriel’s sleeve. These trims or borders might easily refer to the practice of stamping gold or silver onto cloth or the stitching of ribbons woven with gold onto garments that visually conferred dignity and status upon the displayed body.1 In this case, that body was the receptacle for Christ, the woman who would become the vehicle for the salvation of humanity. The Virgin kneels at a simple domestic prie-dieu that displays an open book. Mary had been reading up until the point of angelic interruption. Two text boxes are precisely ruled in black across the double spread of the book, and they each contain lines of large, loosely described letters. In the little cupboard of the prie-dieu, there is another small book of prayer owned by the Virgin, reinforcing the message about containment and incarnation, about divinity in the making, as well as private devotion. This is made all the more clear in the vignette set to the far left of this biblical episode. Behind the Virgin there is a plain chest, a wooden chair set with a blue and red checked fabric seat, and an upright weaving loom. They are items of domestic furniture that illustrate the Virgin’s devotional life and activities, but they also are This article is the product of two separate presentations on related themes: one at the Birkbeck Medieval Seminar, Medieval Textiles: Meaning and Materiality (November 2016), organised by Laura Jacobus, and another at Pregare in Casa: Oggetti e Documenti della Pratica Religiosa tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, an international conference convened by the University of Padua in association with the Cambridge Research project, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home, 1400–1600 (June 2016), organised by Cristina Guarnieri and Zuleika Murat. I am grateful to all the organisers for their support in developing this material.  1 See Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 43.

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Fig. 7.1 (top):  Annunciation, Sankt Magdalena, Rentsch. Fig. 7.2 (below):  Detail of loom at left side of fig. 7.1. Photos: Joanne W. Anderson.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art identifiable with the furnishing of a contemporary home of a well-to-do woman. The compositional layout of the scene thus makes clear that before taking to her knees in prayer, the Virgin had been seated on the chair working at the loom; and it is here that matter becomes material. The loom is strung with vertical threads from the beam in colours of red and silver (fig. 7.2). A fabric is visible from the bottom to the midway point, where the threads have been pushed down, compacted, by the application of the horizontal shuttle that weaves between the threads creating the warp-and-weft effect of a decorative textile. The fabric ground is silver (conveyed by white paint) and carries a pattern of repeated lozenges, which are outlined in red. Looking more closely, there is also a repeated pattern within those lozenges: a small rampant lion woven in red. In this internal picture, then, the Virgin appears to be weaving a heraldic motif on her loom, begging the questions of whose, to what end, and most importantly, why this unusual mode of depiction? The heraldic textile on the Virgin’s loom is the subject of this article, both in its own specific circumstances of making and meaning and what it contributes to our understanding of how identity could be expressed through the depiction of such textiles in late medieval art. The article focuses on the Alpine town of Bozen in South Tyrol and more specifically the artistic commissions of two families, noble and burgher in status. The first part introduces the family responsible for the Annunciation painting with its upright loom, and how that identification relates to devotional artworks in a chapel in the nearby Dominican church produced some fifty years earlier. Part two looks to the daughter who united the two families and whose testament written in 1387 provides insight into her family identity and devotional practices. The generational use of fabric across the two ecclesiastical spaces as a means of expressing identity and gaining social mobility will be connected back to the painted loom, the worked threads of which will be presented as a metaphor for both things and life in the making. WHOSE THREAD IS IT ANYWAY?

The Annunciation scene described above belongs to the church of Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch, a hamlet on the outskirts of Bolzano/Bozen in Alto Adige/South Tyrol.2 It is attributed to the Second Master of Sankt Johann im Dorf and his workshop. The master was a local painter whose style can be characterised as second-generation Venetian, following the work of the famous Paduan painters Guariento d’Arpo and Giusto de’ Menabuoi, whose styles and visual strategies proved influential during the fourteenth century.3 This northern Italian connection is reinforced in terms of the architectural  2 Hereafter I will use German when referring to people and places in Bozen, given that it was

principally German-speaking up until the twentieth century.

 3 This followed the first wave of Italian influence led by the work of Giotto. See Zuleika Murat,

Guariento: Pittore di Corte, Maestro del Naturale (Cinisello Balsamo, Italy: Silvana Editoriale, 2016); Anna Maria Spiazzi, ed., Attorno a Giusto de’ Menabuoi: Aggiornamenti e Studi sulla

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Joanne W. Anderson structure and painted schemes of the entire church. The barrel vault and the open wall surface decorated by narrative cycles, including a Last Judgment on the west wall, are redolent of the Arena Chapel in Padua, painted by Giotto in 1303–5, which enjoyed immediate fame and influence beyond its local area.4 How that influence was spread is significant, but before turning to that aspect and its relevance to the interpretation of the loom and its heraldic fabric, the circumstances of patronage require attention.5 The commissioner of the paintings in the little church in Rentsch has been a moot point in scholarship. There was simply no surviving evidence of patronage, pictorial or documentary, despite the rich tradition of record keeping in Bozen since the medieval period and the good survival rate of other signifiers of identity, namely heraldic shields.6 But in fact, an answer is hidden in plain sight. The Virgin’s loom occupies the right side proper (dexter) of the triumphal arch, a common locus for the siting of heraldry belonging to the financing family as a mark of ius patronatus.7 In the case of Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch, however, there are questions

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Pittura a Padova nel Trecento (Treviso, Italy: Canova, 1994); and Bradley Joseph Delaney, “Giusto de’ Menabuoi: Iconography and Style” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1972). For the diffusion and encounter of northern and Italian styles in this locality, see the exemplary essays by Andrea de Marchi, “Il Momento Sperimentale: La Prima Diffusione del Giottismo”; Tiziana Franco, “Tra Padova, Verona e le Alpi: Sviluppi della Pittura nel Secondo Trecento”; and Andreas Besold, “Il Gotico Internazionale: Influssi Nordici,” all in Trecento: Pittori Gotici a Bolzano, exhibition catalog, ed. Andrea de Marchi, Tiziana Franco, and Silvia Spada Pintarelli (Trento, Italy: TEMI, 2002), 47–75, 149–65, and 195–201. See also various essays in Il Gotico nelle Alpi 1350–1450, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo and Francesca de Gramatica (Trento, Italy: Castello del Buonconsiglio, 2002). The literature is vast on the Arena Chapel. Two recent monographs with ample bibliography are Laura Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel: Art, Architecture, and Experience (London: Harvey Miller, 2008), and Anne Derbes, The Usurer’s Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the Arena Chapel in Padua (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). Helmut Stampfer, St. Magdalena in Prazöll bei Bozen (Bolzano, Italy: Chiesa di Santa Maddalena, 1988). A definitive study on the reception of the Arena Chapel is promised by Laura Jacobus, The Afterlife of the Arena Chapel, 1305–1600 (Brepols–Harvey Miller, in preparation). On the cross-media reception of the Arena Chapel, see Almut Stolte, “Der Maestro di Gherarduccio Kopiert Giotto: Zur Rezeption der Arena-Fresken in der Oberitalienischen Buchmalerei zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 40 (1996/97): 2–41. Joanne W. Anderson, “St. Magdalena in Rentsch bei Bozen: Ein Neuer Vorschlag zur Auftraggeberschaft im 14. Jahrhundert,” Der Schlern 88 (2014): 40–44. For Bozen’s recordkeeping history, see Hannes Obermair, “‘Bastard Urbanism’? Past Forms of Cities in the Alpine Area of Tyrol-Trentino,” Concilium Medii Aevi 10 (2007): 53–76, esp. 63, and more recently, “The Use of Records in Medieval Towns: The Case of Bolzano, South Tyrol,” in Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns, Medieval Urban Literacy 1, ed. Marco Mostert and Anna Adamska (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014), 49–68. The sinister side (proper left) would normally be reserved for female family arms. There is no suggestion of heraldry behind archangel Gabriel even with the substantial losses of painted plaster. Inversions of standard visual formulae are common in this church; the Annunciation scene is unusual in having the Virgin on the left. See Joanne W. Anderson, “Mary Magdalen and Her Dear Sister: Innovation in the Late Medieval Mural Cycle of Santa Maddalena in Rencio (Bolzano),” in Mary Magdalene: Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, ed. Michelle A. Erhardt and Amy M. Morris (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 45–74, esp. 59.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art of scale and decorum. Rather than displaying a prominent shield and/or a model of the building that they helped support, such as in the case of Enrico Scrovegni in the Arena Chapel (discussed later in this article) or the nobleman Guglielmo Castelbarco in the Franciscan church of San Fermo Maggiore in Verona, whose shield is accompanied by an inscription reading “accept dear God this small present that I Guglielmo give to you Christ” (combining generosity and humility), the patron of Sankt Magdalena chose to discreetly insert their arms into a detail of the iconographical programme.8 And discreet it is—the loom is placed high up on the triumphal arch and is embedded in the narrative episode. Moreover, it requires one to know who was who in the local feudal system since there are no accompanying inscriptions. The red rampant lion being woven onto silver ground in fact belongs to the noble family of von Brandis, as verified by a glass window dated 1495–1500 in the parish church of nearby Meran.9 Other paintings and genealogical charts confirm its repeated and continued deployment across the successive generations.10 But who were the von Brandis in the late medieval period, and why did they choose to portray their family emblem—their public identity marker—in such atypical fashion? Why was it incorporated into a textile still being woven rather than a complete, fixed, and permanent symbol? An answer lies in marital bonds, and more specifically with a mercantile family who traded in cloth and were thus aware of its power as a vehicle and shaper of identity. CLOTHING THE BODY IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE: A FAMILY PRACTICE

The most likely patrons of Sankt Magdalena were Randold and Margaret von Brandis. Randold was the title holder of this noble family, whose castle was in Niederlana. He was born in 1366 and probably married Margaret in 1380 or shortly thereafter, making him a very young man at the time of the commission. Margaret’s birthdate is unknown but her first marriage was over by 1380 and she died in 1387. Discussion will turn to Margaret later in this article. What matters at this stage is that she was the daughter of a wealthy mercantile man, Botsch, whose own family, the Rossi, were Florentine émigrés.11 Botsch married Katherine von Völs, of noble stock, after his first wife Gerwiga von Niederthor (also local nobility) died. Botsch founded a funerary chapel dedicated to his presumed namesake saint, St. Nicholas, in the Dominican church in Bozen with paintings produced in around 1360  8 See Louise Bourdua, The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2004), 32–70, esp. 39–41.

 9 See Anderson, “St. Magdalena,” 43; or Ernst Bacher, Die Mittelalterlichen Glasgemälde in 10 11

Salzburg, Tirol und Vorarlberg (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2007), 489. They are held in the private collection of the family at the castle of Brandis in Niederlana, South Tyrol. Botsch’s Christian name is undocumented. Scholars have postulated that he was called Nicholas (explaining the chapel and cycle in the Dominican church) but he is always referred to as Botsch or Boccio in the surviving documents. He was the second son of Giovannino II

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Fig. 7.3:  Ground plan of Dominican Church in Bozen. (1) St. Nicholas Chapel. (2) St. John Chapel. (3) St. Thomas Chapel. (4) Choir. Drawing: Joanne W. Anderson.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art by the workshop of Guariento d’Arpo, who originated from Padua.12 His own father, Giovannino II Rossi, was buried in the chapel of St. John in 1324—in the tomb of his father Bartolomeo (Bambo) II—that lay beyond the choir screen in the same church between the choir and the chapter house (figs. 7.3 and 7.4).13 It was a prestigious location for this branch of the influential Florentine family, whose financial largesse extended to the Franciscan convent and the baptismal church of Sankt Johann im Dorf, also in Bozen.14 Although no contract survives, Botsch is the likely patron of the main decorative scheme in the St. John Chapel, which consists of narrative cycles depicting scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary, Johns Evangelist and Baptist, and Nicholas (alongside other votive imagery). The latter three were namesake saints for the patriarchs of the family, namely Giovannino and Botsch. It is widely recognised that the painter (the so-called Dominican Master) took as his model the Arena Chapel in Padua, which had been completed over twenty years earlier for Enrico Scrovegni and his family.15 The work is generally dated to 1329 or

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Rossi, described on his tombstone as “Banninus de Bamborociis de Florentzia,” whose line went back to Bartolomeo I. He is often referred to as son of Bamborociis. The name Botsch is a process of naturalisation: shortening the Bamborociis and giving it German spelling for ease in local society. In 1343 he is named as the son of “Bombarotschen von Florentz,” indicating the naturalisation process; see Codex R 55, fol. 51, 1343, I 29, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna. In a document from Hall in Tirol dated Oct. 16, 1336, there is reference to the Botsch heraldry—“in Silber drei schwarze Balken”; see Document 12, Stadtarchiv, Hall in Tirol, Austria. My thanks to Hannes Obermair for sharing his unpublished Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Bozen, Teil 3: Urkunden 1300–1349, 123. The family came from the parish of Santa Felicità (de populo ste. Felicitatis) in Oltrarno. For Florentine migration to northern Italy and the Alps in the late medieval period, see Gustav Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel im Bozen des 14. Jahrhunderts Botsch von Florenz und Niklaus Vintler,” Pro Civitate Austriae, Neue Folge 6 (2001): 3–23, and Damiano Neri, “I Commercianti Fiorentini in Alto Adige nei Secoli XIII e XIV,” Archivio per l’Alto Adige 42 (1948): 90–146.    Nicolo Rasmò, “La Chiesa dei Domenicani a Bolzano (Note Araldiche e Genealogiche),” Archivio per l’Alto Adige 36 (1941): 359–79, esp. 363. The chapel was badly damaged in 1944, following a period of neglect. The tombstone reads “Hic.iacet.dom.banninvs.de.bamborociis.de.florentia obiit.anno.dni. mcccxxiv.diexxiv.martii.” Bartolomeo (Bambo) II died in 1318. See Alberto Alberti, “Sepoltuario e Lapidi Funerarie,” in Domenicani a Bolzano, ed. Silvia Spada Pintarelli and Helmut Stampfer (Bolzano, Italy: Archivio Storico di Bolzano, 2010), 90–107, esp. 99; it includes genealogical trees of the families interred in the church. Giovannino II, Botsch’s father, may have helped finance the rebuilding of the church and convent in 1300–20, and was rewarded with a privileged space east of the choir screen. For comparative examples of eastern chapels for lay use, see Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 227–59, esp. 243–44. See Tiziana Franco, “Il Trecento: Pitture Murali nella Chiesa e nel Convent dei Domenicani,” in Pintarelli and Stampfer, Domenicani, 162–83, esp. 168–76, and Enrica Cozzi, “Johanneskapelle,” in Atlas Trecento: Gotische Maler in Bozen, ed. Andrea de Marchi (Bolzano, Italy: Temi, 2001), 78–101. Also Guido Gentile, “Iconografie e Ambienti Spirituali,” and Friederike Wille, “Die Argumentation der Bilder: Versuch einer Bildlektüre in der Johanneskapelle im Bozner Dominikanerkloster,” both in Trecento: Pittori Gotici a Bolzano: Atti del Convegno di Studi, ed. Andrea de Marchi, Tiziana Franco, and Silvia Spada Pintarelli (Bolzano, Italy: Città di Bolzano, 2006), 25–42 (esp. 31–36) and 57–68.

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Fig. 7.4:  Interior view of St. John Chapel, facing liturgical west, Dominican Church, Bozen. Photo: Joanne W. Anderson.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art shortly before. There is no documentation about the commission in either case, but what is clear is that both chapels arose from banking/mercantile origins with the patriarch of each family aspiring to noble status in their respective communities. Moreover, they both used devotional art, alongside strategic marriages, as a key agent in its attainment. The fame of the Arena Chapel and its role in civic processions around the feast of the Annunciation on March 25 was widespread.16 Botsch may have been familiar through trading relations between Bozen and the towns of the Veneto. He is first mentioned in 1328 as a burgher of Bozen and by the 1330s and ’40s he is recorded as a merchant of cloth (amongst other tradable goods), customs officer, and pawnbroker, making him a man of financial influence.17 The towns of Bozen and Padua were connected by the navigable river Adige and its branch waters and connecting roads, which facilitated commercial and cultural exchange, so the circumstances were entirely favourable for knowledge transfer.18 There is no documentary evidence that Botsch ever stepped inside the Arena Chapel, but there are visual confluences in his own family chapel that suggest a working familiarity. The frescoes in the chapel of St. John in the Dominican church in Bozen were completed over twenty years after those executed by Giotto, however, their shared multiple hagiographical cycles, including most importantly the early life of the Virgin, confirm that they still had currency in terms of design formulae, iconography, and visual types for similar semiprivate ritualised spaces.19 Direct transfers from the Paduan programmes were adapted for the local context and taste: namely that of the Botsch family, which included the young Margaret before her marriage into the von Brandis family in or around 1380, and of the Dominican friars, who crossed the chapel space from their chapter house and cloister to reach the choir to perform the divine offices. The life of the Virgin commences in the first bay of the liturgical south wall (cardinal east) of the chapel with the Meeting at the Golden Gate followed by the Annunciation to Anna, the elderly mother of the Virgin. Although both scenes have suffered considerable surface losses, it is possible to identify them and their similarity 16 17

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See Michael Viktor Schwarz, “Padua, Its Arena and the Arena Chapel: A Liturgical Ensemble,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010/11): 39–64. Botsch leased the customs house and pawnshop in Bozen from at least 1332, he became the tax collector of Bozen under the County of Tyrol, and soon ran in the circles of the landed nobility which determined his rise towards aristocratic status; see Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel im Bozen,” 6–12. See Tommaso Fanfani, “L’Adige come Arteria Principale del Traffico tra Nord Europa ed Emporio Realtino,” in Una Città e Il Suo Fiume: Verona e l’Adige, ed. Giorgio Borelli (Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1977), 2:569–629, and in Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), 244, 246, and 273. This includes two personifications of virtue and vice in grisailles. See note 5 on the afterlife of the Arena Chapel. The Arena Chapel narratives are organised in left-to-right wraparound mode across flat wall surfaces. A similar strategy is employed in Bozen with scenes running from left to right, but in the subsequent registers it departs from this logical order. For narrative categories, see Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

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Fig. 7.5:  Giotto, Annunciation to Anna, Arena Chapel, Padua, 1303–5. Photo: Courtesy of the Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection.

to the Paduan prototypes. In regards to the Annunciation (figs. 7.5 and 7.6), the scene shares the feature of a maid spinning outside the room in which Anna will hear the divine news delivered by an angel (detail now missing). In terms of compositional and stylistic transfer it is equally specific. The scene reuses the architectural setting of the house with its external stairs and window, likewise the maid’s distinctive pose and the shadow modulation in the folds of her clothing. The equivalence draws attention to the threading of new life through the prominence of the maid’s distaff and its spun thread. Indeed, this transfer represents a first indication of the importance of threads, and more broadly cloth, in the expression of identity in this family chapel. The importance of working threads or holy skein is taken up in the upper register of the middle bay of the same wall of the chapel, where the life cycle of the Virgin Mary continues. The right-hand scene depicts the Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, which is a further adaptation from the visual programmes in the Arena Chapel (figs. 7.7 and 7.8). They both focus on the steps leading up to the temple and the moment the Virgin leaves her family to enter into spiritual service. In the Bozen version we see the Virgin being supported up the stairs of the temple towards the priest by two angels, a new formulation. Critically, the traditional role of presentation given to her elderly parents, Joachim and Anna (as seen in the Paduan version) has also been 166

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Fig. 7.6:  Annunciation to Anna, St. John Chapel, Dominican Church, Bozen, ca. 1329. Photo: Fondazione Rasmo-Zallinger, Fondo Fotografico, scatola 69, no. 5161/3367, by permission.

jettisoned. Instead, a young man with blond hair who reaches out his arms towards the Virgin Mary replaces them. It was not unusual for patrons to insert themselves actively into their pictorial commissions during the fourteenth century. A pertinent example is Fina Buzzacarini, who included herself and her daughters in the episodes of the Birth of the Virgin in the Paduan Baptistery, painted by Giusto de’ Menabuoi in 1375–76.20 It was a strategy equally employed by other medieval artists, such as Simone Martini and Giotto.21 However, in all cases the patron is an additional guest or agent in the narrative. They do not substitute for a sacred figure. Given the most unusual switch in Bozen (which 20

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See Anne Derbes, “Patronage, Gender, and Generation in Late Medieval Italy: Fina Buzzacarini and the Paduan Baptistery,” in Patronage: Power and Agency in Medieval Art, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 119–50; and Benjamin G. Kohl, “Fina da Carrara, née Buzzacarini: Consort, Mother, and Patron of Art in Trecento Padua,” in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), 19–36. Namely the probable self-portrait of Martini in the St. Martin Chapel (1320–25) in the Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi and the portrait of Cardinal Stefaneschi donating his altarpiece to St. Peter on the reverse of the Stefaneschi Altarpiece (ca. 1330), now in the Pinacoteca, Vatican City.

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Fig. 7.7:  Giotto, Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Arena Chapel, Padua, 1303–5. Photo: Courtesy of the Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection.

can hardly be a mistake by the painter), from an elderly couple to one youthful man, it is possible that it is a “likeness” or construction of the man who commissioned the chapel’s decoration around 1329, namely Botsch; the same likeness appears in the Procession after the Marriage of the Virgin on the liturgical west wall.22 He wears a rich purple cloak that is redolent of the one worn by Enrico Scrovegni in the donation scene in the Arena Chapel (part of the Last Judgment) suggesting knowledge of the prototype and conscious emulation of this luxury textile as marker of identity and power but deployed in a less prominent way. In medieval liturgical categories, purple symbolised Christ’s Incarnation and royal bloodline (encompassing power and

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For early portraiture, see Laura Jacobus, “Propria Figura: The Advent of Facsimile Portraiture in Italian Art,” Art Bulletin 99:2 (2017): 72–101, esp. 73. Botsch’s parents, Giovannino II and Katherine von Reichenberg, are represented as kneeling donors above the altar of the chapel, presented to the Man of Sorrows by St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist. See Franco, “Il Trecento,” 168–76, and Cozzi, “Johanneskapelle,” 78–101. The donors were once believed to be Botsch and his first wife, Gerwiga von Niederthor.

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Fig. 7.8:  Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, St. John Chapel, Dominican Church, Bozen, ca. 1329. Photo: Fondazione Rasmo-Zallinger, Fondo Fotografico, scatola 67, no. 4833/3274, by permission.

dignity), which was undoubtedly significant to a man on the rise.23 In more grounded terms, Botsch purchased for the Duke of Bozen a cloth of purpureum et perl for which he paid 14 marks, 4 pfennigs, and 5 groats as recorded at the court in Meran on November 5, 1344.24 He was therefore familiar during his lifetime with the material and symbolic value of cloth in relation to status. This familiarity is further suggested within the same image. The making of cloth is given individual treatment in the scene of the Presentation. Returning to the main composition, the architecture of the temple spatially distributes the devotional activities of the serving priests but it also facilitates a brand-new vignette of the virgins making textile in a room set directly below the altar. In this space, there 23

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The symbolism of the colour is described by Cardinal Lothar of Segni (Pope Innocent II) in his De Sacro Altaris Mysterio of 1195, in Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: Garnier, 1844–91), 217:786. For a brief discussion of the Christological significance of purpura, see Heather Pulliam, “Color,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 3–14, esp. 9–10. Obermair, Quellen zur Geschichte, 155. The document is registered in the Landesfürstliches Rechnungsbuch, Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck, Hs. 288, fols. 15–16 n. 3. The fabric was most likely silk; see Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 298.

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Fig. 7.9:  Illustration from the Meditatione de la Vita del Nostro Signore Ihesu Christo (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Ital. 115, fol. 41r). Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, by permission.

are four well-dressed and coiffured girls working a box loom, distaff, and carders. There are spindles in the box, and the girl on the right shows the effort of her physical exertion by means of her straddling pose. A comparison with the same Presentation scene in the Arena Chapel cycle confirms its novelty. In Bozen it is a gendered space, one of sorority, where time is occupied by virtuous activity other than prayer. The iconography of the weaving Virgin draws upon the Protoevangelium of James, where the virgins from the house of David were charged with helping to create a veil for the temple of the Lord.25 It was a verification of Mary’s purity and her royal lineage but also a liminal moment in identity formation as the Mother of God. The articulation of Incarnational theory and Mary’s role in weaving human form for the Logos has Byzantine origins, dating back to the fifth century, with a visual language emerging in the middle Byzantine period.26 The oldest surviving evidence of this 25

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“Let us make a veil for the temple of the Lord … And the priest said: Choose for me by lot [from the seven virgins] who shall spin the gold, and the white, and the fine linen, and the silk, and the blue, and the scarlet, and the true purple. And the true purple and the scarlet fell to the lot of Mary, and she took them, and went away to her house … And Mary took the scarlet and span it.” The Protoevangelium of James, in Ronald F. Hock, ed., The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas (Santa Rose, CA: Polebridge, 1995), 32–77, at verse 10. Maria Evangelatou, “The Purple Thread of the Flesh: The Theological Connotations of a Narrative Iconographic Element in Byzantine Images of the Annunciation,” in Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium: Studies Presented to Robin Cormack, ed. Antony Eastmond

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art iconography in the Italian tradition is the Madonna Operosa, or working Virgin, by Vitale da Bologna, which dates to around 1330.27 In this detached fresco, known as the Madonna del Ricamo, she is sewing a garment for the infant Christ, an allusion to the creation that took place in her womb and the sudarium, the linen that will wrap his body after the Crucifixion many years later. But this does not explain the earlier manifestation of the iconography in Tyrolean Bozen nor its significance for the viewers in the church. For this we can look to the mendicant context, and particularly the Dominicans whose mission was preaching to the laity. In particular, it is helpful to turn to illustrated devotional literature, best represented by the Meditationes Vitae Christi. The Meditationes Vitae Christi is typically described as the most influential private devotional text of the late medieval period. It was produced for a nun of the Poor Clares in Tuscany, possibly in vernacular Italian before being translated into Latin by a Franciscan.28 Beyond that immediate cloistered environment, this private devotional aid found purchase with religious orders, both male and female, to help them visualise the sacred narratives through affective meditations on the life of Christ and his family. It quickly became popular with the laity thanks to numerous copies and translations.29 While their precise dating is still debated, recent scholarship has argued for a compilation towards the mid-fourteenth century.30 The earliest surviving Italian manuscript is illustrated, and significantly there are six episodes from Christ’s early life depicting Mary and her cousins sewing, spinning, winding, and carding.31 Each scene of domestic activity, of women’s work, chimes with the frescoed scene in Bozen, and thus represents a potential factor in the departure from Giotto’s model (fig. 7.9). The vignettes from the Meditationes Vitae Christi miniatures are often placed within a cubicle or below an architectural structure. It is a compositional strategy that is shared

27 28

29 30

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and Liz James (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 261–79. See also Katherine T. Brown, Mary of Mercy in Medieval and Renaissance Art: Devotional Image and Civic Emblem (New York: Routledge, 2017), 56–57. Vitale da Bologna, Madonna del Ricamo, 1335(?), detached fresco, 118 centimeters by 79 centimeters, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (formerly Pradalino). See Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010), 86–118, esp. 110–15. McNamer argues for a female author and recipient, with the Latin version representing a gender shift that is concomitant with a redaction of the text from compassion to an arresting of that emotion. Columban Fischer, “Die Meditationes Vitae Christi: Ihre Handschriftliche Überlieferung und die Verfasserfrage,” (Florence: Quaracchi, 1932), 3–35, 173–209, 305–48, and 449–83. See Holly Flora, The Devout Belief of the Imagination: The Paris “Meditationes Vitae Christi” and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009), 27–47. She advocates “responsible scholarship” when discussing the text/image and pictorial traditions, particularly in light of past art-historical work that treated the manuscript as a source for iconographic inspiration. See also Sarah McNamer, “Further Evidence for the Date of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Franciscan Studies 50 (1990): 235–61. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Ital. 115. This manuscript is available for view online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10527648k. For a published reproduction, see Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 27–29, 42–43, and 74–83.

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Joanne W. Anderson by the mural cycle, tempting the conclusion that the painter had access to a copy of an illustrated manuscript—in the possession of the friars or the patron.32 If correct, this would imply that the Meditationes Vitae Christi has an earlier dating, namely before 1329, the approximate date of the mural cycle.33 The jury remains out, but we can at least follow Anne Derbes’s line that both the miniature and mural painting represent an “expression of a larger discourse” on the domestic life of the holy family.34 This inclusion of a new iconographical detail in the decoration of the St. John Chapel speaks to the individualisation of devotional space and the circulation of ideas for the visual arts via the new religious orders. The Dominicans were dedicated to the cult of the Virgin Mary and consequently, this imagery offered an opportunity to emphasise her importance in a contemporary context of virtuous industriousness.35 This was appropriate to their preaching activities but also suitable in a chapel that they saw on a daily basis when crossing between cloister and choir. The Virgin spins the purple thread for the pallium that will veil the entrance to the tabernacle, and at the same time predicts her role in the divine creation. However, it was more than just a case of humanising the sacred story for the Botsch family, which included the women.36 The detail was highly apt to the patron’s requirements in this chapel, namely Botsch, particularly in his quest to further assert the rising status of his family in Bozen. As mentioned above, the Rossi family originated from Florence, but as with all outsiders, a process of integration took place; this is evident in the naturalising of Botsch’s name. In the chapel, it happens thanks to what Kathryn Rudy has described as the “specific charge surrounding textiles and articles of clothing.”37 Indeed, it is this charge and the very materiality of textiles that is germane to a final understanding of the heraldic cloth being woven on the loom in the painting at Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch.

32 33

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That the Meditationes Vitae Christi is associated with the Franciscans is unproblematic. The order was present in Bozen, and Botsch’s family were prominent patrons of their convent. For a rehabilitation of the early dating of the Meditationes Vitae Christi (i.e. early 1300s), see Dávid Falvay and Peter Tóth, “L’Autore e la Trasmissione delle ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ in Base a Manoscritti Volgari Italiani,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 108, no. 3–4 (2015): 403–30, esp. 403–6. Quoted in Flora, Devout Belief, 40. The Dominican church is dedicated to St. Dominic. In 1273 in Regensburg, the feast days of importance are named along with indulgences for the new convent of the Dominicans in Bozen (novella plantatio ordinis fratrum predicatorum in Bolzano Tridentine diocesis): These are Christ, Mary and the Apostles, Peter, Dominic and Mary Magdalen. The original document is lost but recorded in Marian (Andreas) Fidler, Austria Sacra: Österreichische Hierarchie und Monasteriologie: Geschichte der Ganzen Österreichischen, Weltlichen und Klösterlichen Klerisey Beyderley Geschlechtes, part 2, vol. 4 (Vienna: Schmidt, 1782), 51. My thanks to Hannes Obermair (Quellen zur Geschichte, 74). The early life of the Blessed Virgin Mary could have an edifying role for the women in the family; see Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel, 221–39. Jacobus argues this case convincingly for Jacopina d’Este, second wife of Enrico Scrovegni. Kathryn Rudy, “Introduction: Miraculous Textiles in Exempla and Images from the Low Countries,” in Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and Their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), 5.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art The painted programmes in the St. John Chapel offered lots of opportunities to display the Botsch family colours of black and silver on the bodies of those who served or were dependent because of their gender on their lord and master (fig. 7.10). Firstly, it is worn by the musicians in the Procession after the Marriage of the Virgin on the liturgical west wall facing the altar, a scene that is rich with luxury garments; secondly, by the servants in the Marriage at Cana on the north wall; and thirdly, by the three daughters of the destitute father in the cycle of St. Nicholas, on the north wall to the left of the altar (proper right). Each striking example of the liveried body is located at the top of its respective bay under the gothic ribbed vaults. It was a suitable location for such heraldic displays but also decorous given the great height of the chapel and the fact that it was a space through which the Dominican friars would traverse on a frequent daily basis; the black-and-white livery could at least be tolerated for its chromatic similitude to the habit of the mendicant order. The Botsch family represents one of two branches of the Rossi family. According to a later chronicler, one branch had heraldry of red and white stripes, and so the other one changed the colour to black.38 The Botsch heraldry, representing the latter, can still be seen on the bell tower of the Dominican church and in the baptismal church of Sankt Johann im Dorf, confirming both colour and pattern. There it is characterised by horizontal black and silver stripes (known as a barré effect, or fess).39 In the St. John Chapel, however, the horizontal stripes of the Botsch heraldry are transformed into black and white diagonal stripes (the rayé effect, or bend sinister). The precise diagonal lines of the painted cloth in the three examples listed above might seem at odds with the actual depiction of the family’s heraldry elsewhere in the Dominican church and in wider Bozen. However, the master painter was once again adapting the Giottesque model. In the Paduan scene depicting the Virgin Returning from her Marriage in the Arena Chapel (the match for the same scene in Bozen), the musicians are wearing blue and silver diagonally striped robes, in reference to the heraldic colours of the Scrovegni family.40 Once again, the role of cloth in shaping and expressing identity finds its partial origins in a successful prototype. Moreover, it provides a pathway to the dressing of the female body in family colours. The dressing of the body, in reality and in pictorial form, wove visible bonds of devotion with each item a record of self. Fashion today is part of the larger continuum of textile’s cultural import. We dress to express, donate to offset, retain to remember moments in our lives that are indicative of who we think we are and how that shifts over time; personality being construed on a spectrum. While the liveried body was a common trope in medieval society, “stitching” servant to master, in fourteenth-century Bozen, ideas of cloth and display and its import to memory took on a fresh s­ ignificance 38 39 40

See Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel im Bozen,” 5. The chronicler is Franz Adam Graf von Brandis, Des Tirolischen Adlers Immergrünendes Ehren-Kräntzel (Bolzano [Bozen], Italy: Führer, 1678), 2:47. It is also recorded in a seal, in historical documents, and in photographs of lost artworks elsewhere. The condition of the painted plaster makes this less visible today.

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Fig. 7.10:  Botsch livery in the Procession after the Marriage of the Virgin (detail), St. John Chapel, Dominican Church, Bozen. Photo: Pier Giorgio Carloni, by permission.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art for women of rank in projecting their own identity but also for their patronage of religious institutions.41 This can also be seen in comparative examples from a slightly later period, such as the illumination from the lavish Fitzwilliam Hours, once the possession of Isabel Stuart, a daughter of James I of Scotland.42 Isabel wears on her ceremonial skirts her birth nation’s heraldry—a red lion rampant on gold ground with thistles in the four corners—alongside that of her husband, Duke Francis I of Brittany (it is effectively impaled). St. Catherine presents her to the Virgin Mary, who wears a lapis lazuli robe decorated with the French fleur-de-lis in gold symbolizing her royal status and protection.43 Similar to the paintings in Bozen, then, the integration of sacred figures and heraldic textiles within a single decorative scheme was a means of expressing family identity, with women being active participants. What the example in Bozen demonstrates is that it could also become a generational practice. So far, this article has argued that Margaret von Brandis’ natal family, and particularly her father, played a formative role in determining how she might understand the value of cloth and its visual representation as a means of asserting family identity and patronage. There was a genealogy to this process; the forms originated in the Arena Chapel in Padua, and then by means of mercantile relations and exchange, they travelled upriver with the painter and/or patron to find fresh purchase in a similar context. But what did the daughter, Margaret, take from this formative experience, and how did it play out in her life and patronage activities? For this, discussion turns to the sole surviving document, her will. ORDINO ET DISPONO

Margaret Botsch took the powerful metaphor of social transformation embodied by liveried cloth to the church of Sankt Magdalena through her marriage to Randold 41

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“The liveried body, even though the livery was seldom marked as such, stitched servant’s bodies to their households”; Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 11. See also Joanna Crawford, “Clothing Distributions and Social Relations c.1350–1500,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 153–64, esp. 155; and Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe, 1270–1380 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 112–14. Eleanor Stuart, another daughter of James I, married Sigismund of Tyrol in 1450. They held jurisdiction over Bozen and she was guardian of the Franciscan church in the same town. The heraldry of Scotland can be found on a boss in the vaults of the cloister. The illumination, attributed to the Rohan Workshop and dated c. 1410–40, is on fol. 20r of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 62, viewable at http://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/ object/90393. It is discussed in Elizabeth L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty, and Visual Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). In the Annunciation on fol. 29r, the Virgin wears a dress bearing her name repeated in its golden stripes. The impaled arms of Isabel Stuart feature in many of the full-page miniatures (main text divisions), but as L’Estrange observes, these arms were added after her marriage in 1442, and thus when this luxury book came into her possession (20–22).

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Joanne W. Anderson von Brandis in the early 1380s. What we know about this union and its financial and social benefits comes from the last will and testament of Margaret, which survives in the family archive. It is valuable not only for what possessions she had to bequeath and to whom, but also the provisions made for her body and soul, which speak to the social bonds woven between natal and marital families and between church and home. Margaret made her will on November 22, 1387, in the house of her mother, Katherine Fellser (of Völs), which could be found on the Wangergasse, a quarter of the old town of Bozen.44 She is named as the daughter of the late Botsch of Florence (“filia quondam domini Botschonis de Florencia”) and wife of the Tyrolean nobleman Randold von Brandis (“uxor domini Randoldi de Prandes”).45 After the preamble of the document, covering the main protocols, Katherine, who is described as her beloved mother (“dilecta mea mater … karissima”), is noted as being present at her side. The other witnesses are laymen from Bozen, Dominican friars, two notaries (who will prepare the legal document) and Eric of Rottenburg, the minister for foreign affairs of the Habsburg rulers of Tyrol, who is there to guarantee the execution of the dying woman’s wishes at her demand.46 She was a woman of importance in local and regional society. The will continues with detailed instructions for her final resting place and for the cure of her soul in the Dominican church. Margaret asks that she be buried in the Nicholas Chapel, founded and endowed by her father Botsch between the years 1345–50, directly next to his sarcophagus (“tumba que, sarch’ dicitur, in qua pater meus … ”).47 The Dominican friars must conduct a weekly Mass (“perpetua septimonialis missa”) in the chapel in honour of St. Michael Archangel, for which her mother (“mea mater karrissima”) must assume responsibility.48 The fifteen denarii that she leaves to the convent for this ritual will be taken from her Cholhoff vineyards in Eppan, near Bozen. In addition, four friars must sing a vigil on her anniversary in perpetuity—this public Mass comprised a procession with candles (candela) and with chanting to her tomb in the chapel (“et visitatio mei sepulchri cum cantu”). For this Margaret leaves twenty small pounds. What this part of the will reveals are the basic forms of devotional practices required after death and the spaces in which they were performed. The friars’ procession 44

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Account taken from document 8.13, Emil von Ottenthal and Oswald Redlich, eds., ArchivBerichte aus Tirol (Vienna: Kubasta and Voigt, 1888), 259. I am grateful to Duke Ferdinand von Brandis for granting me access to the private archive and his interest in this new chapter in the family history. As always, I thank my colleague Hannes Obermair for making the visit possible and helping with the transcription on site. Botsch died in April 1374. See Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel in Bozen,” 12 n. 66. The County of Tyrol was founded by Meinhard II in the late thirteenth century. Margaret’s aunt was Katherine von Rottenburg and so the minister’s presence was down to a family connection. See the genealogical tree in Alberti, “Sepoltuario,” 92–93. It was common practice at this time for daughters to be buried with their natal rather than marital families. See Luciano Maino, 50 Testamenti Medioevali nell’Archivio Capitolare di Trento (Ferrara, Italy: Liberty House, 1999), 27–28. The location of Margaret’s tomb can be identified thanks to the archaeological investigations undertaken at the Dominican church during the early 2000s. See Alberti, “Sepoltuario,” 90–107, esp. 91. The feast day of St. Michael is September 29 (Michelmas).

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art to the chapel, ritualised by lit candles and chanting, would have passed into the lay church through the portal in the choir screen, down the nave, and into the chapel, which lay on the cardinal west side nearest the main entrance. They passed walls rich with fresco paintings, both nave and family chapels, and textiles that adorned the respective altars. The document lacks the common phrase “pro remedio anime,” but there is no doubting that it was made in advance of the final event of Margaret’s mortal life. The preparations for her death and the objects (tomb and candles) are clearly articulated and visualised in the home, connecting domestic and ecclesiastical spaces. Having dealt with the cure of her body and soul, Margaret turns to the dispersal of her estate. As to be expected, recipients and goods are detailed, but there is one surprising observation by the notary. Margaret is recorded as whispering the names of some of those beneficiaries (“in secreto declaravi”). Only her mother learns of their identity, leaving the notary in the dark. This disruption of normal legalese leaves the door ajar to the private life and desires of a noblewoman in this period. With due caution in mind, the document perhaps captures the emotive tenor of her family relations and personal piety as bound up with her worldly goods, in particular her clothing and jewellery.49 To her husband, Randold von Brandis, Margaret left half of her dowry (“donation mea antelecti”), which was valued at one thousand florins (“mille florenos”), a convention of this period that would provide for all her children. As clearly implied by the diplomatics of the document, this was her second marriage. The first was to Jacob Fuchs (“quondam Jacobus Fux”), who died in 1380, for whom she bore a son, Cyprianus. The other boys were fathered by Randold and were called Christopher and Leo (“Christofforus e Leo de Prandes”). Katherine Fellser, the second wife of Botsch and mother of Margaret, received clothing (vestes corporales) and jewellery (cleonodia aurgentea), the precise details given in secret. To those whose names were whispered went more clothing, indicating her relative wealth and position, but also how she conformed to the standard practice of handing on garments for reuse or repurposing.50 To her dear sister, Elisabeth, wife of Gufidaun, who resided near Brixen (north of Bozen), went also some jewellery. The rest of the cloth and jewellery was bequeathed to the Dominican church, together with a chalice and ecclesiastical vestments. The donation of such material goods to the church was common in the late Middle Ages. As Sandra Cavallo has written in reference to Turin, it was understood as an embodied act that connected the donor with public or private altars.51 These bequests point us to the good women of the parish who created bonds between home and church. The dress of a noblewoman suggests costly materials for which Margaret’s father was in part responsible for importing to Bozen. Indeed, every year, three fairs 49 50 51

For the risks of sentimental readings, see Lena Cowen Orlin, “Empty Vessels,” in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, ed. Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 299–308. For the reused clothing and secondhand markets, see Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 17–33, esp. 26–32. Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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Joanne W. Anderson attracted merchants who traded in textiles from northern Europe and Italy, especially Verona, meaning that new stock was available on a regular basis.52 Having been made into garments and worn during a person’s lifetime, these materials could easily be converted into altar covers in their “afterlives,” as in the case of Anne of Bohemia.53 Anne, who was wife of Duke Henry of Charinthia-Tyrol, paid 1300 Berner marks for her burial in the choir of the Dominican Church in Bozen. Her clothes were bequeathed to ecclesiastical institutions within her husband’s territory: a green garment for the Dominican cloister, Maria Steinach in Algund (near Meran); a scarlet one to the Cistercian abbey in Stams (near Innsbruck); a green and red coat-like dress or mantle with hood (Chor kappa). It was a trend that percolated down the ranks as a way for women to partake in the rituals of their parish church. For noblewomen, such as Anne and Margaret, it was a material memory of their faith and presence at or near the altar. Alternatively, such gifts of cloth could be sold by the parish to contribute to funds for the upkeep of the building or for charity. In her study of late medieval wills in England, Katherine French has demonstrated how women were more likely to donate cloth and other materials for the house, clothing, and jewellery to their parish church, some of which were used to adorn the statues of their patron saints.54 Sometimes liturgical apparatus was donated, as in the case of Margaret’s chalice, suggesting private devotional practice or a secular object to be blessed for a new purpose. Moreover, it is worth recalling that Margaret paid for the Masses and vigils from vineyards, indicating that she had possession and control of land and its goods. Margaret’s father, Botsch, was a merchant banker who sought to rise up the ranks of Tyrolean society and become a nobleman (nobilis vir). He achieved this in economic terms but also by arranging strategic unions for his children, most especially 52

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See note 18. Also Edoardo Demo, “Le Fiere di Bolzano e il Commercio tra Area Atesina ed Area Tedesca tra Quattro e Cinquecento,” in Le Alpi Medievali nello Sviluppo delle Regioni Contermini, ed. Gian Maria Varanini (Naples: Liguori, 2004), 69–97, and Edoardo Demo, “Le Fiere di Bolzano tra Basso Medievo e l’Età Moderna (Secoli XV–XVI),” in Fiere e Mercati nella Integrazione delle Economie Europee, Secc. XIII–XVII: Atti della “Trentaduesima settimana di Studi,” 8–12 Maggio 2000, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 2001), 707–22. The Bozen fairs are contextualized in Paola Lanaro, “Periferie senza Centro: Reti Fieristiche nello Spazio Geografico della Terraferma Veneta in Età Moderna,” in La Pratica dello Scambio: Sistemi di Fiere, Mercanti e Città in Europa (1400–1700), ed. Paola Lanaro (Venezia: Marsilio, 2003), 21–52. See Karl Atz and Adelgott Schatz, Der Deutsche Anteil des Bistums Trient (Bolzano [Bozen], Italy: Auer, 1903), 1:58. Katherine French, “‘My Wedding Gown to Make a Vestment’: Housekeeping and Church­ keeping,” in her The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008): 17–49, esp. 44. She speaks of the “inventiveness” of women in repurposing domestic items for church use. Wedding dresses were remade as altar cloths, a red damask mantle and a silk-lined mantle for costumes for a mystery play about Mary Magdalen, kerchiefs as cloth holders for hosts and a coverlet to lie before the high altar at principal feasts. Frederick William Weaver, ed., Somerset Medieval Wills: 1383–1500 (London: Somerset Record Society, 1901–5), 2:52–57, cited in French, “My Wedding Gown,” 251.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art his daughter, who could marry above her natal station thus effecting social mobility.55 The union with the Fuchs family was prestigious, but by 1380, Jacob was dead, leaving Margaret a still marriageable widow. The von Brandis family and their son, Randold, represented a second opportunity and was to be matched by a respectable dowry.56 But the weaving of new family bonds could be recorded by other means. By her remarriage and movement up the social ladder, Margaret’s identity was in the remaking, and there was no better way of both communicating this process whilst at the same time embodying it than by appropriating the tactics of her father: namely, the representation of luxury cloth and heraldic motifs in the sacred image cycles that decorated the walls of chapels and churches that benefited from his largesse. Servants or female dependents wore the liveried colours of the Botsch family in the Dominican church in the context of a narrative cycle and are indicative of social aspiration.57 In the Magdalen church in Rentsch, where this article began, there was to be no extensive Marian programme. Rather, it had a scene of the Annunciation, as was common for triumphal arches. It was therefore necessary to find a novel way of inserting the von Brandis family’s heraldic motif into the story. The result was a partially woven fabric on the domestic loom. It represents a distillation from one sacred site to another, and, in inheritance terms, a handing down from father to daughter. THE LOOM, THE LADY, AND HER FAMILY CHAPELS

A picture emerges of Margaret’s life in terms of family connections, domestic and devotional spaces, and personal items of clothing and jewellery that would be bequeathed as part of her last will and testament. As a young girl, she probably grew up in the company of those painted pictures in her father’s and grandfather’s chapels (and other churches in the town that they patronised), all of which carried the visual signifiers of the Botsch. When she married into the von Brandis family in the early 1380s, she gained access to yet another chapel in the Dominican church, that of St. Thomas [Aquinas] (fig. 7.3). Although no longer extant, as with the Nicholas Chapel, we know that it once stood next to the choir screen and thus close to the ecclesia fra55 56

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Margaret’s brothers Hanns and Eric were also buried in their father’s chapel. See the genealogical tree in Alberti, “Sepoltuario,” 93. On September 1, 1379, Randold’s mother (Katherine von Brandis) was making provision for her son’s marriage to Margaret, daughter of Johann von Schlandersberg. See document 8.10, Ottenthal and Redlich, Archiv-Berichte, 255. It is unclear as to whether this union was officialised or if this Margaret died in the ensuing few years, leaving Randold free to marry Margaret Botsch. As with all genealogies, names are passed on, and so we should distinguish between our Randold and his father, Randold senior, who died 1380–81; his wife, Katherine, is described as a widow by April 1381; see document 7.7, Ottenthal and Redlich, Archiv-Berichte, 250. For a comparative case study, see Jennifer E. Courts, “Weaving Legitimacy: The Jouvenal des Ursins Family and the Construction of Nobility in Fifteenth-Century France,” in Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages, ed. Kate Dimitrova and Margaret L. Goehring (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014), 141–52.

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Joanne W. Anderson trum. In all likelihood its walls bore painted programmes and displayed the arms of her marital family, the red lion rampant on silver ground, though not necessarily using the lozenge pattern as proven by the stained glass in Meran.58 Looking to the other votive and donor imagery in the Dominican church, there were plenty of examples of how to display one’s family identity via a variety of symbols, patterns, and colours. Yet these normative modes were rejected in Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch in favour of subtlety. It is possible that the master painter, working under instruction, borrowed the emphasis on weaving and liveried bodies from the St. John Chapel (commissioned by Margaret’s father) to entirely novel effect. And the novelty lies in the inclusion of a loom with its unfinished textile, revealing process. The upright or vertical loom painted in the Annunciation is of modest proportions. It was suitable for a domestic household belonging to the ranks of the nobility or the upper bourgeoisie. The type is significant. Manuscript images of the Virgin weaving usually place her at a horizontal loom, with the threads being worked by tablets. It is a similar approach taken to medieval depictions of Penelope weaving the threads of her never-ending textile or women weaving in books such as the Ovide Moralisé. If upright looms are depicted, they are of large dimensions, so that the woman weaving may sit within its vertical frames either on a throne or on the ground with her legs stretched under the threads. The Rentsch loom thus differs in its compactness from a pictorial tradition. The region of Tyrol straddled the Alps, its rivers and roads facilitating the movement of cloth between Northern Europe and Italy in the medieval and early modern periods. It was a place of creativity fostered by its trade fairs but also one of tradition enforced by feudal rule. So textiles, in both material and semantic terms, had currency. The loom and fabric that motivated this article does not depict a finished piece of silk ready to be made into a garment. It is a heraldic textile in production, with the warp strings waiting for the next run of weft to help materialise another pictorial motif. This partially woven or emerging fabric in Sankt Magdalena is an unusual detail in late medieval art. It is an embedded image, in that it is a depiction of a textile within a painting that is both essential and marginal. However, it does not refer to the artist’s own praxis in a process of self-reflexivity, nor to the materiality of painting.59 Rather, it points us to two producers: one internal, the other external. First is the Virgin Mary, who is weaving the cloth. The second is Margaret von Brandis, who surely instructed the painter about the presentation of the family arms. This was significant for a woman who would become the bearer of two more children before her death in 1387, and

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The chapel is not mentioned in Marx Sittich von Wolkenstein, ed., Landesbeschreibung von Südtirol (Innsbruck, Austria: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1936), accessible at https:// digital.tessmann.it/tessmannDigital/Buch/13004/; the text mentions only that of the Botsch (Wotschen) along with a drawing of their heraldic shield. It was destroyed at the beginning of the 1800s. Fragments of painting survive and these are dated to ca. 1325–30. See Alberti, “Sepoltuario,” 100–2, and Franco, “Il Trecento,” 167. On this topic, see most recently Péter Bokody, Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250– 1350): Reality and Reflexivity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), esp. Introduction and chap. 1.

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Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art most importantly two males who would ensure the continuance of the family line as declared by the heraldic lions on the textile. Weaving has been described as “an index of feminine virtue” thanks to its remaining a “respectable” craft for a woman long after its commercialisation.60 This is conveyed beautifully in the painting in Rentsch in the context of the early life of the Virgin, who works at an upright loom (warp-weighted). But this loom and its cloth also represent a shift in visual practices in Bozen over a one-hundred-year period. In the Dominican church in around 1329, the virgins worked together to produce the pallium for the tabernacle, but no cloth is visible in their hands or in the gendered space within the temple. Nearly seventy years later, the motif reappeared in the church of Sankt Vigil am Weineck, which lies on the outskirts of Bozen and was patronised by the noble Weineck family. In the fresco cycle of the life of the Virgin, there is a weaving scene at the temple of David and cloth is present, but this time she only works a plain green strip. There is no painted pattern in the completed textile because the heraldry of the family is displayed on the exterior façade of the church, leaving no one in doubt about their status and rights of patronage.61 Theirs was a nobility by birth and not one acquired by mercantile graft and rising social status. The painting in Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch is a midway point in the representation of what was understood as virtuous women’s work in the local area (figs. 7.1 and 7.2). And it was put to unique effect for a family on the rise. With no heraldry surviving anywhere else in the building, inside or out, what remains are some thoughts left visible, some unfinished threads to collect. For Margaret von Brandis, her second marriage meant a new identity in the making, and this is what the Virgin weaves on her loom.

60

61

Ruth Mazo Karras, “‘This Skill in a Woman Is By No Means to Be Despised’: Weaving and the Gender Division of Labor in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 89– 104, esp. 91. Karras notes a technological factor in the move away from weaving as women’s craft: namely the arrival of the horizontal loom, which required greater finances and strength. See Roberto Bartalini, “‘Iudicium’: Un Affresco a San Vigilio al Virgolo a Bolzano e la Liturgia Funebre Tardomedievale,” in de Marchi, Franco, and Pintarelli, Trecento, 45–55, and Sigrid Popp, Die Fresken von St. Vigil und St. Zyprian: Studien zur Bozner Wandmalerei um 1400 (Ph.D. diss, Technische Universität Berlin, 2003).

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Recent Books of Interest

L’Arte del Sarto nel Medioevo: Quando la Moda Diventa un Mestiere, by Elisa Tosi Brandi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017). ISBN 978-8815253248. 224 pages, 8 black-andwhite illustrations. Elisa Tosi Brandi’s book on the trade or art of the tailor in the Middle Ages is subtitled “when fashion became a profession,” alluding to the rise of tailoring as a specialist activity during this period. The material runs from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century and concentrates geographically on cities and towns in central and northern Italy, primarily Bologna, but also Udine, Verona, Milan, Venice, Ferrara, Rimini, Pisa, and L’Aquila. This is a richly documented book, and the reader could spend happy hours following up the information provided in the footnotes. Chapter 1 begins with a ­reminder that the profession of tailor, one who cut and stitched clothing for both men and women, goes back to the Middle Ages and that it was a profession that responded to new needs in the courtly culture of the period, needs that were then disseminated through the city communes of Italy. This is followed in Chapter 2 by a focus on tailors within guild regulations, the ways in which the profession became specialized, and the work of women. Chapter 3 is concerned with the practicalities of the profession, such as places of work, tools, and the charges tailors were able to make for their work. It contains a very useful appendix on tariffs in various cities between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The final chapter touches on a wide range of information: the relationship between tailor and client, the tailor in sixteenth-century treatises, fashion plates and manuals, records of clothing affected by sumptuary legislation. L’Arte del Sarto is the result of a considerable amount of research and is also a wonderfully engaging read. Tosi Brandi has succeeded in bringing together a vast range of material, which she deftly manages, moving between primary and secondary sources with a light but sure touch. Like many books published in Italy, L’Arte del Sarto does not contain a bibliography or an index. On the plus side, the lack of an index forces the reader to engage with the argument rather than cherry-pick specific topics. The same could be said of the lack of bibliography, but it can be annoying to check something in a footnote only to find a short reference to the publication and that the work has been cited in full for the first time in an unspecified previous footnote. — Cordelia Warr, University of Manchester

Recent Books of Interest Clothes Make the Man: Early Medieval Textiles from the Netherlands, by C ­ hrystel R. Brandenburgh (Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University Press, 2016). ISBN 9789087282608. 289 pages, 112 illustrations (many in color). This doctoral thesis addresses textiles of 400–1000 from Merovingian cemeteries and settlement sites in the Netherlands. None of these are new finds; the author has examined or re-examined textiles stored in museums, and each of the six case studies presented here has been published (including in Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8) in the course of her research. This means the book contains some repetition, and the demands of thesis writing—in terms of stating research questions, then answering them—produce some rather pedestrian paragraphs. However, the thesis is generally written well and clearly in English, and the few errors (of which the worst I found were “died” for “dyed” and “fixated” for “fixed”) certainly do not interfere with enjoyment of the text. While fully aware of the social/cultural implications of textiles and dress, the author is concerned with presenting technical details of fibre, spin, and weave, and particularly sensitive to what must have been the readily perceptible characteristics of cloth, such as drape and texture. She makes it clear that she is not comparing like with like. Evidence from cemeteries, both rural and urban, consists of small, mineralised fragments attached to metalwork. Although in some cases the position of the metalwork in the grave is recorded, the practice of opening graves after the decay of the flesh has often interfered with the positioning and may have included removal of some grave-goods. Cemetery textiles are, however, datable by association, potentially gendered by grave-goods even when there are no skeletal remains, and contextualised by their burial ground and region. They are, potentially, valued textiles. Occupation sites are generally later than the cemeteries, but finds are poorly dated, unstratified, and without associations; many textiles were old and had been discarded. However, they present larger samples than cemetery fragments, including some recognisable hats and parts of other garments with hems, seams, and decorative embroidery, as well as items that may have been domestic or industrial textiles. The author enumerates fabric types and makes comparisons as regards choice of tabby or twill, quality of textiles (measured by thread count), special weaves (­Rippenköper, repp, and a loose tabby suitable for veils), and the use of gold thread. The author identifies gender-related preferences, with women generally wearing higher-quality fabrics than men. She notes that in the early Christian cemeteries of Maastricht–St. Servas church and Vrjthof, gender differences were not apparent, as both sexes were buried in tabby cloth, which, she suggests, is a precursor to the use of special death cloths in Christian times. In comparison with cemetery evidence from Merovingian Germany, these Dutch finds were not rich, though gold thread in graves from Maastricht–St. Servas church and Maastricht-Pandhof made them richer than others in this corpus. The study found regional differences in choice of textiles and major differences between the settlement sites of the north and the cemeteries of the south, though both chronology and different uses of cloth could partially account for this. 184

Recent Books of Interest If the study answers some research questions it also raises others, but with its detailed information, excellent photographs, useful diagrams, and wide-ranging discussions it presents a model for what study of archaeological textiles can be. — Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Editor Cloth Seals: An Illustrated Reference Guide to the Identification of Lead Seals Attached to Cloth, by Stuart F. Elton (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2017). ISBN 978-0993324604. 409 pages, 330 photographs (mostly color), plus 47 black-and-white drawings. The book begins with a 37-page introduction to cloth seals found in and originating from the United Kingdom that covers terminology, types, and identification along with brief notes on the largely untapped potential of such seals to offer clues as to weaves, which sometimes leave impressions in the soft lead when the seal is attached, and even dye colors, from chemical traces trapped in the lead. This section also includes a short history of the use of seals and their context and dating. The bulk of the book’s content is 298 pages devoted to a list of seals, by general category groupings. It finishes with a few pages on identification resources and care of the objects. With this section, Elton achieves the book’s stated purpose of being primarily a guide to aid identification of cloth seals used in post-medieval and early modern industry and trade. There are numerous photographs of examples, many of which depict both faces of the subject. This will be a great resource for collectors and metal detectorists. Of more direct interest to researchers in clothing history and trade will be the notes on some seals that touch on their sources, offering hints into aspects of the cloth trade. These notes sometimes include the types of cloth the merchants dealt in, where they traded, and how long they operated. Alas, such information is not available for all of the illustrated seals. Appendices cover a timeline of events and legislation of the textile industry ­(almost all relating to England), types of cloth, known alnagers (officials charged with inspecting and sealing cloth) and their agents, privy marks of known sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clothworkers, distinctive identification features of cloth seals, and tubular cloth seals used by Dutch immigrant clothmakers in sixteenth- and ­seventeenth-century England. The index concentrates on names and places, with little on cloth itself. — Robert Charrette, La Belle Compagnie The Diversity of Dyes in History and Archaeology, edited by Jo Kirby (London: ­Archetype, 2017). ISBN 978-1909492530. 448 pages, 231 illustrations (most in color). The introduction to this collection is imperative to read, as it explains the attachment to the journal of the same name and its annual meetings. The book is lengthy, with forty-one articles and three abstracts along with a wealth of photographs (most in color), charts, graphs, and maps. All the articles address Eastern European subjects that are not widely known in the West. That said, they help broaden the reader’s knowledge of medieval dyes and the industry. Each of the book’s six sections encompasses a different aspect of dye or dye analysis. The articles in all but one of the sections (“The 18th and 19th Centuries and the 185

Recent Books of Interest Rise of Synthetic Dyes”) mostly remain within the medieval period, although several articles throughout the book migrate beyond it. For example, in the section titled “Dyes and Dyeing in Classical and Medieval Times,” the very first article investigates purple paint on walls in the Late Bronze Age—an interesting read, just not within the medieval period. The other eight articles in this section, as well as the following section (“The 15th to the 17th Century”), which consists of eleven articles mostly relating to the Middle Ages, will be compelling to the student of medieval dyes and dye scientists working in this period. One article in particular, “Dyes in Some Textiles from the Romanian Medieval Art Gallery,” by Irina Petroviciu, Jan Wouters, Ina Vanden Berghe, and Ileana Cretu, starts with an interesting theory that religious embroidery was done in Romania, but brocades and ceremonial costumes were made in western Europe (probably Venice). The article’s multiple color photographs, statistics, and graphs make for a complete and engaging read on dyes used in medieval Eastern Europe. Being that this book was published in 2017, the downside is that the research was done and the articles were written as early as 2003 and no later than 2007. Much of the research used approaches that were cutting-edge in their time but are possibly no longer relevant, as new scientific techniques have been developed since then. Still, this book is a fascinating collection of well-written and well-researched articles, diverse enough that it should warrant interest from both scientific and nonscientific dye enthusiasts alike. — Jennifer Ratcliffe, Clearwater, Florida Dress and Personal Appearance in Late Antiquity: The Clothing of the Middle and Lower Classes, by Faith Pennick Morgan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2018). ISBN 978-9004343955. 243 pages, 209 illustrations (169 in color). Late Antiquity, broadly the period from the fourth to the eighth century, was until comparatively recently shunned by classical scholars and many medievalists alike. From the standpoint of the textile historian, on the other hand, the wealth of the surviving archaeological evidence—particularly the complete garments from cemeteries of that period in Egypt—and the iconographic and written sources that throw light on them are immensely attractive. The University of Kent’s Leverhulme project on Visualising the Late Antique City offers an appropriate context for the present volume. Dress and Personal Appearance is in effect an amalgam of three independent studies—on the apotropaic meanings embodied in the decoration of Late Antique tunics, the life of clothes (repair, reuse, recycling), and the insights to be gained from replicating and wearing specific extant garments—set in a broader matrix under an umbrella title. Each study offers a new and original approach based on thorough exploration of the sources. The multiple appendices, revealing the book’s origin as a thesis, are extremely valuable tools in their own right: The catalogue of 187 selected tunics in museum collections, for example, is the product of extensive fieldwork. There is a wide spectrum of relevant illustration. Criticism may be directed to minor points in the discussion and significant omissions from the bibliography (some works are cited, but were not apparently 186

Recent Books of Interest read). Several obvious questions, such as the chronology of the introduction of flared tunics with gores and the lengthening over time of male dress, are not raised. Written sources are quoted only in translation, which glosses over some of the real difficulties of interpretation. Why should a medievalist consult this book? The ways in which power and status were displayed in medieval costume owes much to the form and decoration of Late Antique clothing; in a parallel sphere, the Christian church ensured a very long life for the dalmatic, pallium, and casula. Early Church fathers preached against the wearing of apotropaic (i.e., pagan) symbols, yet the practice persisted—but for how long? Careful husbanding of apparel through repair and reuse—and in many cases resale—is a well-attested phenomenon in medieval Europe, as well as in the Roman Empire. There is a great deal of food for thought in this work, and in its striking images. Brill’s defensive pricing, however, may limit the circulation which it manifestly deserves. — John Peter Wild, University of Manchester Dress and Society: Contributions from Archaeology, edited by Toby F. Martin and Rosie Weetch (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017). ISBN 978-1785703157. 184 pages, 37 black-and-white illustrations. Inspired by interdisciplinary dialogue at conferences about dress and social identity, this book contains eight papers demonstrating current approaches to dress in archaeology. In a deliberate reaction to typological/chronological study of metal dress accessories and archaeology as a means to reconstruction, the editors emphasise an approach which prioritises archaeological dress finds as markers of social identity and their interaction with the body. I would point out that typological/chronological studies enable us to make societal observations about the constructions of grave deposits, marking, for example, ethnic allegiances and recognising that heirlooms as well as newer items may make up the created “image” of the dead person; and that we have by no means exhausted the topic of reconstruction, as any furnished grave found at any time can change our perceptions. It was disappointing that the editors mentioned only “two academic journals” for dress history (Costume and Textile History), ignoring our own, which has published numerous articles using archaeological evidence. Several chapters concern material within or close to the medieval period. Tatiana Ivleva’s essay on first- to third-century Roman brooches accepts that brooches are “indicative of … identities, such as gender, status, age, social status, and ethnicity” but also considers the messages brooches may have sent out to observers, the objects’ acquisition of their own histories, and changes of association as artefacts were removed from their original context. Stephanie Hoss examines the Roman military belt, a visual and audible sign of status which affected the posture of the wearer and which went through fashion changes as soldiers relocated or were killed (their bodies pillaged and their equipment lost) so that new recruits had to be equipped afresh. Alexandra Knox’s study of “Middle Anglo-Saxon Dress Accessories in Life and Death” considers items collected by the Anglo-Saxons as amulets or heirlooms and includes a plea for attention to the cultural value of dress accessories from settlement sites. Eleanor Standley (“‘Best’ 187

Recent Books of Interest Gowns, Kerchiefs and Pantofles; Gifts of Apparel in the North-east of England in the Sixteenth Century”) focuses more on textiles and garments than the other authors do, summarising the limited archaeological evidence and comparing the evidence from wills and inventories. Natasha Awais-Dean (“Redressing the Balance: Dress Accessories of the Non-elites in Early Modern England”) considers surviving examples of these easily lost artefacts, particularly men’s hat ornaments and buttons. Stuart Campbell also looks at non-elite dress accessories, questioning assumptions about the annular “highland” brooches viewed as characteristic of early modern Scotland. The book’s front cover illustration is challenging: a colour plate from an 1815 historical costume book. It is a matter of individual taste whether the potential reader is intrigued or repelled by it. If the latter (and I was among them), remember the old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” — G. R. O-C. The Medieval Clothier, by John S. Lee (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2018). ISBN 9781783273171. 393 pages, 36 illustrations (10 in color). It is surprising that we have had to wait so long for someone to tackle the clothiers, since they transformed English clothmaking in the later fifteenth century, but it was worth the wait. John Lee has soaked up all the relevant literature, plus added his own discoveries from wills, chancery documents, and regional archives, to produce a readable, thorough, and wide-ranging survey. It is written for the general reader, while providing much of interest to professional historians. The introduction and first two chapters cover the period leading up to the great expansion in the mid-fifteenth century and background on cloth manufacture and sale. The other four chapters deal in turn with regional development, government and regulation, clothiers’ place in society, and biographies of famous clothiers. The illustrations are excellent, and the appendices, particularly one on small-town production, are very helpful. I found the analysis of marketing cloth to be outstanding. The following faint criticisms are therefore ones of emphasis and perspective and do not detract from Lee’s considerable scholarship or the valued contribution he makes to his subject. The title is a little misleading, since the book concentrates on the period 1450 to 1550; clothiers were most influential in the early sixteenth century, and (as the author cogently argues) their capitalist and entrepreneurial tendencies are distinctly modern rather than medieval in character. The definition of the clothier as “involved in both the making and marketing of woollen cloth” is incomplete, even though this is the type the author emphasises. Leading clothiers who made and marketed cloth were by far the most influential, but there were also those who made cloth and sold it to others who marketed it, and those who assembled large amounts of cheaper cloths that they may have had dyed and finished before they sold them. These were all considered clothiers in the sixteenth century. There is only one chapter, “Identifying Clothiers,” and some concluding remarks that cover clothiers’ economic achievements during the key century 1450–1550 and, if anything, the author understates their accomplishments. He sees the clothier emerging in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and there is an impression of 188

Recent Books of Interest inevitable and steady progression from that point forwards. But there was a critical juncture during the mid-fifteenth century when Antwerp’s merchants and cloth finishers must have made it clear that they wanted a standard-quality unfinished broadcloth that would undercut Flemish cloth at Bruges. It was this strategic refocus that forced English clothiers to reconfigure their operations and control the total production system. The leading clothiers’ greatest achievement therefore was to standardise and industrialise the making of Tudor broadcloth. The low cost of labour was a factor, but more importantly it was a question of capital and organisation, which the author acknowledges. It was no mean accomplishment for clothiers to maintain exacting standards with little regulation other than for size and marking of cloths. — John Oldland, Bishop’s University Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia, by Javier Irigoyen-García (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). ISBN 978-1487501600. 321 pages, 19 black-and-white illustrations. The innovation presented in this book is an analysis centred on Moorish clothing in early modern Iberia, but with a scope much broader than the Moriscos themselves. In fact, sartorial Moorishness imbued Christian aristocracy and had a clear ceremonial value. In this sense Part I (chapters 1 to 4) is devoted to the Christian reality and Part II (chapters 5 to 8) to that of the Moriscos. Moorish garments were part of aristocratic ceremonial clothing until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Beyond that, probably because of fashion transformation in Europe, they disappeared from aristocratic men’s daily wardrobes and were instead relegated to ceremonial equestrian performances known as the “game of canes.” Every aspect of these games’ organization was permeated by the evocation of Moorishness, including its costume: leather boots, a Moorish tunic, a hooded cape, a turban, and a leather shield. For Iberian kings, the game was central to their display of power, and, as such, was promoted by every monarch from the sixteenth century till Philip IV (1621–65), whose reign marks its slow decline. Participants’ involvement in these games, dressed as Moors, was a mark of aristocracy; for municipal elites, this was even a rite of passage to nobility. If dressing as a Moor was a distinction between commoners and elites and a locus for negotiating nobility, this affected only Old Christians and the Grenadian aristocracy, well integrated in the Spanish court. Paradoxically, Moriscos didn’t dress like Moors. In daily life, the author states, they displayed no garment differences in early modern Iberia. Laws prohibiting Moriscos from wearing vestidos de moros [garments of Moors], such as Phillip II’s 1567 decree, intersected with general sumptuary laws, regulating the use of luxurious textiles across class lines. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, some specific garments could distinguish some subgroups, particularly among women. Still, only on such occasions as dance and music performances or martial exhibitions were Moriscos asked to perform a certain specific form of Moorishness. In fact, the idea of distinctive Moorish clothing was consolidated in the Iberian imaginary only gradually and after their expulsion (1609–14). Imagining the Moriscos as differently 189

Recent Books of Interest dressed bodies presented an ethnoreligious identity through sartorial difference that did not really exist. The book is well supported by a solid theoretical apparatus, primary sources, and a vast bibliography. Some doubts arise about the Moriscos of Granada, whose cultural features were quite different from those of their Iberian counterparts—an aspect which is not sufficiently emphasised in this work, as well as the fact that perhaps the laws against Moorish garments were particularly addressed to them. Nevertheless, this well-written book undoubtedly constitutes an essential work on clothing and identity. — Filomena Barros, University of Évora MS.8932: A Medieval Embroidered Folded Almanac, by Jacqui Carey (Ottery St. Mary, Devon, UK: Carey Company, 2018). ISBN 978-1527216198. 176 pages, 293 illustrations (288 in color). Jacqui Carey’s MS.8932: A Medieval Embroidered Folded Almanac amply demonstrates the importance of studying medieval cultural objects specifically for their materiality. In this lushly illustrated book, Carey discusses the history of one of the earliest surviving examples of this type of folding almanac—MS 8932 in the Wellcome Collection, London—within the context of such books and their use and visual representation, and then delves deeply into its construction, focusing particularly on the embroidery of the cover. Through her detailed examination and diagramming of the elaborately layered embroidery structures, Carey clearly shows that the almanac cover exhibits well-developed techniques produced by a skilled hand. Such skill speaks to complexities of construction, the many different techniques and specialists involved in the making of medieval objects, and the time it took to make them. Carey does not present this skill as a new research revelation, but rather a continuing reinforcement and specific example of the material richness of medieval textile objects. The book is divided into several sections that make it easy to parse, whether the reader is most interested in the history of this particular manuscript or the construction techniques. As Carey’s textile background and personal interest lie primarily with small band, cord, and, most recently, sixteenth-century embroidery, she spends the bulk of the book describing the dense cover decoration with thorough explanations and many step-by-step illustrations. For the reader who is interested in learning the complex embroidery techniques used on the almanac cover, this book is a gold mine of detailed information and clear visual aids. For those less interested in the exact types of stitches used, Carey’s careful analysis and meticulous reconstructions point to the labor and expertise that were involved in creating the cover for the manuscript’s text, calendar, and astronomical charts. Carey’s object-based research is quite important in furthering our understanding of fifteenth-century English almanacs. The text of MS 8932 can be transcribed, photographed, photocopied, and digitized without losing the meaning. Such copies can be studied by multiple scholars simultaneously. However, photographs of the bindings and especially the cover do not offer enough detail, as the layers of stitches obscure each other and the anchoring substrate. It is only by examining the object 190

Recent Books of Interest as a physical object (three-dimensional, flexible, and layered) that the researcher can truly understand the skill and materials used in its making. Carey’s own skill and deep understanding of cords and embroidery make her reconstruction that much more compelling. — Carla Tilghman, University of Kansas, Lawrence Tapestries from the Burrell Collection, by Elizabeth Cleland and Lorraine Karafel (London: Philip Wilson, 2017). ISBN 978-1781300503. 724 pages, fully illustrated in color. The Power of Textiles: Tapestries of the Burgundian Dominions (1363–1477), by Katherine Anne Wilson (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018). ISBN 978-2503533933. 221 pages, 28 black-and-white illustrations. Tapestries from the Burrell Collection is a sumptuous book. It presents the first definitive published catalogue of the tapestries purchased by Sir William Burrell (1861–1958) which were given, along with other objects in his vast collection, to the City of Glasgow in 1944. The tapestries, which Burrell considered the most valuable part of his collection, range from late medieval to the seventeenth or early eighteenth century. The catalogue is organized geographically, subdivided according to subject matter. It lists 151 items, each illustrated with at least one colour plate, plus additional figures showing details, ultraviolet images, and comparative artworks, both paintings and textiles. The content of each tapestry is described, with details of materials, techniques and quality of workmanship, unusual features (such as the use of human hair for beards and hair in no. 24), its comparative rarity, repairs and reworkings, and present state as well as the histories of its ownership and exhibition. The book is much more than a catalogue, however. It includes details of the Burrell Collection Tapestry Archive as well as introductory essays on Burrell’s travels and collecting practices and his determination to display his acquisitions; on the history of maintenance and care of tapestries, a necessity well understood by Burrell himself; on the viewpoint of the conservator, showing what can be learned by detailed observation, examination of the backs of tapestries, and modern techniques such as raking light and ultraviolet photography; and on a study of dye sources carried out on fibres from a group of tapestries believed to be woven in a late sixteenth-century workshop at Barcheston, England. Appendices cover the collectors and dealers who previously owned the tapestries; lists of the exhibitions and installations which have included them; and the museums, galleries, and cathedrals which benefited from Burrell’s loans. Finally the tapestries are listed by accession and catalogue number. The authors begin modestly with the statement “We do not intend this to be the final word on the tapestries discussed in this volume … we hope that our entries will provide the foundation material on which further research can build.” Undoubtedly this book will be a valuable reference for tapestry scholars for the foreseeable future. Katherine Anne Wilson approaches tapestries of the Burgundian dominions from the point of view of object biography, including the sourcing of materials, ordering and production, delivery and display of the finished products, transportation to different locations, repairs, and recycling. All these stages in the life cycle of the textiles were of course conceived and managed by human beings, and we are presented with insights 191

Recent Books of Interest into not only the ducal households who were the patrons and recipients of the finest tapestries, but the networks of diplomatic and marital alliances supported by the gifts of textiles and also the networks of the urban tapissiers and merchands who supplied them. Both dukes and suppliers were intent on building dynasties; the suppliers also had fingers in many pies, sometimes, for example, acting as wine merchants as well as textile makers, moving between courts and urban fairs, supplying to urban households as well as ducal ones. The evidence is drawn from a formidable range of documentary sources: accounts of the expenditures of the dukes of Burgundy (Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, Philip the Good, and Charles the Bold); inventories of goods taken at the deaths of the dukes and two duchesses; probate inventories from Dijon and wills from Tournai and Douai; references to the production and ownership of tapestries from the archives of Tournai and Douai; and records of the ducal art collections and art production in Burgundian territories. The author skilfully extracts stories from these records, pursuing gifts of textiles and the figures associated with them: brides constantly reminded of their familial allegiance by the motifs on the textile furnishings they took into a new household; the ill-fated crusade of John the Fearless, lavishly equipped with textile chambers and tents, followed by the necessary lavish gifting of textiles by his father to the Sultan in order to redeem John from captivity; the “tapestry chambers” which conveyed power and authority or memorialised a previous owner after his or her death. It is a pity that the illustrations are all in black and white and some are rather small, though they are all apt. The text would have benefited from better copyediting: There are several typing errors, and the recurrent misspelling Cruxifiction alongside the correct Crucifixion is rather shocking in a book of this quality. However, it is well worth reading, not just for its wealth of information but for the up-to-date ways of interpreting that information. Superficially at least, these two books on tapestry could not appear more different, in physical appearance and in content, the first commemorating one of the world’s finest collections of surviving tapestries, the other drawing on documentary evidence of tapestries that have almost all disappeared. However, both volumes recognise that textiles require more maintenance than other valued possessions and collectibles, and they were often subjected to reworking and change of use, even being cut up in the process, and that these stages in their life history are as worthy of consideration as at each tapestry’s finest hour, the point of reception in its original form as commissioned. — G. R. O-C. Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence: Wool, Silk, Painting, edited by ­Cecilie Hollberg (Florence: Giunti, 2017). ISBN 978-8809865150. 288 pages, 136 color illustrations. It should be said at the outset that this is a beautiful book: lavishly illustrated pages between cloth covers printed to replicate the drapery behind the seated figure of St. Martin in Lorenzo di Bicci’s Saint Martin Enthroned between Two Angels (1380–90).

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Recent Books of Interest This is the catalog that accompanied the exhibition of the same name at Florence’s Accademia Gallery. The book begins with a series of essays that address such topics as the movement of silk in Italy and the Mediterranean in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, the F ­ lorentine economy, decorated textiles depicted in Florentine painting, Florentine textile manufacture—both wool and silk—and silk garments. The essays are relatively brief, but consistently readable and informative, with contributors from Germany and Israel as well as Italy—the always reliable Roberta Orsi Landini among them. “Tortoises, Phoenixes, and Parrots: Decorated Fabrics in Florentine Painting of the 14th Century” by Juliane von Fircks is particularly engaging. The author traces the depiction of rich textiles in artwork of the period, textiles that would have been immediately recognizable to the viewer “in the clothing of the noble personages, in the textile furnishings in city buildings and sacred spaces, or in the vestments of the priest who celebrated Mass in front of the painted altarpiece.” She documents the ways in which the changing tastes of consumers were reflected in artwork of the period and examines a number of fabrics as they are depicted in the garments of saints and other religious figures. The essays are followed by a catalog of the works broken down by the sections of the exhibition, among them Mediterranean Geometric Patterns, Luxury from Asia, Winged Creatures, and Forbidden Luxury. Aside from the expected textile panels, included are such diverse objects as a shield bearing the coat of arms of the Arte della Lana, the Florentine wool guild; business documents, ledgers, and letters; paintings and manuscripts; and a few garments (including the almost legendary pourpoint of Charles de Blois). More careful copyediting might have corrected a few errors, such as a detail of a painting correctly identified as by Nardo di Cione in the text but credited to Bernardo Daddi in the caption. There appear also to be minor errors in the translation from Italian to English, but they in no way undermine the value of the work here. The book ends with a glossary of terms used for fabrics and clothing, which lists “both historical Italian and modern English terms … followed by the correspondent Italian term,” an invaluable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike. — Tawny Sherrill, California State University, Long Beach Tricks of the Medieval Trades: The Trinity Encyclopedia: A Collection of ­Fourteenth-Century English Craft Recipes, by Mark Clarke (London: Archetype, 2018). ISBN 978-1909492653. 132 pages, 15 black-and-white illustrations. Tricks of the Medieval Trades contains a transcription, discussion, and analysis of two copies of a fourteenth-century manuscript of various craft recipes. Within its pages are explanations for how to make such pigments as white lead, red lead, azure, and verdigris; how to dye fabrics and leather in various colors; how to make parchment and chamois; how to counterfeit pearls, coral, and amber; how to make black and white soap; and finally, a selection of recipes for confits and other confectionary.

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Recent Books of Interest This is one of several examples of such a collection of recipes. Other examples of this genre, known colloquially as commonplace books, miscellanies, or “books of secrets,” cover similar ground. There are a few aspects of this publication that make it stand out, however. The first is the depth of knowledge that Mark Clarke brings to the subject matter. In particular, one of his other books, The Crafte of Lymmyng and the Maner of S­ teynyng, is a monumental collection of all known Middle English technical instructions of this kind, numbering over 1,500 recipes. As a result, his analysis and discussion of this previously untranscribed manuscript convey a familiarity with the topic that adds significantly to the text itself. It also allows him to add explanatory annotations to unclear passages based on knowledge gained from other writings of the time. The other unusual aspect of this work is the level of detail in the various recipes, in many cases clearly the result of personal experience. There are many recipes extant describing how to make lead pigment, but the one in the Trinity Encyclopedia goes into detail about exactly how to perform each step, which equipment to use, and what the temperature should be at each stage. A recipe for dyeing a leather skin red mentions turning the edges of the leather inward when sewing it into a bag to help prevent leaks when the dye is poured into it. Some recipes contain addenda along the lines of “this is what the recipe says, but if I were doing this, I would do it this different way.” The Trinity Encyclopedia manuscript focuses primarily on recipes useful to painters and limners. Of the seventy recipes in this book, textile-related content is limited to six recipes for processing and dyeing leather, two for dyeing textiles, and four for making soap. The quality of these recipes, however, is solidly above that usually found in medieval recipe collections, and the book is worth reading for those interested in learning more about the details of medieval crafts, as well as those interested in attempting to recreate them. — Drea Leed, Springfield, Virginia The Velvets in the Collection of the Costume Gallery in Florence / I Velluti nella Collezione della Galleria del Costume di Firenze, by Roberta Orsi Landini (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2017). ISBN 978-8856403350. 328 pages, 433 color illustrations. In this lavishly illustrated, bilingual volume, Roberta Orsi Landini presents a study of Italian velvets based on the collection of the Costume Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence. The introductory chapters address velvet production in Italy, beginning with an explanation of the process of velvet weaving, followed by detailed descriptions of various weave structures, accompanied by clear illustrations, allowing the reader to grasp the highly technical discussions that follow. (At the end of the volume, further practical information is given in tables and weave diagrams.) Separate chapters consider the difficult question of attributing velvets to the most important centres of production (Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Venice, and Milan). These offer new insights through detailed comparisons between the extant velvets and legislation promulgated by the silk guilds, with invaluable illustrations of many different selvedge types. Only the unqualified use of kermes to denote all of the crimson insect dyes in the velvets could have been addressed more accurately with reference to the work of Dominique Cardon. 194

Recent Books of Interest The final chapters are devoted to velvets in the collection of the Costume Gallery. Almost four hundred pieces are catalogued, each one illustrated and presented with a weave analysis and attribution—a formidable achievement. The examples range from the fifteenth century to the early nineteenth, but the main strength of the collection lies in velvets of the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth century. The long time span and the abundance of examples allow the reader to follow most of the major developments in velvet weaving. The progression is traced from fabrics that might have served different purposes to clearly demarcated types destined for either furnishing or dress. The discussion of the seventeenth-century Lucchese dress velvets known as contresemplé is particularly illuminating: showing how these voided velvets with small patterns in cut and uncut pile were designed with careful attention to economy of manufacture and to their suitability for tailoring. There is also an interesting consideration of simpler, small-patterned velvets woven on looms without a figure harness. Excellent illustrations of contemporary paintings enrich the volume, although they are not cited in the text, and there is no index or list of illustrations to help the reader. Among the most evocative images are the photographs of velvets in situ in the grand interiors of the Galleria Doria Pamphilij (Rome) and of Schloss Nymphenburg (Munich). This outstanding volume will undoubtedly be an essential reference tool for specialists, but it also offers a perfect introduction to the study of velvet, and is beautiful enough to beguile fashion and interior designers. — Lisa Monnas, London ALSO PUBLISHED

Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe, by Elizabeth Coatsworth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Leiden: Brill, 2018). ISBN 978-9004288706. A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, general editor, Susan J. Vincent (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). ISBN 978-1472557490. 6 vols., notably including vol. 1: In Antiquity, edited by Mary Harlow; vol. 2: In the Medieval Age, edited by Sarah-Grace Heller; vol. 3: In the Renaissance, edited by Elizabeth Currie. L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux: Naissance, Composition et Style d’un Chef-d’œuvre Médiéval, edited by Sylvette Lemagnen, Shirley Ann Brown, and Gale Owen-Crocker in collaboration with Cécile Binet, Pierre Bouet, and François Neveux, with editorial coordination by Clémentine Berthelot (Rouen: Point de Vues, 2018).

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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

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

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)

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 Vol. 11 (2015)

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

Contents of Previous Volumes 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 Vol. 12 (2016)

Grzegorz Pac The Attire of the Virgin Mary and Female Rulers in   Iconographical Sources of the Ninth to Eleventh   Centuries: Analogues, Interpretations,   Misinterpretations Megan Cavell Sails, Veils, and Tents: The Segl and Tabernacle of Old   English Christ III and Exodus Thomas M. Izbicki Linteamenta altaria: The Care of Altar Linens in the   Medieval Church John Block Friedman Coats, Collars, and Capes: Royal Fashions for Animals   in the Early Modern Period Frances Pritchard A Set of Late-Fifteenth-Century Orphreys Relating to   Ludovico Buonvisi, a Lucchese Merchant, and   Embroidered in a London Workshop Jonathan C. Cooper Academical Dress in Late Medieval and Renaissance   Scotland Camilla Luise Dahl Dressing the Bourgeoisie: Clothing in Probate Records   of Danish Townswomen, ca. 1545–1610 Vol. 13 (2017)

Gale R. Owen-Crocker The Significance of Dress in the Bayeux Tapestry Mark Chambers How Long Is a Launce? Units of Measure for Cloth in   Late Medieval Britain Ana Grinberg Robes, Turbans, and Beards: “Ethnic Passing” in   ­Decameron 10.9 Christine Meek Calciamentum: Footwear in Late Medieval Lucca Jane Bridgeman “Bene in ordene et bene ornata”: Eleonora d’Aragona’s   Description of Her Suite of Rooms in a Roman Palace   of the Late Fifteenth Century Jessica Finley The Lübeck Wappenröcke: Distinctive Style in ­   Fifteenth-Century German Fabric Armor

Contents of Previous Volumes Vol. 14 (2018)

Olga Magoula Multicultural Clothing in Sixth-Century Ravenna Anne Hedeager Krag Byzantine and Oriental Silks in Denmark, 800–1200 Monica L. Wright The Bliaut: An Examination of the Evidence in French   Literary Sources John Block Friedman Eyebrows, Hairlines, and “Hairs Less in Sight”: Female   Depilation in Late Medieval Europe Megan Tiddeman Lexical Exchange with Italian in the Textile and Wool   Trades in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries Karen Margrethe Hidden in Plain Black: The Secrets of the French Hood Høskuldsson

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Contents GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles MAREN CLEGG HYER Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon England ELIZABETH M. SWEDO Unfolding Identities:The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga HUGH M. THOMAS TINA ANDERLINI

Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216

Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe

ALEJANDRA CONCHA SAHLI Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders JOANNE W. ANDERSON The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art MONICA L.WRIGHT is Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 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.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Cover image: Detail of cope in opus ciprense (end of the thirteenth century; Museo della Cattedrale, Anagni). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma.

Editors Wright, Netherton & Owen-Crocker

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Edited by Monica L. Wright, Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker