Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Volume 9 [9] 1843838567, 9781843838562

Table of contents :
Illustrations page vi
Tables vii
Contributors viii
Preface xi
1. Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari / Antonietta Amati Canta 1
2. The Marriage of the Year (1028) / Lucia Sinisi 45
3. Clothing as Currency in Pre-Norman Ireland? / Mark Zumbuhl 55
4. Cistercian Clothing and Its Production at Beaulieu Abbey, 1269–70 / John Oldland 73
5. Clothing and Textile Materials in Medieval Sweden and Norway / Eva I. Andersson 97
6. The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist Writers / John Block Friedman 121
7. Domestic Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England: Imagery, Placement, and Ownership / Susan E. James 139
Recent Books of Interest 161
Contents of Previous Volumes 167

Citation preview

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Contents ANTONIETTA AMATI CANTA Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari LUCIA SINISI The Marriage of the Year (1028) 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 Topics in this volume range widely throughout the European Middle Ages. Three contributions concern terminology for dress. Two deal with multicultural medieval Apulia: an examination of clothing terms in surviving marriage contracts from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, and a close focus on an illuminated document made for a prestigious wedding. Turning to Scandinavia, there is an analysis of clothing materials from Norway and Sweden according to gender and social distribution. Further papers consider the economic uses of cloth and clothing: wool production and the dress of the Cistercian community at Beaulieu Abbey based on its 1269–1270 account book, and the use of clothing as pledge or payment in medieval Ireland. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of dagged clothing and its negative significance to moralists, and of the painted hangings that were common in homes of all classes in the sixteenth century.

Cover image: Detail from the Baldishol Tapestry, Hedmark, Norway, twelfth century (Oslo, Norway, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, no. OK-02862). Photo: Ørnelund, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, by permission.

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

www.boydellandbrewer.com

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9

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MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

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9•

Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker



Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 9

Medieval Clothing and Textiles ISSN 1744-5787

General Editors Robin Netherton Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

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



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

Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 9

edited by

ROBIN NETHERTON GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2013 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 2013 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-84383-856-2

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

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. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.

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Contents Illustrations







page vi



Tables

vii

Contributors

viii

Preface

xi

1

Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari Antonietta Amati Canta



1

2

The Marriage of the Year (1028) Lucia Sinisi



45

3

Clothing as Currency in Pre-Norman Ireland? Mark Zumbuhl

4

Cistercian Clothing and Its Production at Beaulieu Abbey, 1269–70 John Oldland

5

Clothing and Textile Materials in Medieval Sweden and Norway Eva I. Andersson

97

6

The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist Writers John Block Friedman

121

7

Domestic Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England: Imagery, Placement, and Ownership Susan E. James

139

Recent Books of Interest Contents of Previous Volumes



55

73

161



167

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

Illustrations Bridal Gifts in Bari Fig. 1.1 Location of Bari, capital city of Apulia, in southern Italy

page 2

The Marriage of 1028 Fig. 2.1 Document marking the “morning gift” from Mel to Alfarana, December 1028 Fig. 2.2 Detail of bridal couple from Figure 2.1

46 47

Materials in Sweden and Norway Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7

Vair garment, from the Baldishol Tapestry, Norway, twelfth century Main materials for clothing, by period Sources of Flemish woollens, by period Furs mentioned for use in garments, 1200–1389 Materials mentioned for clothing and fabric, by country and period Specific places of origin for imported wool fabrics, 1200–1500 Furs mentioned for use in garments, 1200–1500, by country

107 110 111 113 115 115 117

Dagged Clothing Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5

Bronze statuette from Syria, ca. A.D. 200 Initial showing fool, from an English psalter, ca. 1460 Executioner, from Life of Saint Alban, England, ca. 1200 Europeans and Saracens, from Secrets de l’Histoire Naturelle, France, ca. 1460 Josaphat and tempters, from Speculum Historiale, France, 1464

122 130 135 135 136

Painted Cloths in England Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3

Block-printed linen, ca. fourteenth century Entry of Edward VI into Cheapside, 1547, from a later engraving “The Vase Bearers,” detail from “The Triumphs of Caesar,” Andrea Mantegna, late fifteenth century vi

143 144 152

Tables Bridal Gifts in Bari Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 1.3

Clothing terminology from marriage inventories in Bari: Garments Clothing terminology from marriage inventories in Bari: Accessories Clothing terminology from marriage inventories in Bari: Jewellery

page 28

38



41

Cistercian Clothing Production Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4

Beaulieu Abbey Exemplar account for clothing Consumption of cloth and clothing at Beaulieu, 1269­–70 Estimated manufacturing costs, size, and weight for winter and summer cloth at Beaulieu, 1269–70 Percentage distribution of costs for manufacturing cloth at Beaulieu (1269–70), Laleham (ca. 1294–95), and Prato (1384–85)

80 84 91 95

Materials in Sweden and Norway Table 5.1 Prices for fabrics in Kopparberget, Sweden, 1347 Table 5.2 Sources of imported woollens, in order of frequency of references in documents

vii

102 103

Contributors ROBIN NETHERTON (Editor) is a costume historian specializing in Western ­ uropean clothing of the Middle Ages and its interpretation by artists and historians. E Since 1982, she has given lectures and workshops on practical aspects of medieval dress and on costume as an approach to social history, art history, and literature. A journalist by training, she also works as a professional editor. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER (Editor) is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. She is Director of a five-year project funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council on the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 and Co-Investigator of a three-year Leverhulme-sponsored project on Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources. She is also General Editor of An Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles ca. 450–1450 (2012). Recent books include Medieval Textiles of the British Isles AD 450–1100: An Annotated Bibliography (2007; with Elizabeth Coatsworth) and Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (2004). ANTONIETTA AMATI CANTA taught Germanic philology in the Faculty of ­Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Bari. She has published articles of a linguistic-philological nature on Gothic and medieval English. Her book Meffium, Morgincap, Mundium: Consuetudini matrimoniali longobarde nella Bari medievale (2006) focuses on the presence of the Langobards in Apulia. EVA I. ANDERSSON teaches history of material culture and fashion history in the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests focus on clothing in a social context and how clothes relate to concepts of gender and class. She has recently completed a study of gender, class, and clothing in Sweden in the period 1500–1830. JOHN BLOCK FRIEDMAN is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of ­Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His most recent book is Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers: ­Transgressive Clothing, Class, and Culture in the Late Middle Ages (2010). He is coauthor (with Kathrin Giogoli and Kristen Figg) of a forthcoming edition, translation, and study of Libro de las Maravillas del Mundo.

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Contributors SUSAN E. JAMES, a historian and independent researcher, received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University. She is the author of Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (1999) and The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 1485–1603: Women as Consumers, Patrons and Painters (2009). She is working on a new book, tentatively titled Women’s Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material Culture. JOHN OLDLAND is Professor Emeritus at Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Canada. He is currently working on a book on the late medieval English woollens industry. Among his other research interests are late medieval and early Tudor trade and the commercial life of early Tudor London. LUCIA SINISI is Associate Professor of Germanic philology at the University of Bari. Besides publishing various articles, she is the author of two monographic works: The Land of Cokaygne (2001) and Hail seint Michel with the lange sper: “Salute, san Michele dalla lunga lancia!” (2008). Her current research interests include linguistic and cultural traces of Langobard presence in Apulia. MARK ZUMBUHL has worked for the past three years as Research Assistant with the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project at the University of Manchester, with special responsibility for Celtic languages and Old English. His research interests include medieval historiography and the representations of material culture in text and manuscript. He is now a research fellow at Trinity College, Dublin, and is working on a project investigating the development of national histories in English, French, and Welsh manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman period.

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Preface Volume 9 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles reflects the eclecticism of our subject, ranging from Scandinavia through England and Ireland to southern Italy, and addressing textiles, furs, finished garments, and soft furnishings. Its sources are chiefly nonliterary texts and also art. Antonietta Amati Canta examines the evidence for garments, dress accessories, and personal jewelry among the dowry provisions in marriage contracts of the multicultural city of Bari. In a companion article, Lucia Sinisi discusses one early­eleventh-century cartula, uniquely illustrated with a miniature of the bride and groom in what may have been their bridal finery. Trousseaux feature again, along with wills, inventories, bills of sale, and magistrate’s records, in Eva Andersson’s investigation of the consumption of textiles, furs, and clothing in medieval Sweden and Norway. English and French moralistic writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries abhorred the fashion of dagged garments; John Friedman investigates the development of dagging to show how its associations with religious or ethnic alterity, fools, and entertainers both contributed to and reflected the hostility of the moralists when dagging became popular in western Europe. Mark Zumbuhl teases out references in law codes, records of property transactions, hagiography, The Book of Rights, and chronicles to deduce that in medieval Ireland garments could be used as grants, pledges, stipends, and payments of fines or forfeitures. Susan James uses wills and inventories as well as records of trade and manufacture to illuminate the subject of the painted wall hangings that were ubiquitous soft furnishings in sixteenth-century England, examining their functions, the images depicted on them, and their relative value. Turning from the luxurious and decorative to the utilitarian, John Oldland examines the production of clothing for the Cistercian community at Beaulieu Abbey from the wardrobe accounts of 1269–70. The Cistercians were major raw wool producers in late medieval England, and also used their wool to make the simple, utilitarian garments worn by the monks and lay brothers in their communities. Once again, the editors express gratitude to the many scholars in related disciplines who have so generously lent their expertise as peer reviewers for article submissions to this series. We continue to consider for publication in this journal both independent submissions as well as 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) xi

Preface and [email protected] (for Leeds). Potential authors for Medieval Clothing and Textiles should send a 300-word synopsis to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, English, American Studies and Creative Writing, Samuel Alexander Building, The University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK; e-mail [email protected]. For author guidelines, see http://www.distaff.org/MCTguidelines.pdf. Authors interested in submitting a book proposal for our subsidia series “­Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles” should apply using the publication proposal form on the Web site of our publisher, Boydell & Brewer, at http://www.boydellandbrewer.com. We encourage potential authors of monographs or collaborative books for this series to discuss their ideas with the General Editors before making a formal proposal.

xii

Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari

Antonietta Amati Canta

The archives of the Basilica of St. Nicholas and of the Cathedral of Bari, capital city of Apulia, the southern Italian region that stretches along the coast of the Adriatic Sea (fig. 1.1), contain many public and private notarial acts, which have been partially published in the Codice Diplomatico Barese-Pugliese.1 Among the private documents, which include sales, donations, leases, wills, inheritances, etc., are marriage contracts. These are dated by the year of the empire or of the reign of the ruling sovereign, and the month (but not always the day). They may therefore be ascribed to the Byzantine or Greek period (888–1071), the Norman-Swabian period (1071–1266), or the ­Angevin period (1266–1442). All the extant and edited marriage contracts, from the oldest fragmentary example dating to November 971 to the last, drawn up on Feb. 17, 1397, testify to the practical application of marriage law in force in the then multicultural city of Bari. This law derived from the merging of two originally distinct socio-juridical traditions, the Roman

Translated from Italian by Lucia Sinisi and Christopher Williams with additional suggestions by Christine Meek.    1 From a series containing a collection of both public and private acts, drafted in Latin on parchment between the tenth century and the eighteenth century, from various Apulian archives. The first 19 volumes are edited as Codice Diplomatico Barese (henceforth CDB) by the Commissione provinciale di Archeologia e Storia Patria (Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1897–1971). The continuation, vols. 20–35, is titled Codice Diplomatico Pugliese (henceforth CDP) in order to give it a more regional dimension (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 1975–2010). The texts in the archive of the Basilica of St. Nicholas consist of 1,693 documents, dated from 939 to 1850, edited up to 1439. The texts preserved in the Cathedral in the Archivio del Capitolo Metropolitano consist of 1,092 documents, dated from 952 to 1980, edited up to 1434. Citations to CDB and CDP appear in this article with the volume number, the document number, and the year of the document. Each volume has an individual title, reflecting location and period, noted here only for the volumes containing the quoted documents. The last volume, CDP 35: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (1385–1434), ed. Corinna Drago Tedeschini (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 2010), was published during the final stages of preparation of this article. I will consider it in a future publication.

Antonietta Amati Canta

Fig. 1.1: Location of Bari, capital city of Apulia, in southern Italy. Map: Antonietta Amati Canta and Domingo Cozzolino.



Bridal Gifts in Bari and the Germanic,2 and it survived for a surprisingly long time, throughout the various regimes that controlled the city until the end of the Middle Ages and beyond. In the course of research for a book-length study on the penetration and subsequent assimilation of Langobard marriage institutions into the customary law in force in the city of Bari in the Middle Ages,3 I became aware of the rich evidence for garments, dress accessories, and personal jewellery contained in the accounts of dowry provisions in marriage contracts:4 It was the custom in Bari to include a detailed list of the goods with which the bride was endowed,5 along with a note specifying their monetary value.6 The documents selected for the purpose of this paper provide an almost complete picture of women’s clothing in Bari, a multiethnic city containing, along with Latin people, Greeks, Langobards, Franks, Saracens, Slavs, Armenians, and wealthy Jewish communities. Thanks to Apulia’s geographical position, continuous trading relationships existed with the East (Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Syria), elsewhere along the Adriatic (Venice, Dalmatia), and northern Africa, and there must have been a constant presence of foreign tradesmen in Bari, attracted by the cheap customs duties, by its trade fairs, and by its local goods as well as those that stopped in the port in transit.7 In addition, over the centuries Bari absorbed the cultures of the conquerors

   2 The Roman socio-juridical tradition was then represented by the Corpus iuris civilis; for this and preceding practice, see Mario Caravale, Ordinamenti giuridici dell’Europa medievale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 26 and 61–65. The Langobardic tradition was represented by a series of royal regulations and the later autonomous legislative production of the Beneventan princes; see Claudio Azzara and Stefano Gasparri, eds., Le Leggi dei Longobardi: Storia, memoria e diritto di un popolo germanico, 2nd ed. (Rome: Viella, 2005).    3 Antonietta Amati Canta, Meffium, morgincap, mundium: Consuetudini matrimoniali longobarde nella Bari medievale (Bari: Palomar, 2006).    4 Among the edited documents there are fifty (of which four are fragmentary) drafted in Bari relating to promises of marriage, or to engagements, consignments, or acknowledgements of receipt of dos or corredum, endowments of meffium, or grantings of morgincap; for the purpose of the present paper, nineteen marriage contracts have been selected.    5 See Teodoro Massa, Le consuetudini della città di Bari: Studi e ricerche, Documenti e Monografie, Commissione provinciale di archeologia e storia patria 5 (Bari: Vecchi, 1903), 105–7.    6 This might be expressed as gold solidi or silver miliaresi, Byzantine coins; unciae (later written as onciae), already a monetary unit in the Roman system; or tareni, of Arabic origin (Arabic tarīy, “fresh,” “recent,” i.e. “newly coined”) and very widespread in southern Italy after the Muslim conquest of Sicily. See Philip Grierson, “Coinage and Money in the Byzantine Empire 498–c. 1090,” in Moneta e scambi nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio 8 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM—Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1961), 414–24; Grierson, “Monete bizantine in Italia dal VII all’XI secolo,” in the same volume, 54; and Giovanni Battista Pellegrini, “L’elemento arabo nelle lingue neolatine con particolare riguardo all’Italia,” in L’Occidente e l’Islam nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio 12 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM—Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1965), 2:773.    7 See Franco Porsia, “Vita economica e sociale,” in Storia di Bari, ed. Francesco Tateo, vol. 2: Dalla conquista normanna al ducato sforzesco (Rome: Laterza, 1990), 208–13.



Antonietta Amati Canta who succeeded one another in the originally Roman-Byzantine region: Langobards,8 Normans,9 Swabians,10 and Angevins.11    8 According to sources including the Historia Langobardorum, compiled in the last decade of the eighth century by the Langobard Paul of Warnefrit, known as Paul the Deacon, the Langobards were a Germanic tribe from northern Europe who settled in Scania, southern Sweden, whence they migrated to the northern coast of mainland Europe, near the River Elbe, at the beginning of the first century. Toward the first half of the sixth century, they moved to Pannonia (Hungary), and in 569 to Italy, conquering the northeast territories and choosing Pavia as the capital of the new RomanBarbarian kingdom. From there minor groups, called farae, led by duces, headed toward central and southern Italy, where they founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. See Pauli Historia Langobardorum, ed. Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI–IX (Hanover, Germany: Hahn, 1878), 12–187; The Langobards Before the Frankish Conquest: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. Giorgio Ausenda, Paolo Delogu, and Chris Wickham (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2009); Stefano Maria Cingolani, Le storie dei Langobardi: dall’origine a Paolo Diacono (Rome: Viella, 1995), 129–43; A. P. Anthropos, L’età Longobarda a Pavia, a Benevento, in Puglia, vol. 1: Da Alboino a Cuniperto (569–700) (Puglia: Grafischena, 1986), 15–21 and 257–68; and Stefano Gasparri, I duchi Longobardi (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1978). From 605 the Langobards controlled almost all Apulia, including the Terra di Bari (the Apulian region around Bari); see Pasquale Corsi, “Dall’Antichità al Medioevo,” in Storia della Puglia, ed. Giosuè Musca, 2 vols. (Bari: Mario Adda, 1987), 1:125–46; Pasquale Corsi and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, “Dalla caduta dell’Impero d’Occidente al dominio Longobardo,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, vol. 1: Dalla preistoria al mille (Rome: Laterza, 1989), 257–83; and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, “I Langobardi,” in Musca, Storia della Puglia, 1:147–78. The end of the Regnum Langobardorum (774), which formally continued its existence as part of the Frankish kingdom, under Charlemagne, provoked the reaction of Arechis II, duke of Benevento, who took on the title of prince as a symbol of continuity of the tradition of the Langobard kingdom in opposition to Frankish power, which encouraged the migration of many Langobards from the northern and central territories, reinforcing the Germanic ethnic component in the south; see Paolo Delogu, “Il Regno Langobardo,” in Langobardi e bizantini, ed. Paolo Delogu, André Guillou, and Gherardo Ortalli (Turin: UTET, 1980), 1–216. However, internal unrest, administrative ineptitude, and the increasing number of Saracen raids resulted in the establishment of an emirate in Bari from 847 to 871. In 888 Langobard rule over Apulia ended, and Apulia was reannexed into the Byzantine Empire; see Vera von Falkenhausen, La dominazione bizantina nell’Italia meridionale dal IX all’XI secolo (Bari: Ecumenica, 1978). On the Saracen conquest of the city of Bari and the following brief annexation to the Beneventan dominion, see Giosuè Musca, L’emirato di Bari, 847–871 (Bari: Dedalo, 1964), and Giosuè Musca and Cesare Colafemmina, “Tra longobardi e Saraceni: L’emirato,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, 1:287–302. The unfinished Ystoriola Langobardorum Beneventi degentium by Erchempert, a Montecassino monk who was a native of a small village in the Duchy of Benevento, is a precious source for the events of the so-called Langobardia minor from 787 to 889; see Erchemperti Historia Langobardorum (sec. IX), trans. Arturo Carucci, 2 vols. (Salerno, Italy: Ripostes, 1995), chap. 80. See also Nicola Cilento, Italia meridionale Longobarda (Milan: Ricciardi, 1966); Ferdinand Hirsch and Michelangelo Schipa, La Longobardia meridionale (570–1077): Il ducato di Benevento: Il principato di Salerno (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1968; repr., N. Acocella); and Giuseppe Pochettino, I Langobardi nell’Italia meridionale (570–1080) (Caserta, Italy: Casa Editrice Moderna, 1930). The traditional intolerance of the people of Bari to Byzantine dominion, shared by the new ethnic components, both Langobard and Saracen, culminated in 1009 in a rebellion led by Melo da Bari, an aristocrat of Langobard descent, which contributed to ending Byzantine power over Apulia; Antonio Beatillo, Historia di Bari, principal città della Puglia (1637; repr., Sala Bolognese, Italy: Arnaldo Forni, 1978), 44.    9 Robert Guiscard, of the Norman Hauteville family, became Duke of Apulia and Calabria in 1059 and in 1071 conquered Bari, the last Byzantine city, thus unifying the region. On this point a wideranging historical excursus is offered by Jules Gay, L’ Italie méridionale et l’Empire byzantin: depuis



Bridal Gifts in Bari Great difficulties remain, however, in reconstructing a cross-section of Bari society from documents drafted in a Latin that was not only corrupt and ungrammatical, but also full of regional terms not recorded in dictionaries. If analysed from an etymological point of view they reflect the intercultural relationships that flourished in medieval Apulia:12 Tunica and faciolum are widely documented words, both in classical and medieval Latin (and are clearly explained in dictionaries),13 while robba, iuppa, succa, and dublectum are clearly latinized forms of words of—respectively—Germanic, Arabic,

  10

  11

  12

  13

l’avènement de Basile Ier jusqu’à la prise de Bari par les Normands (867–1071) (Paris: Fontemoing, 1904); see also Giosuè Musca, “Il secolo XI,” in Musca, Storia della Puglia, 1:221–36, and Giosuè Musca and Pasquale Corsi, “Da Melo al regno normanno,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, 2:5–55. The regime of the Normans—coarse “north men” of Germanic origin who rapidly absorbed surrounding French culture—was marked by multiethnicity. On immigration from Greek territories (mainland Greece, islands, Constantinople) and eastern territories (Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, etc.) see Agostino Pertusi, “Bisanzio e l’irradiazione della sua civiltà in Occidente nell’Alto Medioevo,” in Centri e vie di ­irradiazione della civiltà nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio 11 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM— Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1964), 75–133; Cesare Colafemmina, “L’insediamento ebraico,” in Archeologia di una città: Bari dalle origini al X secolo, ed. Giuseppe ­ Andreassi and ­Francesca Radina (Bari: Edipuglia, 1988), 513–21; Cesare Colafemmina, “Insediamenti e condizioni degli Ebrei nell’Italia meridionale e insulare,” in Gli Ebrei nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio 26 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM—Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1980), 197–227; and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, “Tra gli Armeni dell’Italia meridionale,” in Atti del Primo Simposio ­internazionale di arte armena: Bergamo, 28–30 giugno 1975, ed. Giulio Ieni and Levon Boghos Zekiyan (Venice: Accademia armena di San Lazzaro, 1978), 181–89; on multiculturalism, see Raffaele Licinio, “Economia e società nell’Alto Medioevo,” in Musca, Storia della Puglia, 1:194–96. The history of the region in Norman and Swabian times (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) merged with that of the Kingdom of Sicily, established in 1130 and at its highest point under Frederick II (1197–1250), son of Constance of Hauteville and Henry VI of Swabia. This dynasty, which reconquered Sicily after about three centuries of Arab dominion (827–1091), spread refined Arabic culture from its court in Palermo to Apulia; see Donald Matthew, The Norman Kingdom in Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Raffaele Iorio, Raffaele Licinio, and Giosuè Musca, “Sotto la monarchia normanno-sveva,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, 2:57–94; Giosuè Musca, “Il dominio normanno,” in Musca, Storia della Puglia, 1:237–55; and Franco Porsia, “Il periodo svevo,” in Musca, Storia della Puglia, 1:257–75; see also Potere, società e popolo tra età normanna ed età sveva (1189– 1210): Atti delle quinte giornate normanno-sveve, Bari-Conversano, 26–28 ottobre 1981 (Bari: Dedalo, 1983). In 1266, after the Battle of Benevento, the French Charles of Anjou was proclaimed ruler of southern Italy. Apulia remained under Angevin domination until 1442, when it passed to the Spanish Aragonese dynasty; see Raffaele Licinio, “Bari angioina,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, 2:95–144, and Raffaele Licinio, “I periodi angioino e aragonese,” in Musca, Storia della Puglia, 1:277–98. There is still no general glossary to the Codice Diplomatico Barese-Pugliese, the lack of which was pointed out by Vincenzo Valente more than thirty years ago in his “Ipotesi per un lessico del latino medievale pugliese,” Archivio Storico Pugliese 31 (1978), 147–63. There are glossaries to some individual volumes, but these are incomplete and often outdated. All the translations presented here from Italian, French, and Latin are those of the author and translators of this article. Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 10 vols. (1883–87; repr., Bologna: Forni, 1981–82); Alfred Ernout and Antoine Meillet, Dictionnaire étimologique de la langue latine: Histoire des mots, 4th ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1967); Egidio Forcellini et al., Lexicon Totius Latinitatis (1864; repr., Padua: Typis seminarii, 1940); Jan Frederik Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden: Brill, 1976); Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13 Jahrhundert, ed. Otto Prinz (Munich: Beck, 1967–).



Antonietta Amati Canta Slav, and French origin. However, for other terms, such as babadiky, fuffudi, gipteca, or simalto, which are not to be found in dictionaries, it is only possible to guess their meaning from the detailed description of the specific garment given by the notary (textile, shape, colour, ornament) or from the context, taking into account the usual notarial procedure of arranging dowry goods according to type.14 The wide time span taken into consideration (tenth to fourteenth centuries) allows us to evaluate each term referring to a garment, both its meaning in its first occurrence and its semantic shift in time or its disappearance from notarial lists as a result of historical or linguistic change.15 MARRIAGE CONTRACTS SECUNDUM BARI CONSUETUDINEM

In the multiethnic society of medieval Bari, cultural exchanges which favoured the acceptance and survival of shared customs were common, and such practices often survived even after the regime that had introduced them had come to an end. This is the case with Langobard law, which entered the Terra di Bari through the Duchy, later Princedom, of Benevento, and was favourably accepted by the local population and practiced long after the end of the Langobard dominion in Apulia. Over some three centuries, a mutually beneficial coexistence gradually developed between the people of Apulia and the Langobards, encouraged by mixed marriages. Although coming under the aegis of public law (successively Byzantine, Norman, Swabian, Angevin, etc.), private law was regulated by the Consuetudines Civitatis Bari, a corpus of deeply rooted local customary rules, which were clearly modelled on Langobard legal precepts, but revised in the light of the Roman socio-juridical tradition. Initially transmitted orally, they were subsequently codified by two judges, Andrea and Sparano of Bari,   14 Valente, “Ipotesi,” 150, signalled the interest of the objects listed in dowry inventories, but also drew attention to the problems of interpreting hundreds of unfamiliar terms.   15 Philip Ditchfield, La culture matérielle médiévale: l’Italie méridionale byzantine et normande, Collection de l’École française de Rome 373 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), presents the results of wide-ranging and extremely useful research on material culture seen as “l’ensemble des biens immobiliers et mobiliers de caractère utilitaire nécessaires au besoins d’une société” [the sum of immovable property and movable assets of a utilitarian character which are necessary for a society’s needs] (1). He concentrates primarily on notarial acts of the Byzantine and Norman periods in Apulian archives (his subtitle referring to the whole of southern Italy being somewhat misleading). His book consists of “un catalogue des objets, qui prende en compte aussi bien leur physionomie, que leurs modes de fabrication et leurs fonctions au sein du contexte géographique et social de la Pouille médiévale” [a catalogue of objects which takes into consideration both their physical appearance, the way they were produced, and their function within the geographical and social context of medieval Apulia] (1). His catalogue is compiled on the basis of etymological research and identification from notarial documents (endowments, wills, inventories, donations, inheritances, and sales) of the rich vocabulary relating to furniture, furnishings, domestic tools, linen, clothing, and jewels. In the course of my own analysis, which is limited to women’s clothing listed in dowry inventories, but which also extends to the Angevin period, Ditchfield’s monograph is an invaluable work of reference, even if in certain cases I express and justify my objection to the sometimes far-fetched textual or etymological interpretations he proposes.



Bridal Gifts in Bari in the Norman-Swabian period (probably between 1180 and 1200, and certainly not later than the thirteenth century).16 In these notarial acts, which are explicitly drafted secundum legem ­Langobardorum (“according to the law of the Langobards”) or, with an alternative but almost synonymous wording, secundum Bari consuetudinem (“according to Bari customary law”), the contribution of nuptial gifts reflects the duty or obligation to settle dos and corredum, according to the Roman tradition, and meffium and morgincap, according to the Langobard tradition. To these should be added the launegilt, i.e. the countergift, or the obligatory repayment of a gift due according to the Langobard law. The endowment of dos (“dowry”) and corredum (“trousseau”) by the bride’s family was the object of a nuptial contract that listed movable and immovable properties (res mobiles and bona stabilia).17 In Bari it was the practice to attach to the marriage clauses a detailed inventory of all the goods which constituted the corredum—that is, clothing, accessories, jewels, household linen, and tableware—with a note of the monetary value of each item (Latin corredum extimatum). Promised, like the dos, during the desponsatio, i.e. the day of the engagement, the corredum was given, along with the dowry, to the bridegroom, who had to attest to its receipt through a written document. Whereas dos and corredum were given by the bride’s family according to the Roman tradition, meffium and morgincap were bestowed by the bridegroom according to the Langobard tradition. In our notarial documents the Langobard juridical term meffium occurs with a quite different meaning from the one it had originally. Initially it indicated the price of the meta,18 that is, the compensation the bridegroom paid to

  16 The Consuetudines Civitatis Bari were codified by these two judges in two distinct collections, neither of which survives in the original. The main, if not the only, source of information on the compilers and also of knowledge of the customs of the city of Bari is the work of Vincenzo Massilla, a noble born in Atella, and lawyer in Bari. In 1550 Massilla published the collections of Andrea and Sparano with a commentary under the title of Commentarii super consuetudinibus preclarae civitatis Bari (Padua: Fabrianus, 1550). This remained in force until 1809, that is, until the city of Bari adopted the Code Napoléon. On this, see Enrico Besta, Il diritto consuetudinario di Bari e la sua genesi, Rivista italiana per le scienze giuridiche 36, fasc. 1–2 (Torino, Fratelli Bocca, 1903), also in Scritti di storia giuridica meridionale, ed. Giovanni Cassandro (Bari: Società di Storia patria per la Puglia, 1962), 121–230; Vito Giustiniani, “Il diritto consuetudinario in Terra di Bari,” in La Terra di Bari sotto l’aspetto storico, economico e naturale, Pubblicazione della provincia di Bari per la esposizione universale di Parigi, 3 vols. (Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1900), 1:143–243; and Antonio Marongiu, Matrimonio e famiglia nell’Italia meridionale: sec. VIII–XIII, Documenti e Monografie, Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia 39 (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 1976).   17 For the Roman dotal system, see the extensive historico-juridical study of Raffaello d’ Ancona, Il concetto della dote nel diritto romano (1889; repr., Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1972); Enciclopedia del diritto, vol. 14, Dote–Ente (Milan: Giuffrè, 1965), 1–8.   18 The term meffium is the latinized form of Langobard metfio, a compound of meta, “compensation,” related to western Germanic *medo (< Germanic *mizdo, from Indo-European *mizdho, “compensation, payment”; Gothic mizdo, Old English med, Old Saxon meda, Old High German miata, mieta > German Miete, “rent, hire”) and fio, “goods, wealth, money,” from Germanic *fexu < Indo-European *peku; see Nicoletta Francovich Onesti, Vestigia longobarde in Italia (568–774): Lessico e ­antroponimia (Rome: Artemide, 1999), 81 and 104–5.



Antonietta Amati Canta the mundoaldus, who was the holder of the mundium (the absolute guardanship of his future wife) till the wedding day.19 In marriage contracts from Bari it is no longer a “compensation,” but a donation, usually consisting of trousseau items, servants, or even sums of money, a little extra present given to the woman as a kind of reward for her assent and for the first kiss,20 indicating that the woman was undoubtedly more emancipated than she would have been according to Langobard legislation.21 The handing over of the meffium, promised by the bridegroom on the occasion of the desponsatio, took place within a freely agreed term; it was given to the mundoaldus of the bride, who was bound to give it to her simultaneously. The “morning gift,” indicated by Langobard morgincap, a compound of morgin (“morning”) and gab (“gift”),22 was the most significant bestowal owed to the wife on the occasion of the marriage, since it consisted of a quarter of the husband’s patrimony. It was conferred through a notarial document (cartula) ratified by witnesses on the day following the wedding night, in the presence of relatives and friends, as a recognition of the bride’s virtue (premium pudicitiae).23 Moreover, documents drafted in Bari during the Byzantine and Norman periods testify to the acceptance of another Langobard custom, the practice of the “countergift” in any act of donation, indicated by the Langobard term launegilt, a variant of launegild, a compound of laune- (< Germanic *launa “prize, reward”) and gild (< Germanic *gelda “reward, repayment”).24 It initially consisted of a counterpayment in money, which might even be equal to the gift in value, but later became a symbolic recognition of the gift, represented by an object of small value, usually, according to Bari law, a silk blended kerchief (faciolum cum serico), or sometimes a silk blended cloak (mantellum cum serico).25 If elsewhere economic and social changes led to the revival of marriages contracted according to the Roman dowry system, southern Italy saw the long-term survival of meffium and morgincap.26

  19 Mundium is the latinized form of a Germanic term *mund- (cf. Old English mund, Old High German munt, “protection, guardianship”), and mundoaldus the latinized form of mundoald, a compound, the second part of which *walda-z is related to an Indo-European root *wal-, *waldh- “to be strong”; ibid., 107–8.   20 Diego Bellacosa, Il “mundio” sulle donne in Terra di Bari dall’anno 900 al 1500 (1906; repr., Sala Bolognese, Italy: Arnaldo Forni, 1984), 53.   21 Benedetto Vetere, La donna nella legislazione e nella tradizione longobarda (Cividale del Friuli, Italy: Gruppo corale culturale Harmonia, 1992), and Ennio Cortese, “Per la storia del mundio in Italia,” Rivista italiana per le scienze giuridiche, 3rd ser., 8 (1955–56): 323–474.   22 Old English morgengifu, Old High German morgangaba > German Morgincap. Francovich Onesti, Vestigia longobarde, 105–6 and 86.   23 Claudia Baldini, Il dono del mattino (Faenza, Italy: Tipografia Fratelli Lega, 1963).   24 Francovich Onesti, Vestigia longobarde, 99–100 and 93.   25 Marco Scovazzi, “La donazione nel diritto germanico,” Rivista di Storia del Diritto Italiano 21 (1958): 247–67, also in Marco Scovazzi, Scritti di storia del diritto germanico (Milan: Giuffrè, 1975), 2:99– 120.   26 Diane Owen Hughes, “Il matrimonio nell’Italia medievale,” in Storia del matrimonio, ed. Michela De Giorgio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Rome: Laterza, 1996), 5–61.



Bridal Gifts in Bari Here follows detailed discussion of terms for specific garments, accessories, and jewellery named in nineteen of these inventories. Citations and other details for occurrences of these terms appear in Tables 1.1–1.3. GARMENTS

Bangbadikus, babadikus. In two notarial documents, the first dating to the Byzantine period (CDB 4:42, 1065)27 and the second to the Norman (CDB 5:9, 1088),28 the dowry inventories which constitute the corredum of two brides, Alfarana and Trottula, include bangbadiky or babadiky. The items in question are very difficult to indentify; the etymology is uncertain. A plausible hypothesis is that the term is related to Byzantine Greek βάμβαξ (“cotton”), from Persian pänbäk, hence medieval Latin bambax, which replaces classical Latin gossypion,29 and so might designate a female garment, probably a shirt or undertunic, made of valuable Syrian cotton, a favourite textile of Byzantine weavers.30 But in my view the term is a compound, the second element of which is Greek δίχα (“in two, divided into two parts”), probably designating a garment made by joining two pieces of cloth. Alfarana’s rich dowry, inventoried in the presence of Petrus, imperial protospatharius, clearly highlights “tres bangbadiky consute solidi sex” (CDB 4:42, 1065); the three garments, which have a total value of 6 gold solidi, are consute (“sewn”), and therefore considered very prestigious items, probably of Byzantine make, imported to Apulia. As Ditchfield points out, “[t]he existence of ‘ready-to-wear’ in Constantinople should not surprise us. The making of cotton shirts (βαγδαδίκια) is attested in Constantinople in the Book of the Prefect of Leo VI (tenth

  27 CDB 4: Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: Periodo greco (939–1071), ed. Francesco Nitti (1900; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1964).   28 CDB 5: Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: Periodo normanno (1075–1194), ed. Francesco Nitti (1902; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1968).   29 Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “bombyx” and “gossypion”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “bombax”; Carl Darling Buck, A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 402. The term bambax, hence Italian bambagia, became widespread in the Byzantine territories of southern Italy from the ninth century, but at the same time in Muslim Sicily, where the Arabs had started the cultivation of cotton, a new denomination took over: the Arabic qutun (“cotton”), hence cottonus, which developed into Italian cotone, French coton, Dutch katoen, English cotton, and German Katun; see Carlo Battisti, “Ripercussioni lessicali del commercio orientale nel periodo giustinianeo,” in Moneta e scambi nell’Alto Medioevo, 631–34; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “cottonus”; and Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “cotonus.”   30 In the glossaries to CDB 4 and CDB 5: babadiky, bangabadiky, “specie di veste” [sort of garment]. According to Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 355 and 446–47, the term indicates a cotton shirt; in fact, although the term is not attested in the references to dictionaries in the form occurring in the two dowry lists, it must be underlined that bombyx, with its alternative form bambax, is recorded with the secondary meaning of cotton garment (Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis) or cotton shirt or tunic (Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, and Prinz, Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch).



Antonietta Amati Canta century) … certain Byzantine luxury garments, according to the law, had to be sewn in the capital before they were sold.”31 Basili Constantini … Alfarana’s exceptional dowry includes a garment valued at as much as 50 gold solidi, but it too is difficult to interpret: “Basili Constantini cusuto […] solidi quinquaginta” (CDB 4:42, 1065).32 The added annotation cusuto would point to a sumptuous garment of Byzantine make, perhaps a tunic of purple silk, made in the imperial atelier in Constantinople under the emperors Basilius II (976–1025) and Constantine VIII (1025–28), that is, about forty years before the endowment:33 it may well have been a family heirloom.34 Camisa, cammisia. Introduced in late Latin of the fourth or fifth century, camisa, cammisia, of uncertain origin, but certainly related to contemporary Byzantine Greek καμίσιον (“undertunic, shirt”), replaces the classical Latin term interula,35 indicating a long undertunic, made of linen or cotton, with sleeves, worn next to the skin.36 It is a recurring item in the dowries of our brides from Bari, the number and the quality varying according to the wealth of their families: The rich Alfarana has “quinque camise bone subtiles appretiate solidi decem” [five good fine shirts of the value of 10 solidi] (CDB 4:42, 1065); Dompnula, who married in the Angevin period, simply has “four shirts” (CDP 28:86, 1381);37 whereas Mitula, Churella, and Mita38 are endowed   31 “L’existence d’un ‘prêt-à-porter’ à Constantinople ne doit pas surprendre. La confection des chemises en coton (βαγδαδίκια) est attestée à Constantinople dans le Livre du Préfet de Léon VI (Xe siècle) … certain habits byzantins de luxe devaient selon la loi être cousus dans la capitale avant leur vente” (Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 447).   32 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 4; unfortunately in the document it is impossible to understand what was written between the words cusuto and solidi.   33 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 449–50.   34 See Lucia Sinisi, “The Marriage of the Year (1028),” chapter 2 in this volume, for more detailed discussion of this reference.   35 Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “interula”; Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis, 2 vols. (1688; repr., Sala Bolognese, Italy: Arnaldo Forni, 1977), s.v. “καμίσιον”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “camisa”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “camisa”; and Prinz, Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, s.v. “camis(i)a.” See also Riccardo Bevere, “Vestimenti e gioielli in uso nelle provincie napoletane dal XII al XVI secolo,” in Archivio storico per le provincie napoletane 22 (1897), 312. See Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 421, for the hypothesis that it might be a gallicism or germanism.   36 According to Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale: Vesti e società dal XIII al XVI secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 42, the camisa was not an essential garment insofar as it did not protect from the cold, but it was comfortable to wear and hygienic because it was soft and washable. This term often denoted a sleeved cotton or linen tunic, long for women and shorter for men. Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 444–47, reckons that Apulian camisie can be divided into four types, according to the material they are made of: coarser flax for the ordinary ones, linen (camisia), cotton (bambadikus), and silk (zendai) for the more precious ones.   37 CDP 28: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (1343–1381), ed. Maria Cannataro Cordasco (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 1985).   38 In documents relating to Mitula and Mita, whose names are very similar, several analogies can be found, such as the name of the father, which is the same, and many seemingly identical items, often with the same wording and the same monetary value. These similarities suggest these documents refer to the same woman on the occasions of two different marriages. In CDP 29:22, 1385, Mitula’s dowry items are endowed from her father Thommasius for her first marriage to Iohannes; in CDP

10

Bridal Gifts in Bari with a fairly large number of shirts, some worked with silk in an assortment of colours (CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:36, 1395; CDP 29:41, 1397).39 Cursectus, corsectum. The term cursectum, corsectum, which comes from French corset, diminutive form of cors, corps (“body”) from Latin corpus, and signifies a body garment of undetermined style,40 occurs in two Angevin dowry inventories. In the dowries of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita (CDP 29:41, 1397) are listed several of these garments, made of textiles of celebrated quality, which for their high cost were exclusive to a limited élite: a precious material woven with golden threads (pannus de auro filato), the legacy of a lavish Byzantine style; an expensive woollen cloth, dyed in the costly red dyestuff known as kermes (de scarlato);41 a soft velvet (inbellutum or bellutus, vellutus, from late Latin villutus, from villus, “hair/fleece,” lit. “fleecy, villous”),42 a fabric for the élite, dyed green, one of the most fashionable colours.43 These luxurious garments have elaborate trimmings to equal the preciousness of the fabrics: They are trimmed according to the local (Bari) style (“cum piczis de bayro”; “cum vecchis de vareis”) or the Armenian style (“cum piczis de armeniis”)44 and use numerous buttons,      29:41, 1397, the widow now called Mita gives her dowry to Elya, her second husband. I am grateful to Robin Netherton for calling my attention to this connection.   39 CDP 29: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (1382–1399), ed. Angela Frascadore (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 1985).   40 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “corsetus,” and Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “corsetus.” Niermeyer proposes that the word refers to a close-fitting bodice, whereas Du Cange gives the meaning of “tunica, thorax.”   41 The etymology of scarlatum is uncertain. According to Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “scarlatum,” and Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “scarlata,” the term is a medieval Latin borrowing from an Arabic-Hispanic form iškirlāta, Arabic siqirlāt (see also Pellegrini, “L’elemento arabo,” 717); whereas John Munro reckons that the term, which means “a fine woollen broadcloth dyed partially or wholly in that peculiar, vivid red color whose name was ultimately borrowed from the textile itself,” is related to Arabic siqlātūn, which indicated the most aristocratic textile of the Islamic world, a brocaded silk, produced also in Muslim Spain and similarly dyed in kermes (from the Arabic ķirmiz, “worm”), a bright red dyestuff extracted from a Mediterranean oak parasite; see Munro, “Scarlet,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer et al. (New York: Scribner, 1982–89), 11:36–37. Pellegrini (“L’elemento arabo,” 834) hypothesizes that some colour terms of Arabic origin may have been introduced through the trade of oriental fabrics such as scarlatum, which was originally a fabric. The classic article on scarlet as a cloth or a colour is John Munro’s “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed. Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting, Pasold Studies in Textile History 2 (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), 13–70, reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries, Variorum Collected Studies, series CS 442 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1994); Munro’s most recent views on the subject appear in John Munro, “Scarlet,” in Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 477–80.   42 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “villosa.”   43 Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 115–16 and 181.   44 A small, but thriving, Armenian community had been established in Bari since the tenth century, where it had arrived following the retinue of the Byzantine army, deployed to regain the Apulian territories for the Eastern Empire. Pasquale Corsi, “Dalla riconquista bizantina al catepanato,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, 1:344; Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, Cesare Colafemmina, and Pasquale Corsi, “Vita religiosa, vita quotidiana e costume,” in Tateo, Storia di Bari, 2:258.

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Antonietta Amati Canta according to contemporary fashion—as many as sixty silver buttons (“cum pulmectis sexaginta de argento”) on the sleeves of one cursectus, and thirty-four pearl ones (“cum pulmectis de pernis numero triginta quatuor”) on the front of another.45 Diopezzi. The inventory of the bride Trottula, in a document of the Norman period (CDB 5:9, 1088), mentions “uno diopezzi cusito hornato,” a garment which was probably made (cusito) in the workshops of Constantinople and ornamented (hornato), but which is difficult to identify.46 It might designate a garment made of two pieces of material, or two different items to be worn together. The hypothesis that diopezzi, considered a variation of duopezzi (lit. “two pieces”), is derived from Vulgar Latin ­diplois, diploidus (“Greek cloak lined with wool”), from Greek διπλοĩς (“lining trimmed mantle/double cloak”), and might denote a silk-lined cloak, appears far-fetched.47 Dublectum, duplectum, dupletus, duplettum. This garment, which appears in the trousseaux of five brides from Bari who married in the Angevin period (Mabilia, Despina, Gemma, Churella, and Mita), was probably introduced by the new French conquerors. The term, derived from French doblet (Italian dobletto), stems from French doble (“double”), and designated a doublet or jerkin, made of linen and cotton with double warp (de bombice, CDP 23:26, 1387),48 also produced in Naples according to French techniques, or a jacket of double thickness with padding between the layers,49 enriched with silver thread couching (“ad filellos cum filis de argento,” CDB 13:76, 1297),50 puckered (crispum, CDP 29:36, 1395), or simply “white,” a frequent colour in bridal dowries (CDP 27:49, 1327; CDP 29:41, 1397).51

  45 For the terms pulmectus, pomettus, see below. For its natural spherical shape, the perna, which occurs in the documents from Bari as a variant of the more common perla, and it is still used in the Neapolitan dialect with the same meaning, was very fashionable; see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “pernae”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “perula, perla, perna”; Battisti, “Ripercussioni lessicali,” 667.   46 In the glossary to CDB 5, diopezzi is generically defined as “oggetto di vestiario, di difficile identificazione” [a garment difficult to identify].   47 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 469; as for the meaning of the term from which it derives proposed by Ditchfield, in my opinion somewhat rashly, see Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), s.v. “διπλοĩς”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “diplois”; and Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “diplois.”   48 CDP 23: Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari (1280–1414), ed. Jole Mazzoleni (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 1977).   49 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “dublectus” and “dobletus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “dobletus”; Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1961– 2002), s.v. “dobletto”; Rosita Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume in Italia, 2 vols., in Enciclopedia della moda (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005), 1:156; Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 40; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 317; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 458; Lucia Sinisi, “Nel vento della moda: mediazioni culturali nell’Italia meridionale normanna,” in Il vento del nord: Scandinavia ed Europa tra Medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Lorenzo Lozzi Gallo and Lucia Sinisi (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2011), 114–16.   50 CDB 13: Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: Periodo angioino (1266–1309), ed. Francesco Nitti (1936; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1976).   51 CDP 27: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (1294–1343), ed. Pasquale Cordasco (Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia, 1984).

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Bridal Gifts in Bari Dupla. The dowries of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita (CDP 29:41, 1397), from the Angevin period, include among the garments a dupla, generically defined by the compiler of the glossary attached to CDP 29 as a “female garment”—presumably a kind of thick (double) tunic—made of felt (paratoria)52 edged with silk. The same term, which is the noun form of the Latin adjective duplus (“double”), when included in the list of bed linen, denotes a quilted blanket53 or, according to Ditchfield, a precious bedcover made of a blended fabric, generally linen and silk54 (cf. CDP 29:41, 1397; CDB 13:76, 1297; CDB 16:15, 1312).55 Faciolum. Medieval Latin faciolum, which replaces late Latin faciale (“face flannel”; Latin facialia, “sweat flannel”), both deriving from facies (“face”), indicates a kerchief made of a wide square of cloth, used as a shawl or head covering (Italian fazzolo or fazzuolo), a tangible sign of modesty and honour.56 A kerchief made of a silk blended fibre (faciolum cum serico) represents, according to a custom of Bari confirmed by documents of the Byzantine and Norman periods, the usual launegilt, that is, the “countergift” of Langobard tradition. In the trousseaux of the brides from Bari, the faciolum is one of the most commonly found accessories. Alfarana’s (CDB 4:42, 1065), Trottula’s (CDB 5:9, 1088), and Mabilia’s (CDB 13:76, 1297) trousseaux are supplied with nine, eight, and four kerchiefs respectively, all of different kinds: from the faciolum scittum, plain, without trimming,57 made with a silk blended fabric or woven with gold thread, or greciskum (“in the Greek style”), richly trimmed,58 to the coppibillatum (coppabellatum, coppavillatum; “embroidered at the top,” along the edge that rests on the head) or totibillatum (“embroidered all over” or “all round”)59 trimmed with small tassels (masuli) or knotted fringe (demme, from Greek δέμα, “knot”),60 multicoloured, or cum nikyforate—that is, hemmed with a fringe of miliaresi, small silver coins which portray the bust of Emperor Nikephoros Phocas (963–69).61 Fuffude, fuffudi. This garment, which is difficult to identify, is included among the corredum of two brides, Alfarana and Trottula, in two notarial acts, the former dating to the Byzantine period, the latter to the Norman. The glossary to CDB 4 ­suggests that the   52   53   54   55   56

  57   58   59   60   61

Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “paratorius.” Ibid., s.v. “dupla.” Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 89–90 and 379. CDB 16: Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: Periodo angioino (1309–1343), ed. Francesco Nitti (1941; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1979). Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “faciale”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “facialis”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 447; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “fazzolo”; Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio, Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols. (Florence: Barbèra, 1950–57), s.v. “fazzuolo”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 321; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:163; and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 471–72. See the entries in the glossaries to CDB 4 and CDB 5. According to Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 473, greciskum refers to a high-quality textile imported from Byzantium. See both entries in the glossaries to CDB 4 and CDB 5 and Valente, “Ipotesi,” 156. Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “demas”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 472–73 and 511. See Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 473 and 506; for the Byzantine coin, see Grierson, “Coinage,” 424–30.

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Antonietta Amati Canta term may refer to a female girdle; otherwise, on the assumption that the term derives from the Arabic fafel (“pepper”), which implies a dotted fabric, it is proposed that fuffude or fuffudi indicates a tunic made from a dotted silk fabric, which was widespread in the Arabic-Byzantine world, but reserved for young brides in eleventh-century Bari.62 Along with their other lavish garments of Byzantine make, such as babadiky, Basili Constantini tunica, and diopezzi, Alfarana and Trottula could flaunt these garments, which were probably made in Constantinople workshops, of fabrics dyed in strong bright colours, one red and yellow (“fuffude russa et citrina consuta,” CDB 4:42, 1065), the other yellow and black (“uno fuffudi citrino et nigro,” CDB 5:9, 1088).63 Gipteca. Alfarana’s rich dowry includes another garment of Byzantine make: “gipteca causuta solidi tres” [a sewn gipteca worth 3 solidi] (CDB 4:42, 1065). Its meaning might be related to gipo (“heavy jacket”); the glossary to CDB 4 offers “specie di giacchettino donnesco” [a sort of women’s short jacket].64 Ditchfeld, who normally gives complex, sometimes speculative, explanations of difficult terms, explains gipteca simply as a “robe arabe” [Arabic garment].65 Iuppa, ioppa. The dowries of brides of Bari from the Angevin period are enriched by a garment of Eastern origin: the iuppa or ioppa, a term derived from the Arabic ğubbah (“cotton undergarment”). This was a sort of sleeved tunic, which was later used as an overtunic by the local aristocracy, but ornamented with additional decorations according to the old Byzantine custom.66 Churella’s trousseau is supplied with a considerable number of them: She receives as a present from her mother Mathia a linen iuppa ornamented by stones in the shape of drops (“ad petras de goccis”) and a green woollen iuppa enriched with pearl trimmings (CDP 29:36, 1395); two others, a dowry present from her uncles Antonius and Vitus, are made of wool in two different shades of green (CDP 29:38, 1395). Mita’s iuppa is pale sky-blue (azorrino)67 and enriched with decorations consisting of forty silver buttons and golden embroideries (“cum frisis de auro”)68 around the neckline and on the sleeves (CDP 29:41, 1397). Red and yellow are   62 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 364, 415–16, and 451.    63 The colours chosen for the material of the two lavish garments given to Alfarana and Trottula, which involved costly dyeing agents, indicate that these young brides belonged to a wealthy social class.   64 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 4; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “gipo”; and Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “gibo.”   65 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 451.   66 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “jupa”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “jupa”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 419; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “giubba”; Pellegrini, “L’elemento arabo,” 779; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:156 and 166.   67 Sky-blue, the term for which is of Arabic origin (Vulgar Arabic *lāzūrd from lāzward, “lapis lazuli”; see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “azurrum”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “azurus”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 1057; and Pellegrini, “L’elemento arabo,” 717), together with various shades of green, was among the most widespread and sought-after colours at this period (see Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 158–61).   68 The medieval Latin term frisium derives from classical Latin phrygium (opus), “Phrygian work,” with reference to gold-embroidered material coming from Phrygia, in Asia Minor. See Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “frisium”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 513–15; and Niermeyer, Mediae ­Latinitatis, s.v. “phrygium, frigium, frisium,” who notes: “sans doute il y a en croisement avec le

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Bridal Gifts in Bari the colours of two silk cloth garments called iuppa in Mitula’s (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita’s (CDP 29:41, 1397) wardrobe. In both the dowry inventories is also inserted a iuppa made of serge (de sargia), a fine, dry wool characterized by a particular diagonal weave,69 and partita, literally “divided, separated,” that is, particoloured.70 Mantilia, mandilia. The terms mantilia, mandilia, plural of mantile, mandile from Byzantine Greek μαντήλιον, μανδήλιον, occur in dowry inventories of the Angevin period. They indicate elegant wide shawls or mantelets,71 gored with silk (iuncta cum seta) or made of a silk blended fabric, sometimes many-coloured, and constitute one of the garments with which the trousseaux of Bari brides are most generally supplied. As many as six mandilia cum seta are included in the trousseaux of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita (CDP 29:41, 1397). There are only three in Mabilia’s, but one of them is made of samite (“unum est xamitaneum,” CDB 13:76, 1297), a fabric of great value.72 Mandilicchium. Diminutive of mandile, mandilicchium indicates a small mantelet of great value, described in notarial documents as elegantly edged with silk and gold, or as de filato, meaning probably some kind of thread work (CDP 28:86, 1381; CDP 29:36, 1395; CDP 29:41, 1397).73 Mantellum, mantellus. In the Italian medieval wardrobe, the cloak is the overgarment par excellence for both men and women, generally made of thick wool, loose, sleeveless, held by a clasp or buckle under the chin or on the shoulder, and sometimes lined and hooded.74 In the first document where it is mentioned, a promise of marriage of the ­     francique frisi ‘bord, frisure’” [without doubt it is crossed with Frankish frisi, “trim, border”]. The Latin term is continued by Italian dialect friso, “frieze, ornament; fringe, border”; see Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “friso,” and Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 318.   69 The term sargia derives from the old French sarge (modern French serge) which derives from popular Latin *sarica, an alteration of serica, feminine of the adjective sericus, “silken”; if initially it indicated a silk fabric, later it referred to a light woollen fabric imported from France, used in the Middle Ages for hangings and curtains. Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “sargea”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “sarica, sargia”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “sargia.”   70 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “partitae (vestes).” A clear definition of partita, when referring to clothing, is given by Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric, trans. Jody Gladding (New York: Washington Square Press, 2003), 105 n. 20.   71 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “mandile” and “mantile”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “mantele”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 446; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “mantile,” and “mantiglia,” and “mandiglia”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 321; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 473–74.   72 The examitum (from late Greek εξάμιτος “six-shaft fabric,” compounded from έξ, εξα- “six” and μίτος “shafts, thread”) was a multicoloured, sometimes vermilion or amaranth red, velvety-looking heavy silk cloth. Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “exametum”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “examitum, xamitum”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 403–5.   73 The glossary to CDP 29 gives “towel” and “small towel” as the only meanings for mandilium and mandilicchium respectively, without considering the typology of the dowry goods the term is inserted in (garments or bed linen); for example, the rich trousseaux of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Churella (CDP 29:36, 1395) have also a great number of towels (mandilia), mainly in white linen.   74 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “mantellum”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “mantele, mantellum”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 417; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “mantello”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 465–66; Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 262.

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Antonietta Amati Canta Norman period, it represents a launegilt: Segnorus, in promising to Petracca, brother and mundoald of his future bride, to give him pro meffio 100 gold solidi,75 declares that as soon as his promise is kept, he will receive, as a symbolic consideration of the bridal gift, a “mantellum cum serico” [silk blended cloak] (CDB 5:128, 1169). The cloaks included in the dowry lists of the Angevin period are characterized by their luxury: of fine wool, velvet, silk; having precious ornaments; dyed red, the predominant colour of the élite. In Mabilia’s trousseau is a cloak of camel-hair fabric (de gomoleto),76 lined with red sendal (zendato), a lightweight silk fabric similar to taffeta77 (CDB 16:15, 1312).78 A cloak of red velvet, held by three pearl buttons, with gold embroideries along the hem and lined with a virgata silk cloth (that is, with multicoloured stripes),79 occurs in Mitula’s (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita’s wardrobe (CDP 29:41, 1397). Pellitza. In the Byzantine period, the pellitza or pellicia80 was a highly sought-after garment, once the traditional contempt of Roman society toward “barbarians,” dressed in furs like savages, and the suspicion of Germanic society toward Eastern peoples, dressed in silk like sissies, were overcome.81 The term indicated a wide tunic made with generally high-quality furs, with sleeves, or—more commonly in southern Italy—an overtunic in linen or silk, lined with fur, which was visible at the edges. The oldest, albeit fragmentary, description of a dowry from Bari, dating to 971 (CDB 4: fragment 2), includes a “pellitza fundatinea noba bo[na]”; it was donated by ­ Kaloiohannes to his niece Visantia on the occasion of her wedding with Alefanto. The notarial

  75 For the various usage of money and objects for these gifts, see above, pp. 7–8, and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 547.   76 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “camelotum”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “camelotum.” The Latin term seems to be connected with old French camelot, “fabric,” from Arabic hamlat, “woollen plush,” produced in the East, but influenced by chameau, “camel” (Latin camelus), from which comes chamelot, “camel-hair cloth” (Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “cammellotto” and “ciambellotto”); see Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 346–47, and Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:124.   77 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “zendadum” and “cendalum, cendatum”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “cendalum, sendalum” and “sendatum”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “zendado.” The term, probably of Arabic origin (Arabic sandal, “silk thread”) or cognate with Greek σινδών (“sindon, very thin drape”), properly designated a very thin silk fabric, mainly used for lining lavish cloaks; it was also used to indicate garments such as shawls or shirts made of “sendal,” that is, of thin silk. According to Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:128, at that period sendal was, at least for Europe, of Sicilian origin (in France it was known as zendade de Sicile); on the Arabic-Byzantine production of sendal, see Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 401–3.   78 The two brides named Mabilia are most likely the same woman, married twice. The one who gives her dowry to her husband Andreas in CDB 13:76, 1297, is identified as the daughter of Andreas de Sullimay, and the one who bestows her dowry to her husband Petrus in CDB 16:15, 1312, is described as sister of Iacono Petro, son of Andreas de Sullimay.   79 The term derives from Latin virga, “rod, strip,” striped, with different coloured strips; see Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 405, and Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth, 23.   80 Late Latin pellicia is the feminine noun form of the adjective pellicius, from pellis, “pelle,” lit. “made of leather.” Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “pellicia”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “pellicia”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “pelliccia.”   81 Roberto Sabatino Lopez, “L’importanza del mondo islamico nella vita economica europea,” in L’Occidente e l’Islam nell’Alto Medioevo, 459.

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Bridal Gifts in Bari i­ nventory does not specify of what sort of skins this “new”—that is, not secondhand and therefore “good”—fur was made; whether it was of a locally produced fur, such as lamb, sheep, or goat skin, which were more affordable and common, or a nonlocal one, such as miniver, squirrel, hare, or ermine, which were mainly imported from Dalmatian forests or from the mountains of Bosnia and Serbia.82 Its only characteristic is indicated with the adjective fundatinea, which is difficult to interpret; according to the compiler of the glossary to CDB 4, this denotes colour, specifically a dark fur. Ditchfield advances an alternative interpretation that “pellitza fundatinea” denotes a sumptuous and expensive overtunic made with a silk fabric interwoven with gold filigree and lined with fur.83 Robba. The late Latin term robba (“outfit”), probably of Germanic origin (*raubaz > Langobard raub, the meaning of which oscillates: “prey, booty, loot; the set of clothes stolen from the enemy; spoils, vestment”) occurs in a dowry inventory dating to the Angevin period. From the thirteenth century, it indicates a complete set of women’s clothes, consisting of several garments, generally three: tunic, overtunic, and cloak.84 Despina’s trousseau lists two sets: “robbam u[n]am de narragina” and “robbam unam de bleveto” (CDP 27:49, 1327). Although not registered in dictionaries and therefore difficult to identify,85 it may be assumed that narragina is related to narancum (“orange”), a late Latin term borrowed from Arabic naranğa,86 and indicated an orange-coloured cloth. The second set of clothes, described as de bleveto, is made with a cloth which similarly takes its name from its colour: blevetus is derived from blavus (“faded blue, cerulean”), a late Latin term of Germanic origin related to Old French bleve (“deep blue”).87

  82 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 427–35 and 459–60; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:70.   83 Ditchfield’s reading (Culture matérielle, 417–20) rests on the hypothesis that fundatinea derives from fundatus, which, even if its etymology is unknown, might in his view be related to the Arabic funduq (“staple”). This would then refer to the origin of the product, a fabric woven with gold thread, made mainly in Arabic workshops and bought in the staples of Levantine ports. In fact, the Latin term fundatus, when referring to a fabric, indicates a cloth woven with gold or a golden hemming; see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “fundatus”, and Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “fundatus.”   84 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “roba”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “rauba, roba”; Francovich Onesti, Vestigia longobarde, 113; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 419; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “roba”; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:156; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 316.   85 See “narragina” in the glossary to CDP 27, where the following meaning is given: “particolare tessuto?” [a particular kind of fabric?].   86 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “narancum”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “narancio” (old Italian term for arancia [orange]), and s.v. “naranceo,” (“colore arancione” [orange colour]); Pellegrini, “L’elemento arabo,” 780–81.   87 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “blavus” and “bleuetus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “blaveus, blavus” and “blaveum”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “biavo”; Valente, “Ipotesi,” 155. Along with greens, the shades of biavi, pale blue, were among the most desirable colours for garments and accessories in a wide social area, from the palest to the most intense blue. The latter, which had been rejected for centuries because it was worn by the “barbarians,” the people who settled beyond the limes (the fortified border of the Roman Empire), from the thirteenth century became, along with red, among the most sought-after dyes, being the colour of the mantle of the Virgin and of kings (Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 160); see also Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:88 and 129.

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Antonietta Amati Canta Simalto. A simalto (CDB 5:9, 1088) is included in the Norman inventory of the clothes given to the bride Trottula. The hypothesis that simalto may represent a variant of smalto88 from smaltum (“enamel/glaze”), a Latin term of Germanic origin (from Frankish smalt; Germ. *smaltjan, “fondere”), cannot be accepted:89 It would make no sense inserted in a list such as “uno simalto et una camisa et duo babadiky.” Better fitted to the context, although speculative since it is not attested in dictionaries, would be a derivation from Arabic sammur, which designated the sable (a type of marten) or its fur; still present in Sicilian zimarra, “a long garment with long and wide sleeves,” it would indicate a long furred overtunic. Succa, schutta. The term succa (modern Italian socca) with its variant schutta, derives from old Venetian soca, which is related to Istrian suokena, of Slavic origin, hence, also through German, French souquenille, a sort of loose coat. It indicates a plain overtunic for women, generally made of linen, open at the sides and on the front, worn over a plain tunic.90 This garment—a more elaborate version because it is made of blended fabric, woven or ornamented with silk (cum seta laborata)—is listed in the trousseaux of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita (CDP 29:41, 1397). Tunica. The tunic, a garment of ancient Roman tradition, is a common item of women’s clothing in the Middle Ages; it was also called gonnella or sottana. It was ankle-length, sometimes caught in at the waist with a girdle, and in the Late Empire period was characterized by tight sleeves.91 The notarial inventories of the Angevin period indicate that the tunics of the young brides of Bari were sewn with linen, wool, or serge cloth (CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:41, 1397), in various colours, as bright as green, which was then very trendy (CDB 13:76, 1297), as dark as brunus (“brown,” CDP 23:26, 1387),92 as pale as honey-white (mellatus albus CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:41, 1397),93 or as refined as dried rose pink (rose secze, CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:41, 1397). Among the most sumptuous are two tunics given to Churella on the occasion of her wedding: the first is made of an off-white linen cloth (blanchette)94 and embellished with ribbons or   88 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 5.   89 Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “smaltum.”   90 See the entry in the glossary to CDP 29; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “succa,” “socca,” and “scuta”; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:155; and Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 269.   91 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “tunica”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “tunica”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “tunica”; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:12, 27–28, 68; and Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 76.   92 Substituting for classical Latin fuscus, “dark, brown,” brunus is a late Latin term, from Germanic brun, “of a dark bright colour”; see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “brunus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “brunus”; Prinz, Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, s.v. “brunus”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “bruno.”   93 Before the fourteenth century, white was obtained only for linen; for wool, one made the best of a natural colour; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 365. Among the most precious natural wools was a honey-coloured cloth (mellatus, from the Latin verb mellare, derived from mel, mellis, “honey”) from Larissa, a town in the fertile Thessaly, a Byzantine province; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:125.   94 The term blanchette is derived from late Latin blancus, “white,” which replaces classical Latin albus and is a cognate of Germanic *blanka-, “pure white, bright.” Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “­blanchetus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “blanchetus, -quetus, -ketus”; Prinz, ­Mittellateinisches

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Bridal Gifts in Bari braids, or with hemming edged with gold threads (“cum zagarellis de auro filato”)95 at the neckline and on the sleeves; the second is particoloured or two-tone (bipertitam)96 of red and deep brown (tenee)97 cloth, with gold embroidery (“cum frisis de auro”) around the neck and on the sleeves (CDP 29:36, 1395). Zendai. The term, probably of Arabic origin (sandal, “silk thread”) or cognate of Greek σινδών (“sindon, very thin cloth”), designated a very lightweight silk fabric, similar to taffeta, mainly used to line sumptuous cloaks (see above, under “mantellum”); it was also used to designate garments such as shawls and shirts “in sendal,” that is, of light silk.98 In a document of the Byzantine period, relating to a marriage promise (CDB 4:18, 1028), Petrus, the bridegroom, has a zendai of silk, cucito (“sewn”) and enriched by ornamental patterns, among the wedding gifts that constitute the meffium for his future bride Maralda. It is clear, in this case, that the term is not related either to the silk fabric or to a shawl, but to a sewn garment, probably a light silk shirt in the Byzantine style.99 On the other hand, the meaning of “sendal shawl” might be attributed to the zindai included, without any further description, in the inventory of the dowry of Trottula, who married in the Norman period (CDB 5:9, 1088). Zeppa, zippa. The origin of this term is uncertain, although a number of different meanings have been attributed to it. In documents from Bari it is easy to confuse the terms zeppa, zippa (“spike”), of Germanic origin (Langobard *zippil, “pointed end,” “tip”),100 with zeppa or zippa related to clothes or accessories.101 This is the case in a document of the Byzantine period (CDB 4:42, 1065) in which the same term occurs twice, but in two different contexts: inserted in the inventory of the wardrobe of a bride, it indicates a garment or an accessory, but mentioned in a list of kitchen utensils, it might refer to a set of iron spikes (zippe ferree). Among the meanings attributed to      Wörterbuch, s.v. “blancus”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 1054; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “bianchetto”; LEI—Lessico Etimologico Italiano: Germanismi, ed. Elda Morlicchio (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000–), fasc. 5, vol. 1 (2008), s.v. “blanka-,” 932 and 938–39.   95 The meaning of the expression cum zagarellis is given on the basis of the Italian term, typical of the Neapolitan area, zagarella, “ribbon, braid, band.” Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “zagarella”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 313.   96 The term bipertitam, literally “divided into two,” is a synonym of partitam, already dealt with above under “iuppa, ioppa.” See Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “bipartitus,” and Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:148 and 282–86, in which there are also illustrations of particoloured clothes.   97 Tenee, or tané, colour was obtained from woad (isatis tinctoria) mixed with the leaves of the smoketree (rhus cotinus), a common bush in Italy, as explained in the treatise L’arte della seta in Firenze: Trattato del secolo XV, ed. Girolamo Gargiolli (Florence: Barbèra, 1868), 54; it is described as a “crazy and odd” colour because of the difficulty in obtaining it (Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:284). It is also defined as burnt brown, with nuances from reddish to black, like the colour of leather or walnut skin (Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “tané”). The term is a French word from late Latin tanare, “to tan” (see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “tanatus” and “tanneyum”).   98 Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:128.   99 According to Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 444–47, zendai is the most sumptuous shirt among the Apulian ones (camisia and bambadikus). 100 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 115; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “zeppa.” 101 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 13; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 347; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “zippa”; and Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 313.

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Antonietta Amati Canta the word zeppa, or its variant zippa, the most plausible is that of “light summer shawl” proposed by Ditchfield, on the basis of a detailed notarial description, even if it is quite different from the meanings previously attributed to it, such as “bag” or “tunic.” This interpretation rests on the assumption that the word derives from classical Latin supparum (“shawl, linen veil”), which in the Roman period referred to a light cloth that women used to wear over the tunic to cover their arms and shoulders, placing it on the head and allowing it to fall to the heels.102 In Alfarana’s dowry inventory (CDB 4:42, 1065), this garment is mentioned without details (zippa), although listed among analogous garments such as facioli (see also CDB 13:76, 1297: “item facciolum cum auro, zeppam unam cum auro et facciola duo cum seta”). Other dowry inventories include some details, but these are irrelevant for identification purposes. They include colour, mainly white (CDP 23:26, 1387; CDP 29:36, 1395); material (de baba, “of cotton,” CDB 16:15, 1312, or de seta, “of silk,” CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:41, 1397); or quantity (as many as ten silk zeppe in Mitula’s wardrobe, CDP 29:22, 1385, to which she adds one more by the time of her second wedding, CDP 29:41, 1397). The detailed description of three of the five zeppe given to the bride Churella in a comparable Angevin document (CDP 29:36, 1395) makes it clear that these zeppe are shawls richly ornamented only on the side which is laid on the head or all around the edge, with trimming of fleurs-de-lys (ad lilios), in gold and silk of various colours,103 or with decorative strips (cum listis)104 in gold or black silk (CDP 29:36, 1395). ACCESSORIES

Adiectitus. There is only one occurrence of this term, in a document of the Angevin period (CDP 29:22, 1385): “adiectitus unus de seyta et auro.” It is not to be found in the standard dictionaries, but according to the compiler of the glossary to CDP 29, it indicates a precious silk and gold ribbon, in that period mainly used as a hair ornament. Bittulus. Although its etymology is uncertain, bittulus is, according to a credible hypothesis, a diminutive of the classical Latin vitta (“band, strip”),105 that is, an ornamental hair band or ribbon worn only by freeborn Roman women. This accessory was still in fashion in the Middle Ages, as attested by its inclusion in the dowries of two brides in Bari, Alfarana and Magistrella, who married in the Byzantine and Norman periods, respectively. Magistrella is endowed with two woollen bands ornamented

102 Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “supparum”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “suparum”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 115 and 463–64. 103 Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:126 and 295. 104 Late Latin lista, lit. “strip,” is of Germanic origin; see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “lista”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “lista”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “lista.” 105 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 5; Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “vitta”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 321; Valente, “Ipotesi,” 155; and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 483.

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Bridal Gifts in Bari with masule, that is, with small tassels106 (CDB 5:77, 1130) in order to dress her hair. Alfarana receives a band made of birgallo (CDB 4:42, 1065), a fibre which is not easy to identify; on the premise that the term is related to the classical Latin virga (“thin twig, switch”) or to its derivative virgatus (“made or intertwined with wicker or flexible rush”), it may be hypothesised that the band consisted of decorative wickerwork, made with flexible thin stalks.107 Borsida. The trousseau of Dompnula, who married in the Angevin period (CDP 28:86, 1381), lists borsidas duas, that is, two small bags or purses, accessories that were hung from belts with long drawstrings.108 The term is a late Latin diminutive form of bursa (“hide bag”), adopted from Greek βύρσα (“leather, hide”) in the fourth century, which substituted for classical Latin crumena, indicating a little bag or purse which hung from the neck.109 Caia, cala. The form caia, which occurs in a dowry inventory of the Norman period (CDB 5:9, 1088), is considered by the compiler of the glossary of that volume as an erroneous notarial transcription of cala (“curtain”), but without considering the fact that in the same list, a curtain and canopy for a bed (“cortina et panno super cabea”) is included among bed linen. It seems more likely caia is indeed the correct reading and that a different interpretation of its meaning is appropriate in a context listing items of clothing and accessories, such as kerchiefs, hairnets, and ribbons. Caia is a local variant of a Neapolitan vernacular form, from Latin cavea (“cage”) used in the whole of southern Italy to indicate some kind of coif; the item in question is ornamented with small tassels (“caia bona cum masuli”).110 Alfarana, who married in the Byzantine period (CDB 4:42, 1065), is endowed with similar cale, which are mentioned among items of clothing and hair accessories.111 These are almost certainly coifs. Two are ornamented with small tassels (cum masuli) and one described as guttulata. Ditchfield assumes that the latter means “made of cotton,” considering that guttulata is a ­variant 106 On the term masule, of uncertain etymology, see Valente, “Ipotesi,” 159, and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 487 and 512–13. 107 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 4; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 483–84; and Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “virga” and “virgatus.” Birgallo could also mean “percale,” a light cotton fabric (Valente, “Ipotesi,” 155) but familiarity with this term, probably of Persian origin, introduced into Europe in modern times (English percale and Spanish percal, French percale, Italian percalle), seems unlikely in the Byzantine period; see The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), s.v. “percale”; The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. Charles Talbut Onions with George Washington Salisbury Friedrichsen and Robert William Burchfield (1966; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), s.v. “percale”; and Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “percalle.” 108 Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:169. 109 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “bursa”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “byrsa” and “bursa”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “borsa” and “borsetta”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 437; Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “crumena.” 110 Valente, “Ipotesi,” 152 and 156; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 480; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:263; Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “cavea”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “cabia” and “cagia”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “cagia” and “cavea.” 111 In the glossary to CDB 4, the term cala is interpreted “curtain, especially for beds.” However, the bride receives bed curtains identified as curtina and listed among bed linen (“Curtina ad giratoria solidi nobem. Curtina et panno supra cabia”).

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Antonietta Amati Canta used in notarial documents to indicate something made of cottonus (“cotton”).112 Alternatively, guttula might be related to Latin gutta (“drop”) and therefore indicate that it was decorated with little pendent drops. Corrigia. The Latin term corrigia, corigia, is of Celtic origin (cf. old Irish *conring, cuimrech, from *kom-rigom, “link”) and indicates a “thong, leather strip,” that is, a girdle,113 which is an essential accessory of both male and female dress. It consisted of a strip of fabric or soft leather having at one end a buckle with a plate, and at the other a metal ferrule that was both ornamental and practical (in that it weighted the end of the girdle so that it would hang down).114 In dowry inventories the feminine girdle made of fabric or leather, even if more elaborate than the male’s and generally enriched with decorative applications in floral or geometrical patterns, was not typically considered worth mentioning because of its low value. However, in dowries of Bari brides of the Angevin period are found girdles of exquisite workmanship, variously made entirely of silver (CDB 13:26, 1277; CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:41, 1397), ornamented with a hanging ribbon (“cum bittula pendenti,” CDB 16:15, 1312), made with leather (“cum cinto de coreo,” CDP 29:36, 1395), made with silk of red or sanguine-red colour (“cum cinto sete rubee,” CDP 29:36, 1395; “cinto sanguineo,” CDP 29:41, 1397), and enriched with ornamental patterns made with silver studs (“cum clovis de argento,” CDB 16:15, 1312; “cum speris de argento nonaginta clavatis in illa,” CDP 29:36, 1395), silver rings or bars (“rotis triginta de argento,” CDP 29:36, 1395; “barris de argento,” CDP 29:41, 1397), or shells (“coczellis de osso,” CDB 16:15, 1312; “cum coczellis,” CDP 29:41, 1397). Fassia. A black and red silk fassia (from Latin fascia; Italian fascia, French faisse), that is, a hair band, is included in the rich dowry of Mita, married in the Angevin period (CDP 29:41, 1397).115 Flectula. In a promise of marriage of the Byzantine period (CDB 4:18, 1028), Petrus, the bridegroom, lists a flectula among the meffium gifts for his wife Maralda. If we accepted the meaning “ring; necklace; golden fillet” given by the glossaries in the CDB, the term should be included among the jewellery.116 However, it seems more likely that this was a circular hairclip made of intertwined thin wooden sticks, the function

112 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 371–72 and 481. 113 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “corrigia”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “corrigia”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “correggia.” 114 Erminia Lapadula, “Oggetti accessori dell’abbigliamento di età bassomedievale in Terra d’Otranto,” in III Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Medievale: Castello di Salerno, Complesso di Santa Sofia, 2–5 ottobre 2003, ed. Paolo Peduto and Rosa Fiorillo, 2 vols. (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2003), 1:147. In this same article (147–49), there is an accurate description of girdles found in late medieval Apulian settlements (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries). See also Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 355; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:158 and 272–74; and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 488–90. 115 See the entry in the glossary to CDP 29; Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “fascia”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “fascia”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “fascia”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “fascia”; and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 486. 116 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 1.

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Bridal Gifts in Bari of which was to hold and prop up the bun117 and therefore to be catalogued among accessories. Flectula, presumably a diminutive of flecta, reported in glossaries with the generic meaning of “feminine ornament,” seems to be related to the Latin verb flectere (“to bend, twist, bow”).118 Kankellata. The compiler of the glossary to CDB 4 found the term kankellata, in Alfarana’s rich dowry inventory (CDB 4:42, 1065), difficult to identify. Considering that in the notarial list it is included among accessories such as hairclips, hair ribbons, kerchiefs, and coifs, the interpretation suggested by Ditchfield as a hairnet made of golden thread and trimmed with pearls seems pertinent to the context, on the basis of its relation with classical Greek κάγκελλος (“grid”) or classical Latin cancellare (“to arrange in a grid”), both from the Indo-European root *kankr- (“object made of intertwined material”). The kankellata, of probable Byzantine make, is the most valuable of the feminine accessories, being worth 14 gold solidi.119 Lencia. Trottula’s Norman-period dowry (CDB 5:9, 1088) includes the term lencia which, according to the glossary to that volume, might indicate a washtub, despite the fact that such a mundane object was not usually listed among luxurious items of clothing and jewellery. A more likely interpretation is a linen ribbon (Italian lenza) used for styling the hair.120 Lencia probably derives from late Latin lenteum, from classical Latin linteum, a neuter noun form of the adjective linteus (“linen”)—from which linciolum (Italian lenzuolo), a common term in dowry inventories, also comes—with influence from lentus (“flexible”). Marsubium, marsupius. In the exceptional dowries of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita (CDP 29:41, 1397), from the Angevin period, one accessory is the marsubium or marsupius (Latin marsupium, from Greek μαρσύπιον),121 that is, an elegant bag, in these cases woven with gold thread or made of velvet. Pomettus, pomectus, pulmectus. The form pomettus, with its variants pomectus and pulmectus, related to Latin pomus (“(roundish) fruit”), recalls the spherical form of

117 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 484. 118 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “flecta.” Another document of the Byzantine period, recording the dowry of Alfarana (CDB 4:42, 1065), includes “duo lectuli da ferula” among items of clothing and accessories, such as hair ribbons, kerchiefs, and coifs. Ditchfield, in considering lectuli an erroneous notarial transcription of flectulae, assumes that Alfarana too receives as a gift two hairclips made of thin intertwined sticks of ferula, a plant common in the dry and uncultivated grazing-lands of southern Italy; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 485; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “ferula”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “ferula”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “ferula.” The emendation, although far-fetched, is supported by the context of clothing and accessories. If lectuli is correct, it could indicate “small beds,” which, according to notarial procedures, should be listed in the following context, where bed furniture is described. 119 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 481–82. 120 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “lentia”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “lenza”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 486–87. 121 In ancient Rome the marsupium was used mainly to hold money. Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “marsupium”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “marsupio.”

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Antonietta Amati Canta a small ornamental object, the button which, when introduced as an essential part of feminine dress in the thirteenth century, had made it possible for sleeves and garments, which up to then were very wide, to become close-fitting.122 Among the Bari documents, precious silver or pearl buttons are mentioned only in the exceptional trousseaux of Mitula (CDP 29:22, 1385), Churella (CDP 29:36, 1395) and Mita (CDP 29:41, 1397), who married in the Angevin period. In these documents, buttons appear both as practical and ornamental attachments to items of clothing of great value (such as cursectus/corsectum, iuppa/ioppa, mantellum/mantellus) and, in two cases, as separate items given in great numbers (quatraginta, “forty,” CDP 29:36, 1395; CDP 29:41, 1397), presumably to be used on new garments. Reticella. The term reticella, diminutive of Latin rete, which occurs in dowry inventories of the Norman (CDB 5:9, 1088; CDB 5:77, 1130) and Angevin (CDB 13:76, 1297) periods, indicates a hairnet mostly made of silk.123 Because of its fragility, its quality and condition are underscored in notarial annotations. This is the case for a tight, black, silk net, which is bonam novam (“good new”), in Magistrella’s trousseau (CDB 5:77, 1130). JEWELLERY

Anulus. In marriage contracts compiled in Bari, the term anulus (“ring,” diminutive of Latin anus, “circle”)124 occurs in notarial formulae regarding the marriage itself, such as sociare sibi in coniugium per anulum, fare sibi uxorem per anulum, ducere et sociare in uxorem legitimam per anulum, disponsare sibi in uxorem legitimam per anulum. These testify to the legitimacy of the marriage contracted in conformity with the laws in force, which provided for the clear consent of the bride, manifested by her acceptance of a ring given to her by the bridegroom as a symbol of a lawful marriage.125 Gold rings (de auro), given by their respective families, are mentioned in the jewel inventories of Alfarana (CDB 4:42, 1065), Trottula (CDB 5:9, 1088), and Magistrella (CDB 5:77, 1130). Cercellus, circellus. The forms cercelli or circelli, plural of late Latin cercellus or circellus, diminutive of Latin circulus, circus (“circle”), designating “hooped earrings,”126 122 See the entry in the glossary to CDP 29; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “pomellus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “pomellus”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “pometto”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 318; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 504–5; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:154, 267, and 274–75. 123 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 5; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “reticella”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “reticella”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 479–80; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:163 and 263; and Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 40. 124 Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “anulus”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “annulus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “anulus” and “anus”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “anello”; Buck, Dictionary of Synonyms, 443. 125 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 503. 126 See the entry in the glossary to CDB 4; Forcellini, Lexicon Latinitatis, s.v. “circulus” and “circus”; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “circelli”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “circellus”; Prinz, Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, s.v. “cercella, cercellus”; and Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “circello.”

24

Bridal Gifts in Bari are very frequent in notarial inventories from Bari. They range from plain cercelli aurei (“gold hooped earrings”) donated to Visantia, as attested in the oldest description of a Barese dowry dating to 971 (CDB 4: fragment 2), to gold or pure (depurato) silver earrings of antique workmanship (anticus),127 or more elaborate ones given to brides who married in the Norman and Angevin periods. These are described as enriched with milille or milelle, presumably small fobs in the form of gold spheres (CDB 4:42, 1065; CDB 5:9, 1088);128 with panarelle, small gold filigree fobs in the form of a little breadbasket, and alve (“white pearls,” CDB 5:9, 1088);129 with pernis et lapidibus (“pearls and stones,” CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:41, 1397);130 or even forged “ad rotas quatuor, cum perlis et petris in medio” [in the form of four wheels, with pearls and stones in the middle] (CDP 29:36, 1395). Therefore the circelli were jewellery items constantly present in dowries from Bari, very popular in southern Italy because of the influence of Langobard, Greek, and Arabic fashion.131 Circhettum. The trousseau of Churella, on the occasion of her marriage to Nicolaus, included a circhettum (CDP 29:36, 1395), provided by her mother Mathia. The word is a diminutive of Latin circus (“circle”) indicating a precious “ring.” The object is presumably a silver bracelet. It is adorned with pearls and garnets. Fronteria. Two inventories of the Angevin period include a precious feminine jewellery item named fronteria (“frontlet, diadem”). The term derives from medieval Latin through old French frontière (from Latin frons, frontis, “forehead”).132 ­According to the detailed notarial description, this product of the medieval goldsmith’s craft ­included

127 Magistrella, married in the Norman period, receives as a present two pairs of gold cercelli, of which one is anticus, “antique” (CDB 5:77, 1130), probably a family jewel. Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 498, substitutes the reading aniticus for anticus. He considers this term as a variant of anterne, related in his opinion to Vulgar Latin lanterna rather than to Greek ανθρήνη (“wasp, hornet”), as as some have suggested (Valente, “Ipotesi,” 155); according to this interpretation, which seems somewhat farfetched, the pair of golden hoops given to Magistrella by her parents are neither “antique” nor “with a pin” (that is, with a fastening that goes through the lobe), but in the shape of small lanterns. 128 The term comes from Greek μέλιλλος (“member”) or μῆλον (“apple-tree”), hence Latin mela, “apple,” or from Latin millium, “millet” (Greek μελίνη), because of the spheroid shape of the small grains of this grass plant; see the entry in the glossary to CDB 4; Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “millium”; and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 496. 129 The term panarelle is the plural of panarella or panarellum, diminutive from Vulgar Latin panarium, “basket, breadbasket,” from panis, “bread” (Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “panarium” and “panarolus”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “panarium”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “­panaro” and “paniere”), whereas alve is considered to be a wrong transciption of albe, “pearls” (from Latin albus, “white,” because of the whiteness of this kind of pearl); Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “alba”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “alba”; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 497–98 and 506. 130 The pearl called perna might derive its name from Greek πινάριον (“pearl”); see Battisti, “Ripercussioni lessicali,” 667, and Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 505–6. 131 Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 327; Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 496; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:106; Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 111–12. 132 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitati, s.v. “fronteria”; Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, s.v. “frontaria, ­fronteria”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “frontiera”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 326.

25

Antonietta Amati Canta in Mitula’s (CDP 29:22, 1385) and Mita’s (CDP 29:41, 1397) dowry consisted of a silver circlet adorned with pearls and precious stones which was worn around the forehead. Iorlanda. Another feminine head ornament is indicated by the term iorlanda, of uncertain origin, a synonym for coronula (“garland, crownlet, diadem”), a circlet ornamented by gems, a precious version of the more common flower garland.133 Mita again, on whom one precious frontlet had already been bestowed on the occasion of her first marriage, adds in her dowry for her second wedding a silver crownlet made up of ten pieces (“de pettiis decem”),134 ornamented with pearls and precious stones (CDP 29:41, 1397). It is worth noting here that a diadem is portrayed in an illumination which constitutes an unusual decorative element on a parchment document compiled in Bari in the Byzantine period (CDB 1:14, 1028), relating to the bestowal of the morgincap by Mel, the husband, on the noble Alfarana, his wife.135 That document does not list specific items of dress, but in the illumination, the bride wears a wide-sleeved long tunic, enriched by embroidered trims, and a diadem surmounted by a cross, reflecting a widespread tradition in southern Italy.136 Paternostri. The term paternostri—plural of paternoster, literally “our father,” from the first Latin words of the Lord’s Prayer, which indicated the major beads of the rosary—was used to signify the rosary itself. Rosaries frequently occur in inventories, and may be of coral, amber, and pearl. They were very popular in the fourteenth century, when men and women used to wear them hanging from the girdle or twirled around bags, or as bracelets or necklaces.137 Initially used for devotional purposes as rosary beads, they also became women’s ornaments, included in the lists of jewellery bestowed upon Apulian brides in the Angevin period (CDP 29:22, 1385; CDP 29:36, 1395; CDP 29:41, 1397). Pentareula. In the inventory of Alfarana’s rich trousseau (CDB 4:42, 1065), duo ­pentareule are registered in the list of garments and accessories. The term is glossed in

133 Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “garlanda” and “girlanda”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “ghirlanda”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 326; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:159, 166, and 267–72. 134 Crownlets were often made up of various pieces which were assembled with small hooks; Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:271. 135 CDB 1: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (952–1264), ed. Giovanni Battista Nitto de Rossi and Francesco Nitti (1897; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1964), appendix: “L’Exultet figurato del secolo XII.” See Sinisi, “The Marriage of the Year.” This Alfarana is different from the one previously mentioned, whose rich dowry was inventoried nearly forty years later (CDB 4:42, 1065). 136 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 482, points out that in Apulia crowns were traditionally ornamented by a cross and an inscription bearing the words of the psalm sung during the liturgy. One such crown, made of iron with precious stones, is preserved in the treasure of the Basilica of St. Nicola in Bari (thirteenth century). But see also Sinisi, “The Marriage of the Year.” 137 Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale, 115. In the glossary to CDP 29, the paternoster is defined as “a sort of gala jewel”; see Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis, s.v. “pater (Pater-noster)”; Battaglia, Grande dizionario, s.v. “Paternostro”; Bevere, “Vestimenti,” 320–21; and Levi Pisetzky, Storia del costume, 1:276.

26

Bridal Gifts in Bari CDB 4 as a clothes-stand, but inserting a piece of furniture among valuable garments would be unusual, since dowry goods are usually catalogued by category. Ditchfield’s proposal of a pendant, hanging from a ribbon on the forehead or the breast, is more appropriate for the context and fits the derivation of pentareula from the Latin verb pendere (“to hang, to be suspended”).138 CONCLUSION

As is evident from the documentary analysis conducted so far, the vocabulary for clothing used by the notaries drafting the dowry inventories of the brides who married in Bari in the Byzantine, Norman-Swabian, and Angevin periods is characterised by multiplicity and multiculturalism. The terms used with regard to garments, accessories, jewellery, and their materials, trimmings, and colours are abundant, and the derivations—apparent or in some cases only presumed—come not only from classical Latin, but also from Byzantine-Greek, from Germanic languages such as Langobard or Frankish, and from Arabic, Slav, Venetian, and French. This provides clear evidence of the readiness of a society originally conforming to Roman tradition not only to preserve local customs by wearing clothing produced locally, but also to accept new products introduced into the local market by the ruling class or by merchants sailing from the East or from the most prestigious production centres in Italy or the rest of Europe. The notaries’ detailed descriptions of more or less elaborate items of female dress and the inclusion of monetary values also allow us to identify the social class to which these brides from Bari belonged.

Tables 1.1–1.3: Clothing terminology from marriage inventories in Bari Note: These tables present the terms, arranged in alphabetical order, for garments, accessories, and jewellery in the analyzed notarial inventories, as discussed in the accompanying article. Most of the lemmata occur in documents relating to the endowments of dos (dowry) and corredum (trousseau); the exceptions (documents of meffium or launegilt) are indicated. Each lemma, in the form it occurs in documents (with variants), is followed by the most suitable meaning for its context, if registered in dictionaries; otherwise, I give the most plausible hypothesis on the basis of etymological and contextual criteria. This is followed by its occurrence in the Latin text, with a translation by Lucia Sinisi and Christopher Williams. Here, parentheses indicate expansion of abbreviations, and square brackets indicate holes in the parchment. The fourth column gives the reference to the document where it is contained (the CDB or CDP volume, with the document number and the year it was drafted), the fifth column gives the historical period, and the last one the archive where the document is preserved.

138 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 502.

27

Meaning

cotton shirt or undertunic (?)

a tunic of purple silk, probably a family heirloom (?)

long undertunic; cotton or linen shirt, sometimes “worked with silk”

Word

bangbadiky, babadiky

Basili Constantini …

camisa, cammisia

Table 1.1: Garments

CDB 5:9, 1088 CDP 28:86, 1381 CDP 29:22, 1385

CDP 29:36, 1395 CDP 29:41, 1397

una camisa … et una camisa “one shirt … and one shirt” cammiseas quatuor “four shirts” camise muliebres quatuor laborat(e) cum seyta; item camise alie muliebres septem “four woman’s shirts, worked with silk; also seven other woman’s shirts” cammisias novem laboratas cum seta diversorum colorum “nine shirts of various colours worked with silk” cammisias quatuor laborat(as) cum serico; item cammisias alias septem muliebres “four shirts worked with silk; also seven other woman’s shirts”

CDB 4:42, 1065

quinque camise bone subtiles appretiate solidi decem “five good fine shirts of the value of 10 solidi”

28

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Norman

Byzantine

Byzantine

Norman

CDB 5:9, 1088 CDB 4:42, 1065

Byzantine

Period

CDB 4:42, 1065

Reference

Basili Constantini cusuto [ … ] solidi quinquaginta “Basili Constantini, sewn, worth 50 solidi”

babadiky

tres bangbadiky consute solidi sex “three cotton bangbadiky worth 6 solidi”

Occurrences

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Location

Antonietta Amati Canta

cursectus, corsectum

body garment of undetermined style

29 corsectum unum panni de auro filato, cum manicis panni lane de scarleto cum pomettis de argento, positis in dictis manicis et cum vecchis de vareis, pro unciis sex; item corsectum unum de scarleto cum pomettis de perlis numero triginta quatuor, positis ante eundem corsectum, pro unciis octo “one corsectum made of a fabric woven with golden threads, with sleeves made of a scarlet woollen fabric with silver buttons set on these sleeves, with trimming in the Bari style, worth 6 onciae; also one scarlet corsectum with thirty-four pearl buttons sewn on the front of the aforesaid corsectum, worth 8 onciae”

cursectus unus panni de auro filato cum manicis de scarlato cum pulmectis sexaginta de argento posit(is) in predictis manicis de scarlato et cum piczis de bayro posit(is) in dicto cursecto, appreciat(us) pro unciis sex; item cursectus unus de inbelluto viridi cum piczis de armeniis, appreciat(us) pro unciis sex; item cursectus unus de scarlato cum manicis eiusdem panni cum pulmectis de pernis numero triginta quatuor posit(is) ante dictum cursectum, appreciat(us) pro unciis octo “one cursectus made of a fabric woven with golden threads with scarlet sleeves and sixty silver buttons set on the aforesaid scarlet sleeves and with trimming in the Bari style applied on the same cursectus, worth 6 onciae; also one green velvet fabric cursectus with trimming in the Armenian style, worth 6 onciae; then one scarlet cursectus with sleeves of the same fabric, with thirty-four pearl buttons on the front of the aforesaid cursectus, worth 8 onciae” CDP 29:41, 1397

CDP 29:22, 1385

Angevin

Angevin

Cathedral

Cathedral

Bridal Gifts in Bari

a doublet or jerkin, made of linen and cotton, with double warp; or a jacket of double thickness with padding between the layers

dublectum, duplectum, dupletus, duplettum

thick tunic (?) (lit. “double”)

unknown meaning; lit. “two pieces”

diopezzi

dupla

Meaning

Word

30

CDP 29:22, 1385

CDP 29:41, 1397

dupla(m) unam paratoria cum seta laborata in capitibus, pro unciis duabus et tarenis quindecim “one felt dupla trimmed with silk, worth 2 onciae and 15 tareni”

CDP 29:41, 1397

dupla una paratoria cum seyta laborata in capitibus, appreciat(a) pro unciis duabus et tarenis quindecim “one felt dupla trimmed with silk, worth 2 onciae and 15 tareni”

duplettum unum album “one white doublet”

CDP 29:36, 1395

duplectum unum novum et crispum “one new and puckered doublet”

CDP 27:49, 1327

dublectum unum album pro tar(enis) quinque “one white doublet worth 5 tareni” CDP 23:26, 1387

CDB 13:76, 1297

dupletos duos ad filellos cum filis de argento “two doublets couched with silver threads”

duplettum unum muliebrem de bombice “one cotton woman’s doublet”

CDB 5:9, 1088

Reference

uno diopezzi cusito hornato “one sewn and ornamented diopezzi”

Occurrences

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Norman

Period

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

S. Nicola

Cathedral

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Location

Antonietta Amati Canta

faciolum

kerchief

31

CDB 4:36, 1057 CDB 4:42, 1065

faciolum cum serico “silk blended kerchief ” Duo facioli grecisky solidi septem. Duo facioli coppibillati uno cum masuli et alio cum nikyforate solidi decem. Duo totibillati cum masuli solidi quattuordecim. Tres facioli, duo cum masuli et alio cum demme colorinee solidi duodecim. “Two kerchiefs in the Greek style worth 7 solidi. Two kerchiefs embroidered at the top, one with small tassels and another hemmed with a fringe of miliaresi, worth 10 solidi. Two wholly embroidered with small tassels, worth 14 solidi. Three kerchiefs, two with small tassels and another with coloured knotted fringe, worth 12 solidi.” CDB 5:9, 1088

CDB 4:18, 1028 launegilt (3 occurrences)

faciolo cum serico “silk blended kerch ief ”

faciolo scitto. et alio coppavillato. et duo capore masuli. et alio faciolo coppavillato […] et duo facioli coppabellati et alio faciolo scitto “a plain kerchief and another embroidered at the top, and two with small tassels on the head rim, and another kerchief embroidered at the top […] and two kerchiefs embroidered at the top and another plain one”

CDB 4: fragment 2, 971 launegilt (2 occurrences)

faciolo cum serico “silk blended kerchief ”

Norman

Byzantine

Byzantine

Byzantine

Byzantine

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Bridal Gifts in Bari

unknown meaning, possibly a sumptuous dotted tunic

unknown meaning, perhaps a kind of jacket

coat

gipteca

iuppa, ioppa

Meaning

fuffude, fuffudi

Word

CDB 13:76, 1297

facciolum cum auro, […] et facciola duo cum seta pro uncia auri una […] item facciolum unum cum seta “one kerchief woven with gold thread, […] and two silk blended kerchiefs, worth 1 gold oncia […] also one silk blended kerchief ”

32 iuppe duo panni de seyta, una coloris rubei et alia citrini, appreciat(e) pro uncia una; […] item iuppa una de sargia partita “two coats of silk material, one of a red colour and the other yellow, worth 1 oncia; […] also one serge particoloured coat”

gipteca causuta solidi tres “a sewn gipteca worth 3 solidi”

CDP 29:22, 1385

CDB 4:42, 1065

CDB 5:9, 1088

CDB 5:87, 1136 launegilt (2 occurrences)

faciolum cum serico “silk blended kerchief ”

uno fuffudi citrino et nigro “one yellow and black fuffudi”

CDB 5:78, 1130 launegilt (2 occurrences)

faciolum cum serico “silk blended kerchief ”

CDB 4:42, 1065

CDB 5:77, 1130

unum faciolum bonum novum “one good quality new kerchief ”

fuffude russa et citrina consuta solidi quattuordecim “a sewn red and yellow fuffude, worth 14 solidi”

Reference

Occurrences

Angevin

Byzantine

Norman

Byzantine

Angevin

Norman

Norman

Norman

Period

Cathedral

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Location

Antonietta Amati Canta

mandilia, mantiglia

mantelets

33

CDB 13:76, 1297

Angevin

Angevin

CDP 29:41, 1397

iuppas duas panni de serico, unam coloris rubei et aliam citrini, pro uncia una; […] ioppam unam de azo(r)rino cum pomettis quatraginta de argento depurato, cum frisis de auro in canna et manicis, pro unciis quatuor; […] item iuppam unam de sargia partitam “two silk coats, one red and another yellow, worth 1 oncia; […] one sky-blue coat with forty pure silver buttons, with golden embroidery around the neckline and on the sleeves, worth 4 onciae; […] also one particoloured serge coat” item mantiglia tria cum seta diversorum colorum quorum unum est xamitaneum pro uncia auri una “also three silk blended mantelets of different colours, one of which is made of samite, worth 1 gold oncia”

Angevin

CDP 29:38, 1395

ioppa(m) unam panni lane coloris virid(is) novelle et aliam ioppam panni lane coloris virid(is) clar(i) “one spring green woollen coat and another of pale green woollen cloth”

Angevin

CDP 29:36, 1395

iuppam unam panni lini sutam ad petras de goccis; […] de perlis grossis in pondere uncias duas et de aliis perlis minutis in pondere unc(ias) octo, positas et laboratas in quidam ioppa sponse predicte panni lane coloris virid(is) tam ante ipsam ioppam per longum quam in canna et manicis, extimat(is) per communes amicos pro unciis auri quatuordecim “one sewn coat made of linen material with drop-shaped stones; […] big pearls weighing two ounces and other tiny pearls weighing eight ounces, sewn on the aforesaid bride’s green wool coat, both along the front and along the neckline and on the sleeves, according to common friends worth 14 gold onciae”

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Bridal Gifts in Bari

Meaning

small mantelet

Word

mandilicchium

Cathedral

Cathedral

Angevin

Angevin CDP 29:41, 1397

mandilicchium unum cum auro et seta “one gold and silk blended small mantelet”

Cathedral

Cathedral

CDP 29:36, 1395

Angevin

Cathedral

mandilicchium unum laboratum cum auro in ambobus capitibus et cum certis listis de seta et auro “one small mantelet embroidered with gold on both edges and with some sort of silk and gold strips”

CDP 29:41, 1397

mandilia duo simul iuncta cum seta laborata, pro uncia una; […] et duo mandilia simul iuncta cum serico laborat(a), pro uncia una; […] item mandilia duo cum seta “two mantelets wholly gored with embroidered silk, worth 1 oncia; […] and two mantelets wholly gored with embroidered silk, worth 1 oncia; […] also two silk blended mantelets”

Angevin

Location

Angevin

CDP 29:22, 1385

mandilia duo simuli iunta cum seyta, appreciat(a) pro uncia una; […] et duo mandilia simul iunta cum seyta laborat(a), appreciat(a) pro uncia una […]; item mandilia duo cum seyta “two mantelets wholly gored with silk, worth 1 oncia; […] and two mantelets wholly gored with embroidered silk, worth 1 oncia […]; also two silk blended mantelets”

Period

item mandilicchia quatuor, duo cum seta in capitibus et duo alia CDP 28:86, 1381 de filato “also four small mantelets, two rimmed with silk and two others with thread work”

Reference

Occurrences

Antonietta Amati Canta

34

35

fur-lined overtunic

outfit

robba

cloak

pellitza

mantellum, mantellus

CDP 29:22, 1385

CDP 29:41, 1397

mantellus unus de inbelluto rubeo cum pulmectis tribbus de pernis, infoderatus cum panno de seyta virgata cum frisis de auro in circuytu ipsius mantelli posit(is), appreciat(us) pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim “one red velvet cloak with three pearl buttons, lined with a striped silk cloth with golden embroideries around the hem, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni” mantellum unum de velluto rubeo cum pomectis tribus de perlis infoderatum cum panno de serico virgato cum frisis de auro in pede ipsius mantelli, pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim “one red velvet cloak with three pearl buttons, lined with a striped silk cloth with golden embroideries around the hem of the same cloak, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni”

robbam u[n]am de narragina pro unc(iis) duabus, tar(enis) septem et med(io), robbam unam de bleveto unc(iis) duabus, tar(enis) decem “one orange-coloured outfit worth 2 onciae, 7 and a half tareni; one cerulean blue outfit, worth 2 onciae, 10 tareni”

CDP 27:49, 1327

CDB 4: fragment 2, 971

CDB 16:15, 1312

mantellum unum de gomoleto infoderatum zendato rubeo pro uncia una “one camel-hair cloak lined with red sendal, worth 1 oncia”

pellitza fundatinea noba bo[na] “a new and in good state dark (?) fur-lined overtunic” (or “an overtunic made with a silk fabric interwoven with gold thread and lined with fur”?)

CDB 5:128, 1169 launegilt

mantellum cum serico “a silk blended cloak”

Angevin

Byzantine

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Norman

Cathedral

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Cathedral

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Bridal Gifts in Bari

Meaning

unknown meaning, possibly a furred overtunic

a plain overtunic open at the sides and on the front

tunic

Word

simalto

succa, schutta

tunica

36

Angevin Angevin

CDP 29:36, 1395

tunicam unam panni lini, coloris blanchette cum zagarellis de auro filato in ca(n)na et manicis; item tunicam unam bipertitam color(is) rubee et tenee, cum frisis de auro in canna et manicis “one off-white linen tunic with hemming edged with gold threads around the neckline and on the sleeves; also one particoloured red and deep brown tunic, with golden embroidery around the neckline and on the sleeves”

Angevin

CDP 23:26, 1387

CDP 29:22, 1385

tunica una panni de lana coloris mellat(i) albi, appreciat(a) pro unciis duabus; item tunica una panni de lana coloris rose secze, appreciat(a) pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim; […] tunica una de sargia “one honey-white woollen tunic, worth 2 onciae; also one dry rose coloured woollen tunic, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni; […] one tunic of serge”

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Norman

Period

tunicam unam panni lane coloris bruni pro uncia una “one brown woollen tunic worth 1 oncia”

CDB 13:76, 1297

CDP 29:41, 1397

schuttam unam cum seta laborat(a) “one succa made of silk blended fabric” tunicam unam coloris viridi novam pro uncia auri una “one new green coloured tunic worth 1 oncia”

CDP 29:22, 1385

CDB 5:9, 1088

uno simalto “one simalto” succa una cum seyta laborat(a) “one succa made of silk blended fabric”

Reference

Occurrences

Cathedral

S. Nicola

Cathedral

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Cathedral

S. Nicola

Location

Antonietta Amati Canta

sendal shirt; sendal shawl (?)

shawl

zendai, zindai

zeppa, zippa

CDB 4:42, 1065 CDB 13:76, 1297 CDB 16:15, 1312 CDP 29:22, 1385 CDP 23:26, 1387 CDP 29:36, 1395

CDP 29:41, 1397

zeppam unam cum auro “one shawl with gold” zeppam unam de baba “one cotton (?) shawl” zeppe quatuor de seyta; […] item zeppe sex de seyta “four silk shawls; […] also six silk shawls” zeppam unam albam “one white shawl” zeppam unam laboratam in capite ad lilios de auro et seta diversorum colorum; item zeppam unam cum listis munitis de auro et seta nigra in capitibus; item zeppam unam cum listis de seta nigra tantum in capit(e); item zepam aliam albam et largam et aliam zeppam albam “one shawl embroidered at the top with gold and silk fleurs-delys of various colours; also one shawl rimmed with gold and black silk strips; also one shawl with black silk strips only over the head; also another white and wide shawl and another white shawl” zeppas de seta septem; […] item zeppas quatuor de seta “seven silk shawls; […] also four silk shawls”

CDB 5:9, 1088

una zindai pro solidis decem et miliarenis triginta “one sendal shawl (or shirt?) worth 10 solidi and 30 miliaresi” zippa solidi duo “a shawl worth 2 solidi”

CDB 4:18, 1028 meffium

zendai serica cucita ornata baliente solidi tres aurei “a sewn and ornamented sendal shirt, worth 3 gold solidi”

tunicam unam panni lane coloris mellati albi, pro unciis duabus; CDP 29:41, 1397 item tunicam unam panni lane coloris rose sicce, pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim; […] item tunicam unam de sargia “one honey-white woollen tunic, worth 2 onciae; also one dry rose coloured woollen tunic, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni; […] then one tunic of serge”

37

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Byzantine

Norman

Byzantine

Angevin

Cathedral

Cathedral

S. Nicola

Cathedral

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Bridal Gifts in Bari

Meaning

ribbon

band, stripe

small bag, purse

coif

girdle

Word

adiectitus

bittulus

borsida

caia, cala

corrigia

Table 1.2: Accessories

38

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

CDB 16:15, 1312 corrigiam unam cum bittula pendenti et passanti de argento et coczellis de osso cum clovis de argento “one girdle with a hanging ribbon and silver loop and with shells made of bone with silver studs” CDP 29:22, 1385 corrigia una de argento cum boctula et murdent(o) de argento, apprecia(a) pro tarenis quindecim “one silver girdle with silver buckle and clasp, worth 15 tareni”

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Norman CDB 13:26, 1277

corrigia una de argento valoris uncie unius auri et tarenorum decem “one silver girdle worth 1 gold oncia and 10 tareni”

S. Nicola

Cathedral

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Location

Byzantine

Angevin

Norman

CDB 5:77, 1130 CDP 28:86, 1381

Byzantine

Angevin

Period

CDB 4:42, 1065

CDP 29:22, 1385

Reference

Duo cale bone cum masuli solidi quinque. Cala guttulata ad serico CDB 4:42, 1065 “Two coifs with small tassels in good state, worth 5 solidi. A silk blended coif trimmed with little pendant drops” caia bona cum masuli CDB 5:9, 1088 “a coif with small tassels in good state”

borsidas duas “two small bags”

uno bittulo da birgallo “one wickerwork band” duos bittulos masule laneos bonos novos “two new and good quality woollen bands with small tassels”

adiectitus unus de seyta et auro “one silk and gold ribbon”

Occurrences

Antonietta Amati Canta

band

hairclip

hairnet

linen ribbon

fassia

flectula

39

kankellata

lencia

lencia “linen ribbon”

CDB 5:9, 1088

CDB 4:42, 1065

CDB 4:42, 1065

duo lectuli da ferula “two hair-clips of ferula” kankellata solidi quattuordecim “a hairnet worth 14 gold solidi”

CDB 4:18, 1028 meffium

flectula de solido uno aureo “hair-clip, worth 1 gold solidus”

CDP 29:41, 1397

CDP 29:41, 1397

corigiam unam de argento cum boccula et pendente, pro tarenis quindecim; […] item corigiam unam de argento cum boccula et pendente et cinto sanguineo cum coczellis et barris de argento, pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim “one silver girdle with buckle and ferrule worth 15 tareni; […] also a silver girdle with buckle and ferrule and a sanguine-red strap with shells and silver bars, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni” fassiam unam laboratam de seta nigra et rubea “one band made of black and red silk”

CDP 29:36, 1395

corigiam unam de argento cum cinto sete rubee ac boccola et pendent(e) de argento et cum speris de argento nonaginta clavatis in illa; item et corigiam unam de argento cum cinto de coreo et rotis triginta de argento, pro unciis auri duabus et tarenis quindecim “one silver girdle with a silk strap in red colour and silver buckle and silver ferrule and with ninety silver globes studded in it; and also one silver girdle with a leather strap and thirty silver washers, worth 2 gold onciae and 15 tareni”

Norman

Byzantine

Byzantine

Byzantine

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Bridal Gifts in Bari

Meaning

bag

button

hairnet

Word

marsubium, marsupius

pomettus, pomectus

reticella

CDB 13:76, 1297

CDB 5:77, 1130

reticellam nigram de serico bonam novam “a good quality new black silk hairnet” reticellam unam de seta “one silk hairnet”

CDB 5:9, 1088

reticella “hairnet”

CDP 29:41, 1397

pomectos quatraginta de perlis “forty pearl buttons”

Angevin

Norman

Norman

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

CDP 29:41, 1397 CDP 29:36, 1395

Angevin

Period

CDP 29:22, 1385

Reference

pomettos crispos quatraginta de argento deauratos “forty crinkle gilded silver buttons”

marsupius unus de auro filato; item marsupi duo de inbelluto “one bag woven with gold thread; also two velvet bags” marsubia duo de velluto; item marsubium unum de auro filato “two velvet bags; also one bag woven with gold thread”

Occurrences

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Location

Antonietta Amati Canta

40

Meaning

ring

hooped earrings

Word

anulus

cercelli, circelli

Table 1.3: Jewellery

41

CDB 5:9, 1088

duo parie circelli de auro. uno cum milelle. et ipso alio cum panarelle et conciatum cum alve “two pairs of gold hooped earrings, one with small globes and the other one with gold filigree fobs in the form of a small breadbasket and ornamented with white pearls”

CDB 5:77, 1130 duos parios de cercellis unum anticus de auro […] et alium m[…]ti similiter de auro “two pairs of gold hooped earrings, one of antique workmanship [ … ] and another [ … ] also made of gold” par unum de circellis de argento depurato cum pernis et lapidibus, CDP 29:22, 1385 appreciat(um) pro tarenis quindecim “one pair of pure silver hooped earrings with pearls and stones, worth 15 tareni”

CDB 4:42, 1065

paria circelli cum milille de auro “a pair of hooped earrings with small gold globes”

Norman

CDB 5:77, 1130

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Angevin

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

S. Nicola

Location

Norman

Norman

Byzantine

Byzantine

Norman

CDB 5:9, 1088

CDB 4: fragment 2, 971

Byzantine

Period

CDB 4:42, 1065

Reference

cercelli aurei balientes solidi constantini sex “gold hooped earrings worth 6 solidi constantini”

quattuor anule auree “four golden rings” quattuor anule de auro “four gold rings” anulum aureum “a golden ring”

Occurrences

Bridal Gifts in Bari

Meaning

bracelet

frontlet

Word

circhettum

fronteria

CDP 29:22, 1385 fronteria una de argento depurato clavata cum postis sex de pernis, pro quilibet posta perne tres et poste alie tres cum lapidibus preciosis, appreciat(a) pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim “one pure silver frontlet studded with six set pearls, in front of each three set pearls, and three other settings with precious stones, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni” CDP 29:41, 1397 fronter(i)am unam de argento deauratam clavatam cum postis sex de pernis et pro qualibet posta perne tres et cum postis aliiis tribus de petris sive lapidibus preciosis, pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim; […] item fronter(i)am unam de argento cum pernis et petris “one gold plated studded silver frontlet with six set pearls and on the front of each of them three set pearls and with three other set stones or gems, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni; […] also one silver frontlet with pearls and stones”

Angevin

par unum de circellis de argento depurato cum pernis et lapidibus, CDP 29:41, 1397 pro tarenis quindecim “one pair of pure silver hooped earrings with pearls and stones in the middle, worth 15 tareni” circhettum unum de argento cum post(is) sex de perlis ana tria et CDP 29:36, 1395 cum petris granatis septem “a silver bracelet with six set pearls in rows of three and with seven garnets”

Cathedral

Cathedral

Angevin

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Location

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

CDP 29:36, 1395

par unum de circellis ad rotas quatuor, cum perlis et petris in medio ipsorum “one pair of hooped earrings forged in the form of four wheels, with pearls and stones in the middle”

Period

Reference

Occurrences

Antonietta Amati Canta

42

pendant

rosary

paternoster

pentareula

crownlet

iorlanda

43

CDP 29:41, 1397

par unum de pat(er)n(ost)r(is) de ambris et par aliud de corallis “one pair of rosaries of amber and another of coral”

CDB 4:42, 1065

CDP 29:36, 1395

par unum de pat(er)n(ost)r(is) de ambris citrinis cum uno dentellerio de argento pro tarenis quindecim “one pair of rosaries of citrine amber with one silver buckle, worth 15 tareni”

duo pentareule solidi uno “two pendants worth 1 solidus”

CDP 29:22, 1385

CDP 29:41, 1397

par unum de pat(er)n(ost)r(is) de argento numero centum cum dinticherio uno de argento et pulmecto uno de pernis, appreciat(um) pro uncia una et tarenis quindecim “one pair of silver rosaries, numbering a hundred (beads), with one silver buckle and one globe with pearls, worth 1 oncia and 15 tareni”

iorlandam unam de argento de pettiis decem clavat(am) cum pernis et petris “one silver crownlet made up of ten pieces studded with pearls and stones”

Byzantine

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

Angevin

S. Nicola

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Cathedral

Bridal Gifts in Bari

The Marriage of the Year (1028)

Lucia Sinisi

The cartula of morgincap (fig. 2.1) preserved in the Archive of the Metropolitan Chapter of Bari, in Apulia, Italy, edited as number 14 in the Codice Diplomatico Barese, represents one of the first pieces of evidence of the consignment of the “morning gift.” Elegantly handwritten in December 1028 by a notary, the deacon Pandus, it is embellished with an illumination (fig. 2.2), probably out of respect for the high social status of the bride’s family. This image is extremely precious, especially bearing in mind how few lay visual sources there are for the period compared to the ecclesiastical ones (represented above all by the magnificent Exultet rolls preserved in the Bari

An earlier version of this paper was given in May 2007 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I wish to thank Christine Meek for her valuable comments and suggestions, Gale Owen-Crocker for her patience, and Robin Netherton for her impeccable editing.   The Codice Diplomatico Barese (henceforth CDB), collaboratively edited by the Commissione provinciale di Archeologia e Storia Patria, is a multivolume compilation of Apulian archival documents. Citations to other documents from the CDB appear in the text of this article along with the volume number, the document number, and the year of the document. For the text of this cartula, see CDB 1: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (952–1264), ed. Giovanni Battista Nitto de Rossi and Francesco Nitti (1897; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1964), appendix: L’Exultet figurato del secolo XII. For an explanation of morgincap and a map of the region, see Antonietta Amati Canta, “Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari,” chapter 1 in this volume.   The text is dated December 1028, but because the Byzantine calendar year started on the first of September, there is a discrepancy between the date on any document drafted between September 1 and December 31 and the date as calculated today, so the actual date of consignment of the morgincap was December 1027. Maria Cannataro, “Un insolito documento privato barese del secolo XI,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Bari 19–20 (1976–77): 203–23, at 203.    On this document “particolarmente pregiato e solenne negli aspetti dell’iconografia, della ornamentazione e della scrittura” [particularly precious and impressive in its iconographical, ornamental, and writing aspects], see Francesco Magistrale, Notariato e documentazione in Terra di Bari: Ricerche su forme, rogatari, credibilità dei documenti latini nei secoli IX–XI, Documenti e monografie (Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia) 48 (Bari: Grafica Bigiemme, 1984), 386–87 and 441–43. This translation and others in this article are my own unless otherwise noted.

Lucia Sinisi

Fig. 2.1: Notarial document marking the consignment of the morgincap (“morning gift”) from Mel, son of Natale, to Alfarana, the daughter of Bisantius, on the occasion of their ­wedding in December 1028 (Apulia, Italy; Archive of the Metropolitan Chapter of Bari, Codice ­Diplomatico Barese, 1:14). Photo: Archive of the Metropolitan Chapter of Bari, by permission.

46

The Marriage of 1028

Fig. 2.2: Detail of bridal couple from the morgincap document. Photo: Archive of the ­Metropolitan Chapter of Bari, by permission.

47

Lucia Sinisi ­ athedral Museum). Although, unlike the texts examined in the accompanying article C by Antonietta Amati Canta, this cartula does not mention specific garments, it is unique among the notarial documents in containing a visual representation of clothing. The miniature, drawn at the centre of the cartula, portrays the wedding couple— framed by an arch, on each side of which rests a bird with its head facing outward—as the bridegroom offers the notarial act to his wife. They are both lavishly dressed. Light strokes of colour (today they appear as red, green, and purple) decorate the edges of their clothes and ornaments. As has been pointed out, this kind of illustration was unusual for a legal document, particularly one pertaining to the private sphere; but although the image has been extensively studied from the palaeographical and artistic points of view, there has not so far been any attempt to take into consideration the outfits the spouses are wearing, even if their attire is the most striking element of the little cartula. Mel, the bridegroom, son of Natale (filius Natali), is a blacksmith (magister ferrarius, perhaps therefore a “master blacksmith”), a citizen of Bari, possibly of Langobard origin. His wife is Alfarana, the daughter of Bisantius (filia Bisanti), who—we can assume—is a descendant of a noble and powerful Byzantine family. In documents of the eleventh century, references to the influential family of the Alfaraniti are frequent. The earliest, dated 1019, concerns the foundation of the city of Troia, a Byzantine stronghold, the boundaries of which were established by the two Alfaraniti brothers, Johannes and Bisantius. From this we can infer that the high-ranking family was loyal to the emperor Basilius II (born 958, emperor 976–1025). There is another reference to   The Exultet rolls are so called because they contained the liturgy for the Saturday night before Easter, which starts with the chant “Exultet iam angelica turba coelorum … ,” inviting all the angels, the Church, and all the people on earth to rejoice for the Resurrection of Christ. These documents, which the priest used to read from the pulpit, are long rolls of parchment wound around a stick. Their particular characteristic is that the writing is arranged facing the priest, while the pictures are upside down, facing the worshippers, who could follow the service while the priest was chanting. They had a didactic function, and for this reason the illuminations had to be rich and attractive. They are a product typical of the church scriptoria of southern Italy, from Montecassino to Cava (near ­Naples) and Bari. Bari Cathedral Museum preserves three of them. Guglielmo Cavallo, Rotoli di Exultet dell’Italia meridionale (Bari: Adriatica, 1973), 51.    Cannataro, “Un insolito documento,” 204.   See the bibliography given in Cannataro, “Un insolito documento”; Myrtilla Avery, The Exultet Rolls of South Italy (Princeton: University Press, 1936), 2:43 and Table 201; Armando Petrucci, “Note ed ipotesi sulla origine della scrittura barese,” Bullettino dell’Archivio Paleografico italiano, n.s., 4–5 (1958–59): 108–9; Guglielmo Cavallo, “Struttura e articolazione della minuscola beneventana libraria tra i secoli X-XII,” Studi medievali, 3rd ser., vol. 11, no. 1 (1970): 361; Cavallo, Rotoli di Exultet, 51; A. Pratesi, “Influenze della scrittura greca nella formazione della beneventana del tipo di Bari,” in La Chiesa greca in Italia dall’VIII al XVI secolo (Padua: Antenore, 1974), 1095–1109; Pina Belli D’Elia, ed., Alle sorgenti del Romanico—Puglia XI secolo (Bari: Dedalo, 1975), 112 and Table 2; Carla Settis Frugoni, “L’iconografia del matrimonio e della coppia nel medioevo,” in Il matrimonio nella società altomedievale, Settimane di studio 24 (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM—Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1977), 901–63; with the addition of Magistrale, Notariato, 386–87, 442, and Antonietta Amati Canta and Lucia Sinisi, “Incontri di culture e particolarismi grafici in Italia meridionale: la littera langobardisca ‘Bari type,’” in I germani e la scrittura, ed. Elisabetta Fazzini and Eleonora Cianci (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2007), 209–27.

48

The Marriage of 1028 the Alfaraniti family in a document of 1039, which attests to an alliance between the Alfaraniti and another powerful family of Bari, marked through the marriage between an Alfarana, daughter of Delecterius (filia Delecterii) and Petrus, described as ­imperialis kritis (a sort of imperial judge), filius Caloiohannis turmarce (son of Caloiohannes the turmarch—a high-standing military officer) in the Byzantine Apulian province. In September 1060, another Alfarana, daughter of Iohannes (filia Iohannis), married an affluent man, Russo, son of the deacon Amoruso, who was prepared to give to his bride-to-be the conspicuously large sum of quinquaginta solidi aurei boni, that is, fifty coins of solid gold, plus a servant, as meffium. It is important to underline the prestigious social position held by this family, because it might explain the special care taken by the notary Pandus in creating the small document of 1028, not only decorating it with an illumination, but using particularly elegant writing, so unusual for private documents. Mel is a craftsman, belonging to a family of artisans and not of nobiles homines, unlike the family of his wife Alfarana. In fact, while the miniaturist takes great pains to highlight the image of Alfarana, Mel is treated with less regard. For example, he is portrayed as being smaller than his wife, and with clothes and headdress that are less ornate. Moreover, his name is written only in lower case. This did not necessarily mean that Mel was not a well-off or influential citizen; indeed, the detailed list of his properties in the document is impressive, including houses with courtyards, vineyards, land and woodland, fruit trees, olive groves, wells, gold and silver, livestock, wine and oil, and clothes made of silk, linen, and wool. Notwithstanding the visible difference of their social status highlighted in the drawing, the two spouses both wear extremely elegant and precious clothes, of assuredly Byzantine style. In contrast with other visual sources of the period, which were mainly created in ecclesiastical environments for religious purposes, the private nature of the document, which was drafted and illuminated for the occasion of the wedding of Alfarana and Mel, allows us to think that the garments in which the newlyweds are depicted are very similar to the clothes they would be wearing on their wedding day—or the day after that, when Alfarana, in the presence of relatives, friends, and legal witnesses, was to receive the “morning gift” she was entitled to, according to the Langobard law. What we do not know, though, is whether these are specific wedding garments or simply best clothes to be worn on special occasions, because—as far as is known—there is no specific reference to clothes or colours worn at wedding ceremonies in the Byzantine Empire at the time, and surviving primary material is

  Cannataro, “Un insolito documento,” 215–16. For the titles and positions of imperialis kritis and turmarch in the Byzantine Apulian territories, see Paul Oldfield, “Urban Government in Southern Italy c. 1085–c. 1127,” English Historical Review 122 (2007), 579–608. For an explanation of meffium, see Amati Canta, “Bridal gifts,” 7–8.   The writing used by Pandus notarius is the Bari-type, a variety of the Beneventan script, which originated in the Langobardic scriptoria of Benevento; Magistrale, Notariato, 441–42.   Cannataro, “Un insolito documento,” 215–16.

49

Lucia Sinisi almost nonexistent.10 From what comes to light from the analysis of documents in Amati Canta’s discussion,11 there seems to be no reference to special clothes reserved for wedding ceremonies in the Bari province of the Byzantine Empire either. The only element in the illumination of the cartula which could be interpreted as pertaining to wedding garb is the crown Alfarana is wearing: It is tall and extremely elaborate, surmounted by a cross. It is well established that for centuries in the lands of the Byzantine Empire, the crown was a symbol of chastity for both bride and bridegroom who, in the iconography, are often portrayed with crowns suspended above their heads.12 Its use is well attested in medieval Byzantium, both in the text of the marriage rite preserved in manuscripts dating from the tenth to fifteenth centuries as well as in other written sources.13 The crown generally consisted of a plain circlet made of gold, silver, or base metal, with a central panel at the front set with a gem. Probably the pair of tin-plated copper crowns now preserved in the Byzantine Museum of Athens are wedding crowns, because they are inscribed with verse 3 of Psalm 21, which was repeated, with a slight variation, during the Orthodox marriage rite. They each consist of a circlet with a single arched projection at the front and have been dated to the tenth century.14 It is very likely that the Byzantine Apulian province made no exception and that wedding crowns were in use here as well, since an iron crown set with precious stones, dating to the thirteenth century, is still preserved in the Basilica of San Nicola, Bari.15 Crowns are not mentioned, however, in dowry inventories drafted in Bari during the Byzantine period, and the reason might lie in the fact that wedding crowns belonged to the church and were only lent to the spouses during the celebration of the wedding rite.16 Alfarana’s crown, however, seems taller and more elaborate than those described in written sources and represented in art of the Middle Byzantine period. It is ornamented with at least three red gems set in the middle of the band, plus two details that might be interpreted either as gems or as small pointed projections at each side of the cross, probably, in the intention of the illuminator, as much as symbol of her noble stock as

10 Maria Parani, “Byzantine Bridal Costume,” in Δώρημα: A Tribute to the A. G. Leventis Foundation on the Occasion of its 20th Anniversary (Nicosia: The A. G. Leventis Foundation, 2000), 185–216. 11 Amati Canta, “Bridal gifts.” 12 Parani, “Byzantine Bridal Costume,” 186. 13 Ibid., 208. 14 Ibid. 15 Philip Ditchfield, La culture matérielle médiévale: l’Italie méridionale byzantine et normande, Collection de l’École française de Rome 373 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), 482; Michele D’Elia, Mostra dell’arte in Puglia, dal tardo antico al Rococò (Rome: De Luca, 1964), fig. 37. 16 In a letter to the Bulgarians (866) in which he describes Orthodox practices, Pope Nicholas I, in referring to wedding crowns, states that they belonged to the church and were kept there; Parani, “Byzantine Bridal Costume,” 208. According to Parani (208–10), whereas earlier representations of crowns in “Wedding of Cana” scenes are slim fillets or metal bands, in later ones they become more elaborate, often ornamented with precious stones and pearls, and moreover, “in some Late Byzantine representations, however, the bride, instead of a wedding crown, is shown wearing a diadem of a type that was fashionable at the time of the execution of the paintings, while her husband wears a wedding crown proper or has his head bare.”

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The Marriage of 1028 the symbol of a bride. Mel’s headdress might also represent a Byzantine wedding crown, although the high projection on the top could be confused with a hat;17 a close look at the illumination, however, reveals that the miniaturist drew a neat circlet at the base of the headgear, surmounted by a projection set with three big, green stones, the shape of which resembles the crowns preserved in the Byzantine Museum of Athens. Below the crown, Alfarana’s hair is fastened up, as was expected of a married woman. In Italian sources dating back to the Langobard period, and later ones, it is common to find the expression in capillo (esse), which is explained as “with hair let down,” referring to a young unmarried woman, usually still living with her parents.18 From this it can be inferred that putting one’s hair up was a sign of the acquired marital status and a symbol of a married woman’s modesty. From a close look at the illumination, it seems that Alfarana’s hair is enveloped in a net. The net is too visible and too wide to suggest that it might be a reticella, a fine, tight silk net, which is attested for the first time in a 1088 document;19 more likely the illuminator wanted to reproduce a kankellata,20 a netted coif of Byzantine make or style worked in gold threads with pearls inserted, which is mentioned for the first time in the dowry inventory of another Alfarana, who married in 1060 and whose dowry inventory is dated to 1065 (CDB 4:42, 1065), and stands as the most expensive among the headdresses in our dowry inventories, being worth the amazing sum of 14 gold solidi.21 Another striking element in the depiction of Alfarana’s dress is a pair of very large earrings, which stick out at the sides of her face: They look like enormous hoops adorned with spherical stones, mainly green. Cercelli were evidently very common items in brides’ wardrobes.22 Alfarana’s might have been made of gold (cercelli aurei) like the hoops given to a bride named Visantia in 971 (CDB 4, fragment 2), but unlike those simple gold hoops, they look more elaborate, like the ones ornamented with milille, which the other Alfarana receives in 1065 (CDB 4:42, 1065).23 As has already been said, there were no distinctive clothes or colours in the Byzantine period that could be attributed to a bride; the exceptional nature of the ceremony

17 Cannataro, “Un insolito documento,” 205. 18 The expression occurs with this meaning for the first time in the laws promulgated by the Langobard King Liutprand. Claudio Azzara and Stefano Gasparri, eds., Le leggi dei Longobardi: Storia, memoria e diritto di un popolo germanico, 2nd ed. (Rome: Viella, 2005), 236 n. 7. 19 Amati Canta, “Bridal gifts,” 24. 20 Ibid., 23. 21 CDB 4: Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: Periodo greco (939–1071), ed. Francesco Nitti (1900; repr., Trani, Italy: Vecchi, 1964). As Ditchfield (Culture matérielle, 482) points out, a kankellata is painted in a fresco in the church of S. Maria del Piano, Ausonia, dating to the early years of the twelfth century; see also Gianclaudio Macchiarella, Il ciclo di affreschi della cripta del Santuario di Santa Maria del Piano presso Ausonia (Rome: De Luca, 1981). 22 Amati Canta, “Bridal gifts,” 24–25. 23 Some Byzantine-style hoops adorned with small globes dating to the ninth to eleventh centuries, from archeological excavations in Apulia, are preserved in the Museum of Taranto; Cosimo D’ Angela, “Le oreficerie bizantine del museo Nazionale di Taranto,” Vetera Christianorum 21 (1984): 181–96; also published in Puglia paleocristiana e altomedievale 5, ed. Giuseppe Di Cagno (Bari: Edipuglia, 1990), 23–30.

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Lucia Sinisi was marked by the luxury of the material and by the jewellery the bride was wearing, according to her social rank. Alfarana, like the bridegroom, wears a tunic, without a mantle, but its magnificence is striking. Its lavish decorations of green embroidered borders—with some strokes of scarlet, and a colour which, on close inspection, seems like imperial purple (the same colours that are used for the decorations of Mel’s dress)—stand out on the material of the garment, which, unfortunately, has been left unpainted. The embroidered bands, two of which run parallel at the collar, a vertical one from the collar down to the waist, one along the sleeve edge and a wider one at the hem, seem to reproduce geometric patterns. Some fairly broad and uncoloured work runs below the bottom edges of the parallel collar bands and along the sides of the vertical one on the front of the dress. At first sight this resembles scalloping, but when magnified it appears too big for scalloping, rather resembling circlets, some with a mark (perhaps representing a hole?) near the rim. These might conceivably represent coins, as a shawl adorned with coins (nikyforate) is mentioned in the later Alfarana’s dowry.24 Because of a hole in the parchment at exactly the point where the waist should be, it is difficult to say whether or not the dress was girdled (both styles were accepted in that period); from folds gathered in the lower part of it and from the vertical band, which ends at the waistline, it is possible to infer that it was girdled.25 Alfarana’s dress is also characterized by sleeves which are extremely wide at the wrists.26 But does the dress coincide with one of the types indicated in the dowry inventories, and if so, which one? Philip Ditchfield, when describing the garment in our cartula, firmly defines it as a vestimentum sericum (silk dress),27 adding that this expression specifically indicated “a bridal dress.” However, defining Alfarana’s dress in this way is somewhat unsatisfactory, because even if the author’s point might be accepted in principle for most Apulian bridal dresses, it cannot be adequate in this case. Alfarana and Mel’s wedding was quite exceptional in Bari’s social context: We cannot expect all

24 See below, 53, and Amati Canta, “Bridal gifts,” 13. Ditchfield (Culture matérielle, 506) also mentions a document written in Bari in 1082, in which there is a reference to a “sacco scitto cum nikiforate” [a plain garment of coarse wool with nikiforate]. 25 “According to the artistic evidence, Early Byzantine dresses, as a rule, had long ample sleeves and were sometimes girt below the breast. They are often shown worn over an undergarment with long tight sleeves … . By contrast, late tenth-century dresses had long narrow sleeves and were usually worn ungirt, while mantles were no longer draped around the body, but secured at the front by means of a brooch.” Maria Parani, Reconstructing the Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconography (11th–15th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 72–73. 26 “[I]n the eleventh century we note a striking development in the design of the sleeves, which now became exceedingly wide at the wrists. The new fashion seems to have been established by the middle of the century, as suggested by its attribution to female characters in miniature painting at that time … . The dress with the immensely broad sleeves remained in use as part of Byzantine female aristocratic costume during the following century as well … . Square embroidered panels adorned the upper arms, while narrow borders decorated the ends of the sleeves.” Parani, Reconstructing, 73. See also Jennifer Ball, Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Dress in Eighth- to Twelfth-Century Painting (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 51. 27 Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 455–56.

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The Marriage of 1028 Bari brides to wear a similar wedding dress. Surely Alfarana on her wedding day was dressed in something very special, something that few brides could have afforded. Could it be a “Basili Constantini [ … ]”? Among the garments mentioned in the documents contained in the Codice Diplomatico Barese which have been analysed in the preceding article, this is the only one which can be compared for its opulence with the one worn by the Alfarana in the miniature. The Basili Constantini [ … ] belonged to the rich and exotic wardrobe of the later Alfarana, spouse of the affluent Russo, who married in September 1060. When she received her dowry from her father Iohannes in 1065, this garment was valued at 50 solidi, nearly ten times the value of a bangbadiky and more than sixteen times that of a gipteca, all expensive items that were also present in her wardrobe. Basili Constantini is the genitive form of Basilius Constantinus. This genitive form is followed by a lacuna in the manuscript, which we may presume originally contained a term naming an article of clothing, thus suggesting the idea of a garment “pertaining to Basil (and) Constantine”—that is, the two brothers and co-emperors Basilius II (976–1025) and Constantine VIII (1025–28). If the Basili Constantini [ … ] really is a silk dress that was tailored in some imperial atelier in Constantinople during the reigns of Basilius II and Constantine VIII, that would fit in well with the date of the wedding of Mel and Alfarana, when it must have been the dernier cri in terms of fashion. Some forty years later, what seems to be the same garment was passed by Iohannes to his daughter Alfarana, apparently as a precious family heirloom. An even more concrete explanation for the mysterious term in the later Alfarana’s inventory lies in the well-established use of coins for garment decoration at this time. The reference to Basili Constantini [ … ] might indicate a dress ornamented with coins minted during the rule of Basilius II and Constantine VIII.28 This possibility adds special significance to the circular designs on the dress depicted as being worn by the earlier Alfarana, which might, as noted earlier, represent such coins. If we consider the pair of gold cercelli adorned with milille, the expensive ­kankellata, and the probable Basili Constantini [ … ] which compose our Alfarana’s wedding garb in the illumination on her morgincap document, we cannot help noticing that equivalent items are mentioned in the dowry list of the second Alfarana, who receives in 1065 possibly the most expensive dowry among the ones examined in Amati Canta’s discussion. The later Alfarana also has a pair of gold cercelli adorned with milille, a valuable kankellata worth the extraordinary sum of 14 solidi, and of course the Basili Constantini [ … ] among the many items in her wardrobe: quinque camise bone subtiles appretiate solidi decem. gipteca causuta solidi tres. fuffude russa et citrina consuta solidi quattuordecim. Basili Constantini [ … ] cusuto … solidi quinquaginta. Tres bangbadiky consute solidi sex. duo lectuli da ferula et uno bittulo 28 Several coins from this era show both the emperors’ portraits. The most likely choice for garment decoration would be the silver milliarèsion, a 25 millimeter silver coin with the bust of Basil II on the left and Constantine on the right, each wearing a crown, struck for the Imperial Mint in Constantinople. A gold histameron or tetarteron would have been too precious for this use. Ditchfield, Culture matérielle, 506.

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Lucia Sinisi da birgallo solidi septem. duo pentareule solidi uno. Duo facioli grecisky solidi septem. Duo facioli coppibillati uno cum masuli et alio cum nikyforate solidi decem. Duo totibillati cum masuli solidi quattuordecim. Tres facioli, duo cum masuli et alio cum demme colorinee solidi duodecim. Kankellata solidi quattuordecim. Zippa solidi duo. Duo cale bone cum masuli solidi quinque. Cala guttulata ad serico solido uno. Paria circelli cum milille de auro, quattuor anule auree solidi octo.

Was the Alfarana with the outstanding 1065 dowry the granddaughter of the earlier Alfarana? Did she receive from her father a sumptuous garment that once belonged to her grandmother, the wife of the affluent Mel? One detail might add substance to this hypothesis: The notary who drafted the dowry inventory in 1065 is the same Pandus who drafted the morgincap document in 1028. His career as diaconus and notarius has been meticulously traced by Francesco Magistrale, who has ascertained that Pandus’ first extant document, written when he was a young deacon and notary, is the 1028 cartula, and the last extant act he engrossed is the 1065 dowry inventory.29 We may assume that, out of deference for a family he was well acquainted with, when he wrote the first document, he painted, or arranged to have painted, a beautiful illumination, a sort of photo of the spouses on their wedding day, with the young bride wearing clothes that were so precious that—we can imagine—all the population of Bari had been talking about them. Thirty-seven years later, he was entrusted with the dowry inventory of another scion of the powerful Alfaraniti family, who received from her parents not only what was necessary and decent for her marital life according to her social status, but also what constituted part of the patrimony of a very influential house, which had to be kept within the house and to be transmitted from one generation to the next.30

29 Magistrale, Notariato, 286–390. 30 Children could inherit part of their mother’s dos (“dowry”).

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Clothing as Currency in Pre-Norman Ireland?

Mark Zumbuhl

Human societies have used many forms of goods as mediums of gift or exchange. Any item to which a value can be assigned, no matter what the nature of that value, might be used as such a medium. It is therefore natural that, throughout history, textile products have been used in this fashion. To the present day, the gifting of garments and accessories remains a general feature of most societies, and in places which use (or once used) barter, garments act as a medium of exchange. A number of societies have at one stage or another taken this process further and utilised textile products in a more formal role in processes of exchange and transaction: more specifically, using particular quantities of textiles as units of currency with established values. Among the better-known examples is China, which early developed sericulture and the production of silk on a large scale, and where both skeins and woven pieces of silk were used as money. In Europe, different Slavic peoples utilised cloth as a means of payment: The Bosnian and Serbo-Croat verb platiti (“to pay”) is derived from the noun platno (“linen”) and quantities of this fabric were used as a form of currency; in

This paper began as a presentation in a DISTAFF session at the 2011 International Medieval Congress at Leeds. Thanks are due to the audience for their perceptive comments and questions. Part of the material was presented at a colloquium on Insular economics in Ireland held at the University of Cambridge in September 2011; thanks are also due to that audience. Particular gratitude is hereby expressed to Christina Petty and Janilee Plummer, graduate students at the University of Manchester, for their aid in estimating the labour required to produce certain garments. All errors remaining are my responsibility.    For an overview of various early mediums, two works that appeared within a year of each other provide an excellent introduction: Paul Einzig, Primitive Money in its Ethnological, Historical, and Economic Aspects (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1949), and Alison Hingston Quiggin, A Survey of Primitive Money: The Beginnings of Currency (London: Methuen, 1949); both works also discuss diverse other goods used for the same purposes, from salt to cowrie shells and beyond.    Einzig, Primitive Money, 253–58; see also Quiggin, Survey, 220–24. Quiggin also notes the problematic term pu, applied to various Chinese tool-coins, which has been argued to have originally meant “cloth” or “silk,” and the sycee known in colonial India, which appears to derive from a Chinese term meaning “fine silk.”

Mark Zumbuhl the tenth century Franconian Slavs paid various renders in linen cloth. Leathers were used for transactions and renders in medieval France and Italy, while the significance of the regulated Scandinavian wadmal (Old Norse vaðmál) is well known. The significance of clothing as marker of status and element of the individual’s public persona in early medieval Ireland has been long understood. In the narrative sources, the significance of clothing and the processes required to produce it are often highlighted. Gifts of clothing are often referred to in literary sources, and for the professional poets, the provision of clothing (along with other goods) by the poet’s patron is often noted. The starting point for the present paper is a short note in Fergus Kelly’s magisterial Early Irish Farming. In an appendix discussing various units of value in early medieval Ireland, Kelly notes the potential for clothing to be used as a form of “currency,” and gives three examples of such practice. The aim of this essay is to look again at these examples and some others, and to consider whether clothing was used as currency in a systematic way in pre-Norman Ireland. It is clear that Kelly is himself using “currency” in a relatively loose way to refer to the use of clothing as a medium of exchange, without implying that it had other monetary functions, such as use as a unit of account (i.e. standard values with which other goods or services may be compared) or as a store of value (though the fact that clothing may be used in exchanges implies a value). In examining the evidence, we shall see the extent to which Irish clothing could have been used for any of these purposes, rather than simply as an item of worth which could be gifted or exchanged in specific circumstances. At the outset, we may note one contrast with the examples of textile-money given above. All the references in Irish sources are to finished garments, rather than set quantities of cloth. Clothing, particularly in pre-industrial societies, was far from a uniform set of goods. The medieval Slavs would have judged the value of a piece of linen cloth not merely by the size, but also the quality of the fabric. Deciding the relative values of tunics or hoods would have been an even more subjective exercise, due to the scope for variation among finished articles of clothing. It is fairly easy to see why cloth of various kinds could have been used as currency: It is material with intrinsic value; it is measurable; it is portable (depending of course on the nature of the textile; a set value of silk was far more transportable than a quantity of linen of the same value); and given that a piece of one type of cloth of particular manufacture is effectively the same as another piece of the same cloth of the same size, it is, in economic   Traian Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 187.   Einzig, Primitive Money, 267–71.   The first detailed discussions in modern scholarship were by Eugene O’Curry, On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish: A Series of Lectures (London: Williams and Norgate, 1873), 3:108–211. Since then, there has been no comprehensive treatment of the subject.   Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), 45–46.    Fergus Kelly, Early Irish Farming: A study based mainly on the law-texts of the 7th and 8th centuries AD (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997).   Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 598–99.

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Clothing as Currency? terms, fungible, in that those two pieces may be swapped easily. However, one cloak is unlikely to be identical to another, and thus establishing their relative values is a more complex matter; therefore the use of such items in a set exchange system may, a priori, be more difficult. For the purposes of what follows, I shall use what seems to be the most standard system of values given in early Irish law.10 Values were reckoned in terms of bullion, cattle, and a unit called the cumal (plural cumala), which originally meant “female slave” but from an early date came to mean a certain large unit of value, which might be paid in bullion or cattle. The other usual measures given in texts are the screpall, the Roman scruple = 1/24 of an ounce; the ungae or ounce (with silver as the standard bullion); and the sét (plural séoit), which literally means “valuable thing” but had a standard value of 12 scruples, equivalent to a samaisc or dry heifer. The most common equation was: 24 scruples = 1 ounce of silver = 1 milch cow = 2 séoit = 2 dry heifers = 1/3 of a cumal.11 With these preliminary observations concluded, I now turn to the source material. The starting point is also Kelly’s: the native Irish legal material. From Ireland we have both the largest and earliest corpus of vernacular law from early medieval Europe, though much of it survives in manuscripts of a considerably later date. The law itself is very different in kind from the codes of Anglo-Saxon England or Carolingian Francia. It consists of customary law, the tracts arranged generally around particular legal principles or procedures. Most of the primary texts seem to have been composed in the seventh and eighth centuries.12 The legal texts which survive cover a very diverse set of topics, but none is specifically concerned with garments or the values ascribed to them. Thus, references to textiles and garments in the surviving legal corpus are generally brief and incidental, providing us with hints but nothing very definite. Some texts refer to the processes of cloth and garment production and give indications as to the worth imputed to elements of such processes.13 A well-known instance is found in

  For discussion of the various economic aspects of such currencies, see Einzig, Primitive Money, 319– 34, 395–96. 10 The relative values naturally varied considerably with time and place. For discussion, see Kelly, Early Irish Law, 112–16. 11 Ibid.; see also Neil McLeod, “Interpreting Early Irish Law: Status and Currency,” part 1, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 41 (1986), 46–65; part 2, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 42 (1987), 41–115. 12 For more detailed discussion, see Kelly, Early Irish Law, passim. The bulk of the early Irish legal manuscript material was transcribed into a diplomatic edition by Daniel A. Binchy, Corpus Iuris Hibernici, 6 vols. (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978), hereafter CIH; see Liam Breatnach, A Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005) for an overview of the material. Various legal texts have been edited individually; see the list in Kelly, Early Irish Law, 266–83, and additional references in Breatnach, Companion, 13–91. 13 The two most notable examples are, first, Di Chetharslicht Athgabála, “On The Four Divisions of Distraint,” which lists possessions which may be distrained (legally impounded as compensation); many of the objects belonging to women are tools for textile production. The other is Cáin Lánamna, “The Law of Couples,” which lists the share of property, including materials for textile-production processes, which would go to each partner in the event of separation. See Kelly, Early Irish Law, 279, 269.

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Mark Zumbuhl the tract Bretha im Fhuillema Gell, “Judgments about Pledge-interests.”14 In early Irish law it was possible to guarantee a contract or agreement by giving a physical object or pledge (gell) to the counter-party, or by borrowing the gell from a third party and giving it to the counter-party. In the latter case, assuming the arrangement was concluded successfully within a set time frame, the contractor who borrowed the gell would return it to the third-party owner with a payment of “interest” for the service.15 If the contract was not fulfilled, the gell was forfeit. This text details the appropriate interest payments for such arrangements. Generally, the objects which could be pledged were associated in some way with the role or profession of the pledger, e.g. women were depicted as being able to pledge items connected with textile production.16 Garments might also be pledged; we shall return to this point below. The comment about the pledging of an embroidery needle in the text shows the regard in which ornamental embroidery and its practitioners were held: Techta fuillema gill snaite druinige la Feine: imdenmaib direnar corruice log nuinge argit, air is mo do thorbu dosli cach ben bes druinech olldaite cid rigna (The lawful pledge-interests of an embroidery needle among the Féni: For ornamental work, there is paid up to the value of an ounce of silver, for every woman who is an embroideress deserves more profit than even queens.)17

Note the extremely high interest payment to be received—an ounce of silver, equivalent to a milch cow. However, although confirming the high status of such pursuits, and allowing us to infer that clothing decorated with such work was valuable, this extract does not tell us very much about the value of garments themselves. In fact, there are almost no law tracts which give direct values to clothing itself. One such text is that on fosterage, Cáin Íarraith, “The Law of Fosterage-fee,” which states “cumdach maic righ logh .uii. .s.” (“the apparel of the son of a king has the value of seven séoit”).18 This provision is stipulating the value of the garments that the fosterer is supposed to provide for a royal child, which equates to the value of three and a half milch cows or just over one cumal.19 This can be assumed to be clothing of very high status, though the semantics of the term cumdach mean that it is unclear whether the text is describing a 14 CIH, 2:462.19 (my translation). The text is currently being re-edited and translated by J. Bemmer of the University of Oxford. 15 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 164–67. Although the term “borrowed” is used here, normally the third party deposited the pledge directly with the counter-party, rather than giving it to the beneficiary of the loan. 16 Ibid., 164–65. 17 CIH, 2:464.2–3 (my translation). 18 CIH, 5:1762.5 (my translation). 19 A later commentary elsewhere on the same tract (CIH, 5:1761.24–5), probably of the tenth or eleventh centuries, notes the skills to be taught to royal children: “fithceallucht 7 brainnuidecht 7 marcuigecht 7 snam 7 diubhrucudh doibh, uaim 7 cumadh 7 druinechus dia ningenaibh” (“fidchellplaying and brandub-playing [both types of board game] and horsemanship and swimming and shooting for them [the sons of kings]; sewing and shaping and embroidering for their daughters”; my translation). In this article, the tironian nota (a symbol equivalent to the ampersand in Insular script) is rendered as 7.

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Clothing as Currency? single garment or a whole outfit of clothes.20 A later commentary to this text, perhaps of eleventh-century date, contains one of the earliest explications of the idea that the wearing of certain colours (and particularly multiple colours) was restricted by social status, a theme which continued into the seventeenth-century writings of Geoffrey Keating and was taken up by Irish scholars in the nineteenth century.21 Overall, there is in fact very little in the legal material which discusses whether clothing could be used as a medium of exchange or currency, per se. Given that the law texts are very concerned with compensation, fines, and property, this is perhaps telling in itself. In most cases values are given in terms of the various quantities outlined above—livestock, silver, or slightly more abstract quantities such as the sét and the cumal. Nowhere is a “garment standard” set alongside a cattle or bullion standard. The legal system generally allowed payment in kind, and, for example, someone required to pay the value of several cows who lacked such cows would be able to pay in land or bullion.22 References to payment using clothing are extremely rare. Two examples are mentioned by Kelly.23 The first is in the law tract Bretha Déin Chécht, “Judgments of Dían Cécht.”24 Dían Cécht was a mythological physician; the tract is concerned with fines for illegal injury and payments due to a doctor as a share thereof. Hon. anim esbuith amarcc. etracht direnar i comcisi[n] aisli i clanntar crecht; cumal cainchuisi formnaib ech nallmuiri to sseotu sli. Sliasait sair sethnaig samascaib dirirther lennaib sceo lennaib lin. (Disfigurement, blemish, loss [of a limb], hurt [or] impotence is atoned for after inspection of the part [i.e. of the body] in which the hurt is planted. A cumal [in payment] for [injury to] a goodly leg with choice foreign steeds. [Injury to] the thigh of a noble’s body involves [a penalty of] séoit which shall be paid in dry heifers and linen mantles.)25

20 See Dictionary of the Irish Language: Based mainly on Old- and Middle-Irish materials (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1913–76) s.v. “cumtach,” sense (b). 21 The original text is at CIH 5:1759.12–15. A commentary immediately following in the manuscript (1759.16–36), identifying itself as gné eile (“another version”), expands on the permitted fabrics and colours; as it stands it can be no older than the very late twelfth or thirteenth century, as it contains a reference to sgarlóit (i.e. scarlet, the high-status fabric rather than the colour), a French loanword. Seathrúnn Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating) synthesized various medieval references to such customs in his Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (ca. 1634), and the first modern scholar to discuss the practice was O’Curry, Manners and Customs, 3:87–90, where he described it as a “sumptuary law” comparable to similar provisions in other societies. 22 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 112–23, especially at 115–16. Most payments recorded in the law tracts are fines, though occasionally customary payments for services are listed. The tracts generally specify when payment in kind is not permitted, e.g. the honour-price of an ócaire (smaller-status farmer) is given as 3 séoit, but is specified to be paid in cattle; whereas compensation for the facial wounding of a rí ruirech (“king of overkings,” normally understood to be a provincial king) is valued at a milch cow, but must be paid in silver. 23 Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 598–99. 24 D. A. Binchy, ed., “Bretha Déin Chécht,” Ériu 20 (1966): 1–66. 25 Ibid., p. 40. I give Binchy’s translation. The first instance of lennaib (“mantles”) is probably ­dittography.

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Mark Zumbuhl A principle of the Irish system was that people in the care of another as a result of injury would receive contributions toward food and clothing.26 Therefore it is not necessarily surprising that we should find a similar provision here. All the compensation is reckoned in terms of the sét and the cumal, or in terms of various kinds of livestock, such as a dry heifer (samaisc). With regard to the final stipulation (for a wound to a noble’s thigh), one later commentator’s note, found as a gloss in the manuscript, reads “.i. dirither samaisc la taebh, trian do lennaibh 7 lentibh, trian do samaiscaib, 7 int eac isin trian ele” (“i.e., a samaisc shall be paid in addition; one-third [consisting] of mantles and smocks, one-third of heifers, and the horse as the other third”).27 This later comment retains the principle that clothing is to be paid as part of the compensation, and indeed expands upon it. In general, compensation of course varies as to the status of the victim, another standard Irish legal principle.28 But we must ask whether, given that the clothing is part of a set fine involving other goods—heifers, and possibly a horse also (according to the commentator)—the clothing is simply a traditional item to be given as compensation, rather than simply being a convenient unit of worth. In other words, the traditional compensation package for this kind of injury was required to include, inter alia, some clothing. Note that the text specifies no value for the linen mantles—is such a value assumed? If so, one wonders how the value of such things was determined, given that not all mantles were of the same quality. We must also consider whether the mantles could have been replaced by something of equivalent value as part of the fine without causing any problems. As noted above, payment in kind was often accepted in the Irish legal system. If one did not have a specific item, unit of livestock, or materials to hand, substitutions were generally allowed; where the law did not permit such a substitution, the texts normally make this explicit. This implies, however, that most goods which could be substituted for each other were economically liquid, in the sense of being straightforwardly exchangeable for each other and reckoned to be of equal value. Such a characteristic is normally considered necessary for a good to be used as a medium of exchange or currency.29 The conclusion is that in this case, clothing makes up a customary part of the fine, and it is included because it is clothing. Thus, although they were an exchanged good and item of value, the garments here were not “currency” in the usual sense of the word. The second legal example is in one of the stories preserved in the law tracts. Early Irish law was not composed of a body of case law; however, there are so-called “leading cases,” which are accounts of legendary or historical persons involved in a

26 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 130–32. A Middle Irish commentary to the tract known as Corus Béscnai, “The Regulation of Discipline,” suggests that one of the duties of the noble was to support the wretched (trúaig) by providing them with, among other items, gloves (lámainn). For discussion of the tract itself and references to texts and discussions, see Breatnach, Companion, 290–91. 27 Binchy, “Bretha Déin Chécht,” 40. 28 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 7–10. 29 This is a standard principle of economic thought; for an introduction, see Robert A. Jones, “The Origin and Development of Media of Exchange,” Journal of Political Economy 84 (1976): 757–75, esp. 762–65.

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Clothing as Currency? legal process, in order to illustrate a principle at hand.30 For example, Bechbretha, a tract on beekeeping, discusses the historical king Congal Cáech of Ulster, who died in 637. His epithet means “squinter,” and according to the law tract he was blinded in one eye by the sting of a bee.31 Our example concerns a king Cernodon of Ulster who, according to the anecdote, was unjustly satirized by some poets.32 This kind of insult to one’s status was due considerable recompense in the legal system.33 The story mentions various sets of payments as alternatives; most are reckoned in precious metal or cattle, as is standard, but one possible fine is given thus: secht n-uingi airgit ocus leth n-uinge ocus secht mba finda eóderga, da c[h]umal insein, brat corcra secht n-uingi airgit, léne cona dagc[h]ulpait bes fiú da screpall [deug] … [rest of column blank in manuscript] (Seven ounces and a half of silver, and seven white cows with red ears, that is, two cumala, a purple cloak worth seven ounces of silver, a shirt with its goodly hood which is worth twelve scruples … )34

This is interesting in describing the kind of fine that could be paid as honour-price for insulting a provincial king. And unlike the previous example, this text specifies both the nature of the garments and their required value—not any old shirts will do. But again we must ask whether the garments were an essential or mandatory component of the fine. Could the cloak worth seven ounces of silver simply be replaced with seven ounces of silver? The law tract does not tell us, but the wording seems to imply this is not the case. Where law tracts have this level of specificity, it suggests that substitution or payment in kind was not permitted. Moreover, abundant examples show that purple garments were the preserve of persons of royal status, as elsewhere they were expensive and were not easy to obtain.35 The inclusion of a purple cloak here as compensation for a king is symbolically related to the rank of the one who has been offended. It seems, then, that again we have a specific example of particular clothing being used as a payment in a very specific context, conditioned by Irish legal principles of status. The poets who satirized the king—probably persons of relatively high status and wealth—could not easily buy their way out of the situation by handing over silver. Instead they would have to go to the additional trouble of sourcing royal-status garments.

30 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 238–40. 31 Thomas Charles-Edwards and Fergus Kelly, Bechbretha: An Old Irish Law-Tract on Bee-Keeping (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983), §§27–35. 32 Myles Dillon, “Stories from the Law-Tracts,” Ériu 11 (1932): 42–65, at 45. For a discussion of the date and provenance of these “leading cases,” see also Breatnach, Companion, 349–50, which notes the various Old Irish verbal features in the tale and suggests that it therefore dates from before the tenth century. 33 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 137–39. 34 Dillon, “Stories,” 45. The word deug is supplied from an alternative version of the same passage; see Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 599. 35 There are dozens of references to purple garments in secular literary texts; see the discussion in Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 263–68, and references to legal and hagiographical examples there.

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Mark Zumbuhl One class of evidence we are sorely lacking from pre-Norman Ireland is documentary evidence of the kind utilised by historians of other parts and eras of Europe. There are virtually no charters of any sort, no wills, and very few transaction records. The observation of exchange and commerce in operation is largely an archaeological exercise. That said, there are one or two snippets pertaining to clothing found in the few notices which do survive. One example is from the so-called Additamenta to the Book of Armagh.36 This manuscript was largely written in the first half of the ninth century. It contains a selection of New Testament texts, Sulpicius’ Life of St. Martin, and most importantly, a selection of texts relating to St. Patrick and the major church at Armagh which claimed him as founder. The primary texts are hagiographies of the saint; the Additamenta, or “additional things,” include a set of property records pertaining to land and churches owned by the community. They vary considerably in character, and though none has all the characteristics of what is usually defined as a “charter,” several contain charter-like characteristics such as boundary clauses.37 Only one record, however, mentions clothing as being involved in a transaction: Cummen and Brethán [members of the community] purchased Óchter Achid together with its estate, in wood, plain, and meadow, with its enclosure and its herb-garden. Hence half of this heritage belongs absolutely to Cummen, in house, in man, until her chattels be paid to her, that is three ounces of silver [.iii. ungai argait], and a can of silver, and a necklace [muince] worth three ounces, and a circlet of gold [droch óir] according to the ancient measurements and ancient dimensions [senmesib senairotib]; the value of half an ounce in pigs and the value of half an ounce in sheep, and a garment [díllat] worth half an ounce, all of these according to ancient measurements on (and given) on account of a [?] marriage settlement. Cummen made a mantle [cétach] which was sold to Éládach son of Máelodar, lord of Cremthann, for a brown horse. That horse was sold to Colmán of the Britons for a cumal of silver. That cumal went to the additional price of Óchter Achid.38

There is much which could be discussed here, but I wish to focus on the garment issue. To start with the final section, we note a female producing a garment, as is standard for early Ireland, but selling it to a high-status nobleman in exchange for a horse, which in turn she sells elsewhere for bullion. At first glance this looks like the clothing being used as a medium of exchange, but the mantle was not used as part of the purchase price of the land. In fact, Kelly characterised the exchange of the cloak for the horse as “barter,” for the horse was not normally used as a unit of value in early

36 Ludwig Bieler, ed., The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1979). 37 For further discussion, see Jane Stevenson, “Literacy in Ireland: The evidence of the Patrick dossier in the Book of Armagh,” in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11–35. 38 Bieler, The Patrician Texts, 174–75. I have slightly emended Bieler’s translation, and note the uncertainty in interpreting certain phrases; these are not essential to the mentions of garments.

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Clothing as Currency? Ireland.39 We are not in fact told how much the land cost, but assume it is twice what would need to be paid to Cummen to redeem her half. Her payment includes livestock, bullion, and jewellery—and particularly jewellery of a defined value; compare this with the defined values of garments we have met in the law tract on Cernodon of Ulster.40 More importantly, among the various things making up the redemption value are the díllat, a fairly general word meaning garment or outer covering; moreover, as with the pigs and sheep, this garment is given a specified value. Overall, this is a notable example of garments being involved in transactions. However, here the values of both the díllat and the cétach are defined against another items. One would dearly like to have access to the “ancient measurements” for the jewellery which the text talks about; perhaps this is some kind of text comparable with the legal text discussing the values and defects of livestock and sheep, but if so it has not survived.41 On the other hand, this may simply be an appeal to tradition dressed up in the formal register of the additamenta.42 My second example is in the property records found in the eleventh- and twelfthcentury notitiae entered into the Book of Kells.43 Nearly all the payments documented in these records were made in gold or silver, or occasionally cattle. There is one mention of clothing, however: Gilla Críst son of Manchán bought the land on your Gospel [i.e. left] hand going down toward Áth Cathán … from the sons of Beollán … and the price is twenty-four ounces, i.e. of silver, in addition to the education of the son of Cú [Cú Ulad, one of the sons of Beollán]. The sureties are Móenach Ua Cináetha, superior of [the church of] Áth Dá Loarg, and Áed Ua Maílscíre of Sogain [a people living around five miles southwest of Kells], and Scolaige Ua Labrata, lord of Sogain—and it is that Scolaige who took the penalty of a purple cloak from the hands of Ímar’s son, taking it as a forfeit [ocus is é in Scolaige hísein rucastair fiach broit corcra a lámaib meic Ímaira aca brithi inna fordilsi]; [and the other sureties are] Máelbrigde mac Rónáin, successor of Columba [and various others] … 44

39 Kelly, Early Irish Law, 111. For a discussion of horses and their values in Ireland, see Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 99–101. He notes that law texts (especially the later commentaries) rarely give standard values to horses, probably due to the fact that horses vary in value more widely than other domestic animals. Very rarely are horses specified as part of a fine or payment: One example is Bretha Étgid, “Judgments of Inadvertence,” which suggests that for compensation, payments of value greater than a cumal should consist of one-third each of horses, cattle, and silver; see further Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 99–100. 40 See Colmán Etchingham and Catherine Swift, “English and Pictish Terms for Brooch in an 8th-century Irish Law-Text,” Medieval Archaeology 48 (2004): 31–49, especially 44–48, on the potential uses of jewellery as gift and currency. 41 The text discussing the values of cattle, sheep, and pigs has been edited and translated by Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 533–36. 42 Stevenson, “Literacy in Ireland,” 29–33. 43 Gearóid Mac Niocaill, ed., “The Irish ‘Charters,’” in The Book of Kells: MS 58, Trinity College Library Dublin, ed. Peter Fox (Lucerne: Faksimile-Verlag, 1990), 153–65. 44 Mac Niocaill, “The Irish ‘Charters,’” 159–60 (Mac Niocaill’s translation).

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Mark Zumbuhl However, in contrast with the Armagh record, here the cloak does not seem to be directly connected with the transaction; rather, Scolaige’s taking of the cloak as a fine or forfeiture—for an unknown transgression—is an aside. The information seems to be included simply to remind the community of Kells (or other later readers of the document) who this Scolaige was; it has no explicit connection with the transaction itself. Without further information it is not certain who the son of Ímar was, other than that his patronymic indicates a Scandinavian or Hiberno-Norse parent. The wording implies that the cloak was taken for some specified deed or crime, rather than as battle spoils or because Scolaige liked the cut of the hem: the word fiach, in a legal context, means “payment,” but especially “a payment of obligation or debt.”45 Fordílse is the only instance of a compound based on dílse meaning “forfeiture.”46 And of course as a purple garment it was high-status. But without information we can say little more about the incident leading to the forfeiture. The mention of garments in these ecclesiastical records may be compared with similar mentions in more overtly literary ecclesiastical texts, specifically hagiography. Handling such source material is difficult, and in moving from the notes added to the Book of Armagh and the Book of Kells to hagiographical texts we are in some measure moving from reality to fantasy. However, I wish to highlight the following examples since they potentially contain references to clothing being used as units of value and mediums of exchange. The examples are both concerned with supposed grants to churches, and both in date are not too far from the date of the Book of Kells notitiae. The first is from the Life of St. Berach, dated by some scholars to the eleventh century, though in my opinion a little later.47 In it, following the performance of what might be called a reverse-Cana miracle, in which the saint turned all the wine at a royal feast into nothingness due to his anger at the king, the king submits to the saint and makes him various grants: Is annsin ro eadhbair in rí in baile cona chrích 7 gona ferann don Coimdhe 7 do Bhearach. Conidhe sin Diseart Bearaigh i mBreghaibh; 7 tug a erredh féin, 7 erredh gach rígh Érenn ina diaigh go brath gacha treas bliadhna, 7 screpall gacha cathrach o cloinn Colmain gacha tres bliadhna osin amach go brath. (Then the king offered the place with its territory and its land to the Lord and to Berach; and this is Dísert Beraig [Berach’s Hermitage] in Brega.48 And he gave his own outfit, and an outfit from every king of Ireland after him till doom, every third year; and a

45 Dictionary of the Irish Language, s.v. “fiach.” 46 Mac Niocaill, “The Irish ‘Charters,’” 160 n. 49. 47 Charles Plummer, Bethada Náem nÉrenn: Lives of Irish Saints (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922). The life of St. Berach is at 1:22–33; for introduction and date, see page xvi. My opinion of the date is largely due to the language of the text, but as we are dependent wholly upon a late transcript for the Irish text, and the nature of the relationship of the Irish life to the Latin life is uncertain, it is impossible to be definitive at this stage. 48 A kingdom in the east midlands of Ireland, roughly equivalent with modern Co. Meath.

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Clothing as Currency? scruple from every settlement of Clann Cholmáin [the king’s dynasty] every third year thenceforth until doom.)49

This is a rather interesting set of goods to be given triennially by the king of Clann Cholmáin and his people to the community of St. Berach. The word translated “outfit” here is erredh, an early Modern Irish spelling of errad, a term referring to a full suit of clothes and accessories (and in a military context often a set of armour and equipment).50 However, even allowing for the usual degree of idealization and hyperbole found in Irish hagiography (which, as elsewhere, was at pains to substantiate the grants of property allegedly made to a church or its founder), the assertion is striking: As well as the land of the site of the miracle being donated to the church (a standard for the genre), the Life claims a regular due of clothing from each king of Ireland. Of course, even if we assume for a moment that this custom was actually practised, although it shows a particular set of high-status garments belonging to a king being given regularly as renders, the nature of the anecdote suggests that this is a customary gift, rather than a convenient way of transferring something of value to the church. It is possible that an equivalent value of silver or cattle may have been given, but the whole character of the incident suggests that it is the garments themselves which have symbolic value—of the submission of royalty to the power of the saint and the church—and these, rather than a substitution, are what is expected.51 An even more elaborate version of this kind of grant is found in the second Life of St. Máedóc of Ferns.52 This Life is extremely valuable for providing information about the practicalities of the saint’s churches and cult and its relationships with certain royal dynasties, including one of the few descriptions of an Irish royal inauguration ritual.53 The incident is another miracle: A disfigured king falls asleep under the saint’s cowl, and when he wakes he finds that he is blemish-free, thanks to the power of God and the saint. Previously known as Áed Dub, “Black Áed,” he is rechristened Áed Finn, “Áed the Fair.” In repayment he promises much: 49 Plummer, Bethada Náem, 1:28 (my translation). The first instance of “every third year” is added above the line in a later hand. 50 Dictionary of the Irish Language, s.v. “errad.” 51 Clann Cholmáin supplied several kings of Tara (Uí Néill overkings and at times most powerful kings in Ireland) from the eighth to the eleventh centuries; however, their power diminished greatly after the 1070s, and by the twelfth century they were in no position to compete to be recognised as kings of Ireland. This might suggest that the present anecdote dates back to the eleventh century, but the division of renders from the settlements of Clann Cholmáin (in scruples, possibly to be paid in silver) on the one hand and clothing from the kings of Ireland on the other betrays an awareness of twelfthcentury conditions. For further discussion, see Mark Zumbuhl, “The Practice of Irish Kingship in the Central Middle Ages” (Ph.D. diss., University of Glasgow, 2005), 40–46, 79–83. 52 Plummer, Bethada Náem, 1:191–290, with introduction at 1:xxxiii–xxxvii. This is a problematic text, with a probably twelfth-century core, but preserved in a later medieval redaction. 53 For further discussion of the text’s value for the student of early history and church economics, see Charles Doherty, “The Historical Value of the Medieval Lives of Máedoc of Ferns” (master’s diss., University College, Dublin, 1971) and Doherty, “Some aspects of hagiography as a source for Irish economic history,” Peritia 1 (1982): 300–28. On the text’s description of royal inauguration, see Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Royal Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c. 1100–1600: A Cultural Landscape Study (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 173–76, 193.

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Mark Zumbuhl Ise so immorro luach baiste Aodha finn do Maodhóg ó Ibh Bríuin .i. screpall as gach tigh do Mhaodog gacha bliadna; each 7 earradh gach righ, 7 gach banrioghna; erradh 7 tlacht gacha Taoisigh 7 gacha mna táoisigh, bo adhastair as gach creich o gach Breifneach o Druim Cliabh go Cenannus … (This moreover is the baptism fee of Áed Finn to Máedóc from the Uí Briúin [Áed’s dynasty]: A scruple every year to Máedóc from every house; a horse and outfit of every king and every queen; the outfit and garments of every chieftain and chieftain’s wife; a cow on halter out of every cattle-raid undertaken by every Bréifne-man from Drumcliff [the site of Máedoc’s church] to Kells … )54

The passage continues for half a page in increasingly hyperbolic fashion, with the dues to the church including pigs, sheep, and cattle from every herd, ironmongery from every smith, extra dues of hospitality to the community of Drumcliff at Easter and Christmas, and a place of honour for the abbot (the successor of Máedóc) in the king’s hall and counsels. The text provides a striking example of an ecclesiastical attempt to define the relationship between a church and its local dynasty in the late twelfth century. There are further mentions of clothing in the same passage: A child from the community is to be fostered by the king, and consequently provided with appropriate clothing.55 Moreover, when it comes to the inauguration of a king of Bréifne, “Each 7 earradh righ Breifne an lá rioghfaidher é do thabairt do muinntir Maodhog, no deich marcc, no fiche bó” (“a horse and the outfit of the king of Bréifne on his inauguration day are to be given to the community of Máedóc, or ten horses or twenty cows”).56 This seems to be a more specific instance of the previously described dues. Though the detail here is considerably greater than that in the Life of Berach, the mode of these passages is entirely the same; and regardless of the extent to which any such renders were actually given in real life, the author of the Life of St. Máedóc visualises a world in which the valuable garments of kings, queens, and chieftains are appropriate to be gifted to the community of Drumcliff. Moreover, the inaugurationday garments—perhaps the most important items of clothing the king could ever wear—are also to be given to the church. This was a sign of the superiority of God’s community, and an acknowledgement of the role the saint played in curing the ancestral king, in so doing forever securing the kingship for his lineage. It is made clear in the text that when Áed Finn is baptised by the saint, he removes his clothing and war-gear and gives it to Máedóc.57 The grant of the inauguration-day outfit is clearly 54 Plummer, Bethada Náem, 1:202 (my translation). Bréifne is the name of the kingdom ruled by the Uí Briúin, in the northwest midlands of Ireland; between the tenth and twelfth centuries it gained considerably more territory southeastward in the traditional lands of Clann Cholmáin, so that its rulers were able to encroach on churches such as Kells previously associated with that dynasty. 55 See also above, p. 58, and n. 18. 56 Plummer, Bethada Náem, 1:202 (my translation). 57 The text claims that Áed was baptised at a place which, in the author’s time, was still called Áth Airm, “Ford of Arms”: “o arm 7 o earradh an righ an fedh do bái’ga bhaisttedh 7 ‘ga bhennachad do benadh de, a mbith dílsi do Dia 7 do Mhaedhócc” (“from the arms and from the outfit of the king which were taken from him while he was being baptised and blessed, and [they were] ever a gift to God and to Máedóc”); Plummer, Bethada Náem, 1:202.

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Clothing as Currency? intended to allude to this; yet we note that unlike the more general dues of clothing listed before, there is a possibility that the inauguration outfit may be substituted with ten steeds or twenty cows. If anything, one might expect the “regular” renders of clothing to be the ones capable of being substituted, rather than the special inauguration clothing. Overall, however, though the dues of clothing in the text are again being used as mediums of gift and exchange (for the perpetual favour of Máedóc’s community), and in one instance have another characteristic of currency (in that substitution may be made), we again see the transfer of clothing in a restricted and formalised set of circumstances.58 These late Middle Irish hagiographical texts remind one strongly of what is probably another twelfth-century or perhaps slightly earlier text, known as Lebor na Cert or The Book of Rights.59 This is supposedly a record of the cís or tribute owed by sub-kingdoms to their overking, and the túarastal or stipend which an overking paid to his subkings in return, symbolising his overlordship upon them. The text is now largely read as a piece of propaganda written for the kings of Cashel, that is the kings of the province of Munster, particularly in the context of their struggle for the kingship of Ireland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.60 The following is a fairly representative sample passage of the work as a whole, which in the published edition runs to some two thousand lines: Císa Muman ar meadón beos and so do Chaisil 7 is cach bliadna do-bearar .i. smacht 7 biathad 7 turgnam 7 faesam. Trí cét mart chéadamus a Múscraige 7 trí cét torc 7 trí cét bó. Trí cét torc 7 trí cét leand 7 cét lulgach ó Uaithnib and sin. Cét bó 7 trícha torc 7 trícha mart 7 trícha brat a hAraib ind sin .Lx. dam 7 .lx. molt 7 .lx. bó ónt Seachtmad sin . Caeca bó 7 caeca dam 7 caeca mart a hOrbraigib inn sin . Trí chét dam, trí chaeca lulgach ó Dáirfine beos. Trícha bó 7 trícha dam 7 trícha brat a Corco Duibne. X.c. bó .x.c. dam .x.c. cráin a Ciarraige . Seacht cét brat, seacht cét molt, seacht cét bó, seacht cét cránad ó Chorco Baiscind. Céd caerach 7 cét cránad 7 deich cét dam 7 deich cét brat a Corcamruad. Míli dam 7 míli caerach 7 míli brat 7 míli lulgach óna Désib. Céd bó a hOrbraigi 7 cét brat find 7 cét cránad. (These are the internal tributes of Munster to Cashel, and they are paid every year, i.e. fine and refection and provision and protection. First, three hundred beeves from Múscraige and three hundred boars and three hundred cows. Then three hundred boars and three hundred tunics and a hundred milch cows from the Uaithne. Then a hundred cows, thirty boars, thirty beeves, and thirty cloaks from the Ara. Then sixty oxen, sixty wethers, and 58 Similar examples are found in other pieces of twelfth-century Irish hagiography: for example, the Life of Colmán of Lynn (relatively securely dated to the mid-twelfth century) stipulates “lenn cech ríglaig” (“a mantle from every royal warrior”) “and blæ lín cecha caillige” (“a linen tunic from every veiled woman”). See Kuno Meyer, Betha Colmáin maic Lúacháin (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1911), 50. 59 Myles Dillon, ed., Lebor na Cert: The Book of Rights (Dublin: Educational Co. of Ireland, 1962). This superseded the older edition by John O’Donovan, Leabhar na g-Ceart, or, the Book of Rights (Dublin: Celtic Society, 1847). 60 Myles Dillon, “On the date and authorship of the Book of Rights,” Celtica 4 (1958): 239–49; see also Francis John Byrne (review of Dillon, Lebor na Cert), Studia Hibernica 5 (1965): 155–58, and Anthony Candon, “Barefaced Effrontery: Secular and ecclesiastical politics in early twelfth-century Ireland,” Seanchas Ardmhacha 14/2 (1991): 1–25.

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Mark Zumbuhl sixty cows from the Sechtmad. Then fifty cows and fifty oxen and fifty beeves from the Orbraige. Three hundred oxen and a hundred and fifty milch cows from Dáirfhine also. Thirty cows and thirty oxen and thirty cloaks from Corco Duibne. A thousand cows, a thousand oxen, and a thousand sows from Ciarraige. Seven hundred cloaks, seven hundred wethers, seven hundred cows, and seven hundred sows from Corco Baiscind. A hundred sheep, a hundred sows, a thousand oxen, and a thousand cloaks from Corcamruad. A thousand oxen, a thousand sheep, a thousand cloaks, and a thousand milch cows from the Déisi. A hundred cows from Orbraige and a hundred white cloaks and a hundred sows.)61

Note, of course, the focus on garments. Many sections of renders in the text include garments as well as cattle. Such stipulations are certainly not in the minority. And, similarly, many of the descriptions of stipend granted by the overkings include garments of one sort or another: At é andso immorro tuaristla na ríg ó ríg Caisil mad rí Hérind hé … cét corn 7 cét claideam 7 cét n-each 7 cét n-inar uad do ríg Cruachna … Fichi falach 7 fichi fichthell 7 fichi each do ríg Ceneóil Chonaill … Caeca corn 7 caeca claideb 7 caeca each do ríg Ailig … Trícha corn 7 trícha claideb 7 trícha each do flaith Thulcha Óc … Ocht lúireacha 7 sesca inar 7 sesca each do ríg Airgiall … Céd cornn 7 cét matal 7 cét claideb 7 cét n-each 7 cét long do ríg Ulad … (Here are the stipends of the kings from the king of Cashel, if he be king of Ireland … A hundred horns, a hundred swords, a hundred horses, and a hundred tunics from him to the king of Cruachain … Twenty rings, twenty sets of chess, and twenty horses to the king of Cenél Conaill … Fifty horns, fifty swords, and fifty horses to the king of Ailech, … Thirty horns, thirty swords, and thirty horses to the chief of Tulach Óc … Eight coats of mail, sixty tunics, and sixty horses to the king of Airgialla … A hundred horns, a hundred mantles, a hundred swords, a hundred horses, and a hundred ships to the king of Ulaid … )62

A few important differences between the two types of transfer are evident. The grants or túarastla made by the king to the sub-kings are generally denominated in smaller numbers of items, of higher value. Weapons and horses are more likely to be featured, while the overwhelming concern with the cís or renders is with cattle. Yet both lists feature various sorts of clothing, though it is to be admitted there is more diversity in the list of stipends, whereas most garments specified in the list of tributes are cloaks.63 In this text, clothing is one of several forms of exchange. Yet as ever we are left with difficult questions: To what extent were these goods liquid and capable of being substituted one for another? What is the supposed value of garments, or is there some customary scale which we simply do not have? More importantly, does this conceptualization of the relationship between kings and overkings bear any relation to reality? 61 Dillon, Lebor na Cert, 4, 24. 62 Ibid., 4, 6. 63 There is somewhat more variation in the clothing renders found in other parts of the text, e.g. at p. 46, in the list of tributes from the sub-kingdoms of Connacht.

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Clothing as Currency? The last question can be answered a little more positively than might first be expected, by referring to the Irish chronicles. These collections of annalistic records provide most of our framework for understanding early Irish history, and in the main, though there are of course issues in handling them, they are considered tolerably reliable, especially when independent chronicles agree with each other.64 From the era in which the propagandistic Lebor na Cert was written, we have entries such as this from the Annals of Ulster: Sluagadh la Ruaidhri h-Ua Conchobair & la Tighernan h-Ua Ruairc co h-Es Ruaidh, co tangatur Cenel Conaill i n-a thech, co tardsat a m-braighti do h-Ua Concobair, co tarat ocht fichtiu bó doibh,i n-ecmais oir 7 etaigh. (A hosting by Rúaidrí Úa Conchobair and by Tigernán Úa Rúairc to Essaroe, so that the Cenél Conaill came into his house [a technical formula meaning “submitted to him”], and they gave their hostages to Úa Conchobair, and he gave them eight score cows, besides gold and clothing.)65

Here we have in practice the operation of a system of túarastal such as that envisioned in Lebor na Cert. Another chronicle provides an account of a different event later in the same year in which túarastal was bestowed. This chronicle is part of the “­Clonmacnoise group” of records, which are in general more partisan toward the cause of the Úa Conchobair kings of Connacht.66 Comdal ac Ruadrí Ua Choncobair ac ríg Erenn ic Ath Luain, 7 ac Díarmuid Ua Mael Sechlainn ríg Midhi, 7 ac Tigernan Ua Ruairc, ríg Brefne, 7 ac Gallaib Atha cliath a l-los tuarastail. Do srethadh da fiched cét bo do Gallaib Atha cliath for Feraib Erenn, 7 do-rad in rí da fiched dég bó do Cenél Conaill 7 .x. n-etaighe datha fichit 7 da fichit etach datha d’ Feraib Muman. Do-rat .ccc. bó do Ua Cherball do rí Airgiall. Do-rat da fiched déc bo do Mac Fhaelan. Do-rat .u. eich fichit do Mac Gilla Padraic do ríg Osraigi. Do-rad .x. n-eich 7 tri fichit each do Mac Carrthaigh. (An assembly at Athlone by Rúaidrí Úa Conchobair, king of Ireland, and by Díarmait Úa Máelsechlainn, king of Mide, and Tigernán Úa Rúairc, king of Bréifne, and the Foreigners 64 The fullest recent treatment of the annals is D. P. McCarthy, The Irish Annals: Their Genesis, Evolution, and History (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008); note that McCarthy’s conclusions as to the early development of the chronicles (deriving particularly from his attribution of primacy to the chronological apparatus of the so-called “Clonmacnoise-group” texts) has not found general favour with Irish historians. See Nicholas Evans, The Present and the Past in Medieval Irish Chronicles (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2011), for a nuanced analysis of the compilation and evolution of the annal texts. 65 Annals of Ulster, at 1166 (my translation), online at the CELT project: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/G100001A/. The original edition used for this portion of the online text is B. Mac Carthy, Annála Uladh: Annals of Ulster otherwise Annála Senait, Annals of Senat: A chronicle of Irish affairs from A.D. 431 to A.D. 1540 (Dublin: Alexander Thom, 1895). 66 The important monastery of Clonmacnoise lay on the banks of the Shannon on the border between Connacht and Mide (the overkingdom of Clann Cholmáin) and was patronised by dynasties of both kingdoms; annals associated with that site demonstrate increasing sympathies for Connacht rulers. For general discussion, see Kathryn Grabowski and David Dumville, Chronicles and Annals of Medieval Ireland and Wales: The Clonmacnoise-group Texts (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1984).

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Mark Zumbuhl of Dublin [i.e., the Hiberno-Norse and Vikings], on account of stipend. Two hundred score cows for the Foreigners of Dublin were imposed on the men of Ireland, and the king gave to the Cenél Conaill twelve score cows and ten score coloured garments, and to the men of Munster forty coloured garments. To Úa Cerbaill, king of Airgíalla he gave three hundred cows. To Mac Fáeláin, he gave twelve score cows. Five and twenty horses he gave to Mac Gilla Phátraic, king of Osraige; three score and ten horses he gave to Mac Carthaig [king of Desmond].)67

Although there are comparable categories of goods and clothing in Lebor na Cert, they do not match the chronicle record closely, even if the latter is approximately accurate in terms of numbers. The amounts are not the key thing; we see again the granting of clothing as stipend, often in large quantities, and this category was on a par with cattle and horses. Still we have the same problem as with the earlier texts: We must ask to what extent the inclusion of particular kinds of gifts was customary or even ritualized. It seems likely that it was not merely the giving of objects of considerable value in public which highlighted overlordship (useful or ornamental as some of these items were); the inclusion of different categories of stipend no doubt had symbolic value. The provision of clothes to the sick or poor in Irish society emphasised the status and responsibilities of the giver; at the rank of kings and overkings, though the garments given may have been of extremely high quality (of course we are not told their precise values), the grant still highlighted the subordination of the receiver to the giver. Since túarastal was therefore a special kind of gift, I am not sure we can refer to it as a medium of exchange or currency in the usual sense. Annalists were not concerned with mundane matters of renders and resource collection within kingdoms, and so we do not get a glance of the flipside, that is the cís or tribute of Lebor na Cert, the cattle and perhaps garments being sent to the overking or gathered for his household’s acquisition as he itinerated around his lands. It would be useful again to know whether a customary obligation for cloaks could be substituted for something of equal value if there was a wool shortage, for example. Unfortunately, I have found no other sources with information bearing on the matter. Given that the principle, if not the exact quantities, of túarastal outlined in Lebor na Cert is supported by twelfth-century annals, it may be suggested that the lists of tribute may also have reflected genuine practice, if in an idealised way. Many scholars, including the editor of Lebor na Cert, have been inclined to consider the quantities of tribute given in the text as fantastic, but a serious study of those quantities could shed light on both population demographics and economic capability in twelfth-century Ireland. This is an important desideratum; the term cís used in the text, translated above as “tribute,” is a borrowing of Latin census and may well be equally translated “tax”; the resource

67 My translation. Whitley Stokes, ed., “The Annals of Tigernach,” originally published in Revue Celtique 16 (1895): 374–419; 17 (1896): 6–33, 116–263, 337–420; 18 (1897): 9–59, 150–97, 267–303, and now online at the CELT project, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/G100002/.

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Clothing as Currency? and revenue-collecting capabilities of Irish kings are still poorly understood.68 This render of clothing is of course comparable with that of cloth, leather, or furs made in various other medieval European societies.69 This paper has examined several examples of clothing being used as units of value either for legal payment, as part of a transaction, as grants to churches, or as renders or stipends. I have not, however, been able to find clear evidence for garments being used in a general way as currency. Rather, clothing was used as a specialised and customary medium of exchange in particular and well-defined contexts. In this regard it was less versatile than cattle or bullion, and clothing values, where they are given at all, are denominated according to livestock or silver standards. But garments clearly had an important function in the early Irish economy as assets which could be transferred for certain purposes. Thus, clothing was “currency” in a looser sense, that used by Kelly, rather than in the more narrow definition which may be used by modern economists. The question is not completely settled, however; further investigation into the collection of cís by Irish kings will enhance our understanding of the matter. To conclude, I offer one final example from the law tracts. We recall the hagiographical mentions of a king’s errad or outfit, a word which originally meant “outfitting” or “equipping” and could also refer to military gear. Another word with similar meaning was étach (found in the annal entries above), and there is a particular phrase étach lith laithe (“festival day outfit”), which refers to the “Sunday best” worn on public occasions.70 As with virtually all possessions, this outfit could be lent out as pledge to guarantee a contract. However, there was a firm time limit by which time the contract had to be fulfilled and the pledge returned to the lender, for if a noble—or even, theoretically a king—lent out his special outfit (the text seems to assume only one is available), and it is not returned for a public occasion such as an assembly or church festival, he would have to appear without it and suffer public disgrace. The text does not specify how much such ensembles were worth, but the hapless man who did not return the outfit in time had to repay thrice the value of the outfit, plus the full honour-price of a king (or other noble) if he was forced to attend a festival in his workaday clothes. For a provincial king, the honour-price alone was 14 cumals or the value of 42 milch cows. The person for whom the outfit had been pledged had ten days in which to pay the fine.71 The very existence of such a provision in the legal material is striking, and

68 I hope to carry out such a study at a later date. As a preliminary exercise, making assumptions about the size of a typical brat or cloak, it would require perhaps several thousand person-hours of labour to fulfill the obligations of textile production in a kingdom such as that of the Déisi, who are required to provide a thousand cloaks per year for the kings of Munster. Whether such figures suggest the required cís of cloaks is impossible requires further demographic and archaeological analysis of the territory of the Déisi. 69 Einzig, Primitive Money, 268–69. 70 The phrase is found in Bretha im Fhuillema Gell, CIH, 2:469. For discussion of the pledging of this item, see Kelly, Early Irish Law, 166–67. 71 CIH, 2:469.19–23.

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Mark Zumbuhl it encapsulates several important features about early Irish social conditions. Though clothing may not have been routinely and regularly used as currency, the value and display of clothes were subjects which the early Irish lawyers took very seriously.

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Cistercian Clothing and Its Production at Beaulieu Abbey, 1269–70 John Oldland

The Latin account of the keeper of the wardrobe (vestiarius) for the Cistercian monastery at Beaulieu, Hampshire, in 1269–70 contains important English woollen textile production cost information for the later Middle Ages, and considerable detail concerning clothing for the abbey’s monks and lay brothers. The following analysis of Cistercian clothing derived from this account complements Barbara Harvey’s study of Benedictine monks’ clothing at Westminster Abbey in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The only other late-medieval cost data on English woollen cloth production so far discovered have been the few scraps of production information at Westminster Abbey’s manor of Laleham, Middlesex, from 1294–95 and the costs derived from a claim made in the Colchester court of pleas by a weaver, William Okle, in 1388. For broadcloth production costs, English economic historians have had to rely on continental records or isolated costings for individual processes. This 1269–70 set of accounts predates the voluminous cloth cost information in the Datini archives at Prato near Florence by more than a century.

Portions of this paper were presented in May 2010 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan.   C. H. Talbot, “The Account Book of Beaulieu Abbey,” Cîteaux in de Nederlanden 9 (1958): 189–210; S. Frederick Hockey, The Account-Book of Beaulieu Abbey, Camden Society, 4th ser., 16 (London: Butler & Tanner, 1975), 214–24.   Barbara Harvey, Monastic Dress in the Middle Ages: Precept and Practice (Canterbury: William Urry, 1988).   Terrance Lloyd, “Some Costs of Cloth Manufacturing in Thirteenth-Century England,” Textile History 1 (1968–70): 332–36; Richard Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester 1300–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 60–62.   Raymond de Roover, “A Florentine Firm of Cloth Manufacturers: Management and Organization of a Sixteenth-century Business,” Speculum 16 (1941): 3–32; Paulino Murugarren, Evolución de la industria textil castellana en los siglos XIII–XVI: Factores de desarrollo, organización y costes de la producción manufacturera en Cuenca (Salamanca, Spain: University of Salamanca, 1974), 168–233; ­Federigo Melis, Industria e Commercio nella Toscana Medievale (Florence: Le Monnier, 1989), 212–43.

John Oldland THE CISTERCIANS

The Cistercian order was founded in the late eleventh century by a Benedictine abbot who wished to follow the Rule of St. Benedict literally, setting up a new monastic order at Cîteaux in France in 1098, substituting the undyed, white/grey/brown habit—­symbolic of humility and repentence—for the Benedictine black. The Rule emphasised the simple life of work, love, prayer, and self-denial. The order set up a parallel organisation of bearded lay brothers within the monastic community to directly manage the farming and much of the daily work of the abbey, so that the monks could stay close to the cloister and more faithfully fulfill their religious obligations, although these included daily manual labour. Lay brothers were not ordained, followed their own religious life, lived and ate in separate quarters of the abbey, and entered the church by a separate door. Cistercians contributed to agricultural development through their specialisation in the sale of commodities for the market, and they may have been innovators in the use of metallurgy, particularly the development of mills. They were innovators in the use of forward contracts for wool, mainly with Italian merchant houses. In England they were particularly associated with the production of superior wools for sale across Europe. The monastery at Beaulieu was founded by King John in 1204. The monks started to use the church in 1227, and it was finally dedicated in 1246. The religious population in 1279–80 was about seventy-three monks and novices and sixty-seven or sixty-eight lay brothers. The abbey was supported by a number of local granges, including one in Cornwall, and the most productive and largest grange at Faringdon in Berkshire. Unlike the Benedictines, the Cistercians farmed the land directly. Most of the income at Beaulieu came from the sale of wool (that is, unprocessed wool fibre), as was the case for most English Cistercian monasteries. The Cistercian economy based on lay brothers’ management was to decline in the fourteenth century as pestilence, rising wages, and falling prices led the Cistercians to lease out their demesnes. Workers who might have become lay brothers found greater opportunity elsewhere. It is probable that the fulling mill and the production of cloth and clothing were under the management of a monk, but the weaver was a lay brother, based on the type of clothing that the accounts indicate he received. In addition it is likely that other lay brothers were involved in cloth production and sewed clothing for the abbey’s members, especially during the winter months, when there was less agricultural work. They may also have been involved in securing wood to heat the water needed to wash the cloth and clothing, for which there is no cost item in the accounts. There is no evidence that cloth was made on a commercial basis for sale outside the abbey, or for others who worked daily at the abbey. Three and a half yards of cloth was recorded as   Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks, and Paul Dryburgh, The English Wool Market, c. 1230–1327 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).   David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 1:65–77.   Hockey, Account-Book, 17.

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Cistercian Clothing Production being sold during the year, for 5s., which would value the whole cloth at £1 15s. 9d. (429d.), plus a further 52s. 11d. in cloth was sold to new lay brothers. Today, just north of the main abbey complex, are the ruined outside walls of the overshot fulling mill and the large adjacent stone building where the cloth must have been woven, the clothing washed, and the wool, cloth, and garments stored. The weaving warehouse was originally 118 feet in length by 43½ feet in width, but was later reduced in length by 34 feet. The fulling mill was 60 feet by 25½ feet. The mill race was fed not from the tidal Beaulieu river that flowed through the monastic property and drove the corn mill, but from two springs, Abbot’s Well and Monks’ Well, on the hill above, that provided water for not only the fulling mill but also the daily needs of the abbey. Recent archaeological research has suggested that the mill was not constructed until the fourteenth century, so there must have been an earlier fulling mill of which there is no trace. THE 1269–70 ACCOUNT BOOK

This annual cloth and clothing account was prepared sixty-five years after the foundation of the monastery. Frederick Hockey has edited and published this account book, kept at the British Library, and has written a history of the Abbey.10 The published wardrobe accounts have been checked against the original by this author. There are factual inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the original, but the transcription was found to be accurate. The original is a large, illustrated manuscript, of seventy-five leaves, although all but a few of the drawings have been removed.11 The edited wardrobe accounts have been briefly analysed by Eric Miller and John Hatcher in their discussion of thirteenth-century woollen cloth production costs.12 Frederick Hockey has also transcribed, in the same volume as the 1269–70 account, an account of the abbey’s grange at Faringdon, dated after 1275, which is in the Bodleian Library and was first

  W. H. St. John Hope and H. Brakspear, The Cistercian Abbey of Beaulieu in the County of Southampton, reprinted from Archaeological Journal 63 (1906): 45–46; J. K. Fowler, A History of Beaulieu Abbey, A.D. 1204–1539 (London: Car Illustrated, 1911), 94–96; K. J. Barton, R. B. Burns, and David Allen, “Archaeological Excavations at the ‘Wine Press,’ Beaulieu Abbey, 1987–1989,” Hampshire Studies: Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society 52 (1997): 107–49. The buildings were originally considered to be a winepress, wine cellar, and hayloft, but recent archaeological research has identified the smaller building to have been a fulling mill.   Barton, Burns, and Allen, “Archaeological Excavations,” 139, 143. 10 London, British Library, MS Add. 48978; Hockey, Account-Book, 3–4, 214–24; Stanley Frederick Hockey, Beaulieu, King John’s Abbey: A History of Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, 1204–1538 (Woking, UK: Pioneer, 1976). 11 For a detailed description, see Talbot, “Account Book,” 189–210. 12 Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts 1086–1348 (London: Longman, 1995), 96.

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John Oldland described by Noël Denholm-Young.13 It follows the same formulaic accounting pattern as the 1269–70 account. The Cistercians ran a well-regulated financial accounting system in which each department was given a set of best-practice accounts as a guide for both the department and the auditor. Other monastic houses had developed auditing and control systems by this time, but this manuscript contains the only set of such Exemplar accounts to have survived.14 Accounts were submitted each Michaelmas, and the monk in charge of the Camera, the abbey accountant, made a presentation four times a year to the abbot. Ongoing management was by meetings of various officials every Monday morning. Each department had its own set of accounts with its own profit or loss, but many costs were interdepartmental transfers. For example, the wardrobe bought wool from the bergerie, at probably close to market prices for that year, since coarse wool was bought for £4, the same price as the bergerie received from its coarse wool sales. But the wardrobe also bought bread from the bakery and beer from the brewery, presumably at prices set by convention.15 The set of accounts for 1269–70 is divided into the Exemplar account, which lays out standard costs and processes, and the accounts for the year, which include opening inventory, production, consumption, and closing inventory. The Exemplar account was to be a guide for the keeper of the wardrobe, and allowed the warden of the Camera to make a comparison between budgeted and actual costs. It covered the dimensions of the cloth, expected costs for both winter and summer cloth production, how much cloth was required to make each article of clothing, who received what clothing, and finally the garments to be delivered to the porter and hospital for distribution to the poor and infirm. The annual wardrobe account included revenue and expense information for the production of cloth, the laundry, and the fulling mill. In 1269–70 there was income from selling wool and cloth (£8 17s. 1½d.) and revenues from the fulling mill (£4 14s.), but most of the required funds came from the warden of the Camera (£30 5s. 4¼d.). In addition there was bread from the bakehouse (£15 2s. 3¾d.) and drink (28s. 11d.); after accounting for other small miscellaneous items, the total income was equivalent to £60 13s. 11d. Offsetting this were the purchase of wool and the costs for putting out work to various artisans at each stage of cloth production, for washing, and for fulling mill expenses, totalling £62 3s. 9½d. There remained a loss on the account of 28s. 10½d. at the end of the year. There was no accounting for making the garments, as this was presumably the work of monks and lay brothers. Then there was the closing inventory of wool, clothing produced, cloth that remained, and the closing garment inventory. It is possible to compare what transpired against

13 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Barlow 49, fols. 58–114; Noël Denholm-Young, Seignorial Administration in England (London: Frank Cass, 1937), 122; Hockey, Account-Book, 8. 14 Knowles, Religious Orders, 76; Alisdair Dobie, “The Development of Financial Management and Control in Monastic Houses and Estates in England c. 1200–1540,” Accounting, Business and Financial History 18 (2008): 146–51; Alisdair Dobie, “An Analysis of the Bursars’ Accounts at Durham Cathedral Priory, 1278–1398,” Accounting Historians Journal 35 (2008): 198–206. 15 Hockey, Account-Book, 35, 214.

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Cistercian Clothing Production what was expected to happen, but there were considerable deviations between the pro forma statements in the Exemplar account and the actual accounts. CLOTHING

Cistercians prided themselves on the simplicity and economy of their clothing, in contrast to the more voluminous and expensive traditional black clothing of the Benedictines. The Cistercians’ cloth was undyed because it was significantly cheaper. Black was traditionally produced by dyeing cloth with woad, then re-dyeing with madder that required a mordant to set the dye. At London in 1278 no woollen cloth was to be dyed black except in woad.16 Both dyes were imported, woad from Picardy in northern France and madder from the Low Countries. In 1237 the merchants of Amiens, Corby, and Neale paid 50 marks a year to warehouse and sell woad in London both to citizens and foreigners, and to transport woad outside the city.17 They also contributed £100 to the conduit then being built from Tyburn to London, indicating the importance of the London woad market.18 Based on the cost of dyeing at Laleham in 1294–95, thirteenth-century dyeing was very expensive.19 Dyeing was 30 percent of manufacturing costs, compared with 24 percent at Prato in 1384–85. Moreover, this understates the cost of dyeing black. At Laleham, the costs for dyeing colours were 24d. per stone for perse, a dark blue; only 10d.–12d. for watchet, a light blue; 24d. for red; and only 16d. for blood, a lighter red. Black required dyeing very dark blues and then redyeing with strong reds, so the cost may well have been as much as 48d. per stone, or well over half of manufacturing costs. The Cistercians, called “white monks,” were sometimes known as grey monks, because the unbleached wool might be white, grey, or brown depending on the sheep. Their cloth was coarse and their clothing minimal, perhaps not much different from homespun peasant clothing, although homespun would have been mostly lighter cloth.20 It made sense for the abbey to make its own cloth because it grew the coarse wool, lay brothers could weave the cloth, the cloth did not require any specialised dyeing or finishing, and it made the abbey more self-sufficient. This was important because many Cistercian abbeys were remotely located. It was also probably highly cost-efficient, although there are no comparative cost data to prove it. The wool the abbey used was coarse and therefore was unlikely to receive the market premium that its best wools enjoyed. The fulling mill seems to have been low-cost because the abbey fulled for others, and the lay brothers who worked on the cloth or clothing 16 Reginald Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall (London: J. E. Francis, 1899–1912), A:218; H. T. Riley, ed. and trans., Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London (London: R. Griffin, 1861), 279. 17 Riley, Liber Albus, 360–68. 18 Eleanora Carus-Wilson, “The English Cloth Industry in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in her Medieval Merchant Venturers (London: Methuen, 1967), 217. 19 Lloyd, “Some Costs,” 332–36. 20 James France, The Cistercians in Medieval Art (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1998), 72–75.

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John Oldland were supported but not paid. But the big saving came from not dyeing the cloth. The estimated cost of Beaulieu winter woollen cloth is £1 14s. 4d., very close to the price for second-quality cloth given by Thorold Rogers in the 1280s, but Beaulieu cloth would have used far more wool than most cloth purchased on the open market, and wool prices were slightly higher in the mid-eighties than they had been in the late sixties.21 It seems likely that the Abbey continued to produce its own cloth through to the sixteenth-century dissolution, even though by then there were no lay brothers, because there is evidence of further construction at the fulling mill and weaving shed site in the late fifteenth century.22 The abbey’s religious population was almost equally divided between its sixty-six monks and sixty-seven or sixty-eight lay brothers. There were also seven novices. Most monks prayed and studied, while lay brothers managed the granges and some abbey departments, those from the granges returning regularly to participate in the abbey’s religious life.23 The difference in clothing between monks and lay brothers must have resulted from the needs of the contemplative compared with the active life, plus the desire for some visual way to identify the two callings. In the Exemplar account there were both white and grey cloth costing templates, but we are not told how much of each cloth was produced or the uses for each type. Cistercians wore only outergarments. Regular wear at Beaulieu was an anklelength circular tunic with tight sleeves, plus hose and shoes.24 Over this monks placed a scapular, a long piece of narrow cloth that reached front and back below the knees and was wider at the shoulders. It had an opening for the head and was used like an apron to protect the tunic. Since the amount of cloth used for a scapular was the same as for hose, and the cloth was cut to make four scapulars, its width at its widest point was probably half a yard. Monks also wore a cuculla (cowl). This was a flowing tunic with an attached hood and sleeves, which was worn for religious services, and might be worn over the tunic as protection from sun and rain or for extra warmth.25 The cuculla was probably a fuller garment, since it used 5 yards of cloth compared with 3.125 yards for the tunic.26 Since there was only one habit for each monk and no undergarments, and the monks slept in their clothes, it is not easy to determine what 21 J. E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England from the Year after the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the Commencement of the Continental War (1793) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1866), 588; Terrance Lloyd, The Movement of Wool Prices in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 40. Thorold Rogers’s second-quality cloth prices were £2 7s. 6d. in 1283, £1 16s. in 1284, and £1 14s. in 1285. 22 Barton, Burns, and Allen, “Archaeological Excavations,” 139. 23 Hockey, King John’s Abbey, 56–68. 24 For a discussion of shoes and a photograph, see Harvey, Monastic Dress, 6, 12. 25 By comparison, the Benedictine’s habit included two outergarments that might be worn over the tunic: the cowl, probably ankle-length but sleeveless, used within the monastery, and the frock, with ample sleeves, used for formal occasions. Harvey, Monastic Dress, 14. 26 Fabric lengths in the original text are in ells. An English ell at this time was one yard, or 36 inches, according to the Compositio ulnarum et perticarum, written between 1266 and 1303, which stipulated that all linear measures were to be based on the “iron ulna”: 1 yard or 36 inches; see John Munro, “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c.1290–c.1330,” in Thirteenth Century England

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Cistercian Clothing Production the laundry arrangements might have been, unless monks wore the cuculla while the tunic was being washed and vice versa. Lay brothers did not wear a scapular, and wore a caputium, a hooded cape, rather than the full cuculla. The caputium used 4.17 yards of cloth compared with 5 yards for a cuculla, so it was possibly shorter. They were also issued with hoods (capa) that used only 0.78 yards of cloth each. There were set rules for the distribution of clothing (table 4.1). Both the monks and lay brothers were issued ankle-length winter tunics, hose, and slippers (pedules) annually in September. Summer clothing was distributed in May. The rule stated that monks were to be issued two pairs of shoes (sotulares) annually, at Whitsun and All Saints, and this happened in 1269–70, the monks drawing their shoes from the wardrobe and the lay brothers from the shoemaker. Lay brothers often wore a belt to which might be attached a sheath with a knife, and some were probably issued boots. The basic wardrobe of tunics, hose, and shoes was automatically distributed to both monks and lay brothers, and collected each year, so that they could be given away to the poor. Other clothing—the winter cuculla and scapular for the monks, cape, ­summer cuculla, hood, boots, sheaths, and knives—seems to have been replaced only as needed. The order’s dedication to poverty and simplicity meant that there was no extravagance, and there was contemporary comment on the poor quality and heavy usage of the clothing.27 There were no drawers, shirts, or other undergarments, and monks’ clothing may have been cold in winter and hot in summer. The prior and other senior administrators wore the same clothing as the other brothers, but they received new garments every year, while monks and lay brothers received some garments only when they were worn out. Obviously, some clothes lasted more than a year and would only be replaced in an established sequence; or, as in the case of boots, belts, sheaths, and knives, as required. In 1269–70, clothing distribution closely followed the Exemplar account (table 4.2). All received their annual garments and shoes. It was a good year for lay brothers, because nearly all of them received hoods and a third of them capes. Only a third rather than a half of the monks received their winter cucullas, but another third received summer cucullas. The prior, sub-prior, and cellarer received summer tunics, but there were no summer scapulars produced. It is possible to work out the annual cloth usage for both monks and lay brothers, as stipulated in the Exemplar account, because we have the cloth requirements for each garment (table 4.2). For the monks, the annually replaced tunic, hose, and slippers used 4.695 yards of cloth, 2 yards wide. Based on the distribution of a winter cuculla every two years and a scapular every three years, the average annual cloth usage per monk for these garments was 3.02 yards, for a total of 7.715 yards. In addition, every three years, the monks were meant to receive both a summer cuculla that used 13 yards VII: Proceedings of the Durham Conference 1997, ed. Michael Prestwich, Richard Britnell, and Robin Frame (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999), 113 n. 35. There was also a “long ell,” 1¼ yards, used as a measurement for linen. 27 France, Cistercians, 74–77.

79

—

Hood

80

Annually

Annually

—

Cuculla

Scapular

Hood

—

Annually

Annually

—

—

Every three years

Every two years

Annually

Monks

Every two years for subprior and under-cellarer, master Probably every of wardrobe, masters of Faringdon and Cornwall granges three years Every two years Probably every three years Anually for masters of hospital, forge, and stable —

Every two years for subprior and under-cellarer

Annually

Annually

Annually for under-cellerer, masters of Faringdon and Cornwall granges, abbot’s notary and lay brother, and master of bergerie —

Every two years

—

Annually

Other officials

Source: Hockey, Account-Book, 216–18.

Annually

Tunic

Summer

Annually

Annually

Cape

Slippers

Annually

Scapular

Annually

Annually

Cuculla

Hose

Annually

Abbot and cellerar

Tunic

Winter

Clothes

Table 4.1: Beaulieu Abbey Exemplar account for clothing

Every two years for weaver and skinner; every three years for porter, carpenter, cobbler, monk’s cook, and masters of grange, bergerie, infirmary, and brewery

—

—

—

Annually

Annually

Annually

Every two years for weaver; every three years for other lay brothers

—

—

Annually

Lay brothers

John Oldland

Cistercian Clothing Production of worsted (a lighter wool cloth) and a scapular that probably used 1.56 yards, for an additional 14.56 yards of summer cloth, or 4.85 yards on average per monk per year. Lay brothers, in addition to the annual tunic, hose, and slippers that required 4.695 yards of winter cloth, were given a hood annually and a cape every three years, for an average usage of 2.17 yards for each lay brother, making a total of 6.865 yards. Most received a summer caputium every three years that would have used around 2 yards of summer worsted,28 or 0.67 yards on average annually for each lay brother. Cloth usage for lay brothers was less than for monks, perhaps because their more active life required more mobility and therefore less cumbersome clothing. The abbey also supplied blankets and used cloth for other purposes around the abbey. Lay brothers were given good-quality, durable, warm clothing that might be considered similar to the necessary clothing for a reasonably successful peasant. Of course, a peasant might be less fortunate in that he may have been unable to replace his tunic and hose every year and probably did not have a wardrobe that included a cape, a hood, and a long overgarment as well. He also might have been unable to afford clothing of this quality, which would force him to replace garments more frequently. Some of his clothing was frequently secondhand.29 The comparison of Cistercians at Beaulieu with Barbara Harvey’s analysis of Benedictine clothing at Westminster Abbey during the later Middle Ages shows not only the difference in clothing worn, but also the contrasting vision between the two orders. Benedictines bought their cloth, but had it tailored in-house. Cistercians had a much simpler and smaller range of garments than Benedictine monks at Westminster, although comparison of Cistercians in the thirteenth century with Benedictines from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries may not be appropriate, as Cistercian practice may have become more accommodating over time. Benedictines were far more prepared to adapt cloth to climatic conditions and the virtues of various cloths. In comparison, one wonders how Cistercian monks and lay brothers stayed warm in winter, and how stifling the clothing must have been in summer as they mostly wore their winter habits day and night year-round.30 Benedictine outergarments were made of serge rather than the heavier woollens of the Cistercians. In addition to the hooded cuculla and tunic, scapular, hose, and shoes, Benedictine monks also wore undergarments (shirt and drawers), and in cold weather a pelisse (a tunic made from a special type of leather, usually from lamb or sheep, in some cases lined with fur) and a separate 28 This quantity of summer worsted is equivalent to 0.75 yards of winter cloth. The summer caputium was most likely more similar to the small winter hood than to the much larger winter caputium. 29 Christopher Dyer conjectured that each household bought or made 4 yards of cloth a year; see Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 175–77; and Dyer, An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 149. Richard Britnell based his estimates of domestic consumption on 2½ yards per person, see Richard Britnell, Britain and Ireland 1050–1530: Economy and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 416. 30 The production of summer body garments was so limited, lay brothers receiving none, that they must have been wearing their winter clothing year-round.

81

John Oldland fur-lined hood.31 They sometimes wore caps instead of hoods so that they could hear more easily.32 They had separate tunics and cowls for night wear, and at nighttime wore a shirt, drawers, stockings, and in a later period a nightcap. At Westminster there was a greater variety of fabrics used to suit specific garments: serges and worsteds for outergarments and shirts, kersey for hose, and—in the fifteenth century—linen for drawers. During the day, Benedictine monks wore shoes, issued twice a year, lined in winter, unlined for summer; and slippers were also issued twice a year. At the end of the thirteenth century, rather than regular clothing distribution, monks were given an allowance to be spent at the tailor’s shop, which inevitably led to the purchase of additional clothing.33 Benedictine outergarments were more generous with their use of cloth. One cloth, 23 to 24 yards long and 1½ yards wide (35.25 square yards), made two frocks and two cowls (cucullas and tunics), compared with 32.5 square yards for the same garments at Beaulieu.34 Barbara Harvey estimated that 1,400 to 1,500 yards of cloth were required to clothe and provide bedding for around fifty monks. This compared with 1,296 yards at Beaulieu for clothing alone of sixty-six monks, seven novices, and sixty-eight lay brothers in 1269–70 (table 4.2). The greater range of Benedictine clothing existed, at least in part, because the Benedictines purchased their cloth. Cistercians grew the short wool that was used for fine, heavy woollens, and therefore they naturally made heavy cloth. Since they were determined to be self-sufficient, they avoided the cloth market, which might have provided them with the linens and the broader range of worsteds that the Benedictines favoured. The Norfolk worsted industry made a variety of worsteds throughout the late medieval period.35 One cloth seems to have been made specifically for the monastic market: monks’ cloth, 12 yards by 5 quarters (that is, quarter-yards), the size sufficient to make the full habit, tunic and cuculla. These cloths were usually black or grey. The Westminster Abbey archives have no record of the regular purchase of cloth for around fifty to sixty Benedictine monks at the abbey in the late thirteenth century, but there are surviving accounts for the purchase of smaller quantities of cloth at the fairs in the early fourteenth century. These were coloured cloths, bought for a few clerical and other persons, one or two cloths at a time. The best clerical cloth was worth £4–£4 6s. 8d. per cloth, around two and a half times the cost of Beaulieu winter cloth. There was also some ray (striped) cloth (£3 per cloth), some good but cheaper cloth at around 32s.–40s. per cloth, and some London candlewick and other cloth for alms at 12d.–13d. a yard.36 This suggests that senior Benedictine officials had access to far superior cloth, unlike Cistercian abbots and officials who wore the same clothing as ordinary monks, and that other lay people at the abbey were also more expensively clothed.

Harvey, Monastic Dress, 14–15. Ibid., 15. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 17. Anne Sutton, “The Early Linen and Worsted Industry of Norfolk and the Evolution of the London Mercers’ Company,” Norfolk Archaeology 40 (1989): 203. 36 London, Westminster Abbey, WAM 50687, 50688, 50689, 50690. 31 32 33 34 35

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Cistercian Clothing Production The only other extensive analysis of monastic clothing is for Durham Priory in the late fifteenth century, and while it is two centuries later, it is worth noting.37 The Priory purchased an average of 1,474 yards of cloth per year. It was used for clothing some sixty-eight monks, and for liveries for the prior, his obedientaries (officials), gentlemen, servants, valets, and grooms, and also for bedding, kitchen uses, and vestments.38 Liveries were now a major cost, £40 of the £70 total textile expenditures per year. The obedientaries were wearing black woollen cloth with black fur; the gentlemen coloured cloth with white fur; and for the rest, coloured cloth, and sometimes rayed cloth. The monk’s habit was made from inexpensive black serge worth 10.3d. a yard, and the long shirt from white serge worth 7.7d. a yard.39 Summer serge at Beaulieu cost 4.9d. for a yard, but most serge was 1¼ yards wide, compared with ¾ yard for Beaulieu cloth. It was likely that the Durham monks were also issued linen undergarments. Outergarments were made from woollen cloth, as were socks. Each monk had three or four undershirts, indicating that washing had become more frequent. As might be expected, given the development and diversification of the cloth industry by the fifteenth century, Priory clothing was also more varied than at Beaulieu, and the senior officials more expensively clothed. THIRTEENTH-CENTURY WOOLLEN CLOTH

The thirteenth century was a transitional period in that worsteds, semi-worsteds, and heavy woollens were all competing in continental markets. Heavy woollens were almost to displace worsteds for lay clothing in the fourteenth century. Worsteds continued to be worn by the religious orders throughout the late-medieval period, and there was a revival of worsteds, or light draperies as they came to be known, in the sixteenth century.40 The primary distinction between luxury coloured broadcloths and the rest of the woollens market was that luxury coloureds used high-priced, short, curly, fine English wools that were very thoroughly washed and then greased with butter or oil before they were combed and spun, making the key distinction between the “greased” and “dry” drapery. It seems that the process produced a finer, more consistent yarn, and was conducive to blue-dyeing the washed wools with woad.41 These luxury greased broadcloths were still a relatively small part of the international trade in woollen cloth

37 Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Monks and Markets: Durham Cathedral Priory 1460–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 102–35. 38 Threlfall-Holmes, Monks and Markets, 121. 39 The individual production cost is a statistical figure derived from dividing the total cost by the numbers produced. 40 John Oldland, “‘Fyne worsted which is almost like silke’: Norwich’s Double Worsted,” Textile History 42, no. 2 (2011): 181–200. 41 Patrick Chorley, “The Cloth Exports of Flanders and Northern France During the Thirteenth Century: A Luxury Trade?” Economic History Review, n.s. 40 (1987): 375.

83

Opening inventory

84

5

1

28

—

10

22

Cuculla

Scapular

Cape

Hood

Hose

Slippers

—

—

Cuculla

Hose

Woollen clothing—total

—

Tunic

Woollen clothing—summer

5

Tunic

Woollen clothing—winter

Garments

—

—

—

—

5

—

—

—

2

5

Returned because of death

4

16

3

156

139

60

—

22

25

160

Made

4

16

3

178

154

60

28

23

32

170

Total

4 lay brothers

16 monks

prior, subprior, and cellarer

66 monks, 7 novices, 68 lay brothers, 5 in abbot’s gift, 5 to visiting teachers (total: 151) 66 monks, 7 novices, 68 lay brothers, various gifts 27 (total: 168)

60 lay brothers

20 lay brothers, 7 horsemen (total: 27)

20 monks

66 monks, 7 novices, 68 lay brothers, 5 in abbot’s gift (total: 146) 21 monks, 6 novices, 1 in abbot’s gift (total: 28)

Distribution

Table 4.2: Consumption of cloth and clothing at Beaulieu, 1269­–70

0

0

0

8a

3

0

1

3

4

24

Closing inventory

4.2 est.

13

6.8 est.

0.2

1.56

0.78

4.17

1.56

5

3.125

Yards of cloth per garment

1,296.2b

16.8

208

20.4

33.6

235.56

46.8

112.59

31.2

135

456.25

Total yards used

John Oldland

—

—

—

—

—

Belt

Knife sheath Knife 0

0

0

0

13

85

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

c 

Hockey, Account-Book, 38, 213, 225. There seems to be a minor discrepancy between the wardrobe and shoemaker’s accounts. The shoemaker distributed 317 pairs of shoes to the brethren and 536 pairs to secular employees and as gifts. Of the 317, the wardrobe received 171 pairs, lay brothers 134, the abbot 10 as gifts, and the cellarer 2 as gifts. It seems that monks received their shoes from the wardrobe twice a year, and lay brothers obtained theirs directly from the shoemaker twice a year. This suggests that the shoes worn by the monks and lay brothers may have been different. The remaining distribution was 68 pairs for stable boys working for the abbot, 72 pairs for stable boys working for the monks, and 65 pairs for other boys. The porter gave 30 pairs to the poor. As gifts the abbot gave out 211 pairs, the prior 2 pairs, and the cellarer 18 pairs.

The total consisted of 1,051 yards of winter cloth, two yards wide, and 145.2 yards of summer cloth, probably three-quarters of a yard wide.

24

24

10

146 monks and novices, 4 to abbot, 6 to cellarer and other horsemen, 4 in abbot’s gift (total: 160) 12

b 

24

24

10

12

173

This is an arithmetic error in the account.

—

—

—

—

160

a 

Source: Hockey, Account-Book, 216–24.

—

—

—

Boots

—

13

Shoesc

Other clothing

Cistercian Clothing Production

John Oldland in the thirteenth century in terms of volume, if not value, mostly produced by a few French and Flemish draperies.42 Most continental draperies made ungreased woollen cloths of three types; worsteds (says), semi-worsteds (serges), and those cloths—like the Beaulieu winter cloth—that were true but ungreased woollens; each cloth was distinguished by the yarn, thread count, and finishing. Worsteds used longer, coarser, cheaper wools that were tightly spun to produce cloths that were lighter than woollens, yet had higher warp thread counts.43 Unfortunately we have no thirteenth-century information on weights and warp thread counts for greased woollens to make a precise comparison between worsteds and woollens. Ungreased woollens, as at Beaulieu, used shorter wools, combed and spun in their natural oils; had lower thread counts and proportionately more wool in the weft compared to the warp than did worsteds; and were heavily fulled, so that the cloth might shrink as much as 50 percent. Almost blending into true woollens were serges, cloths with a worsted warp and a woollen weft. They were fulled but not to the extent of true woollens, because the warp was more tightly spun.44 Summer cloth at Beaulieu was probably say because the thread seems to have been purchased, and was therefore all worsted thread. From a price perspective, greased, coloured broadcloths were almost always far more expensive, mainly because of the higher cost of wools, but also because they required more labour-intensive finishing processes. The price and weight of says, serges, and dry woollen broadcloths merged, being produced in a range of qualities. Most of these cheaper worsteds, semi-worsteds, and ungreased woollens were priced at 40 percent to 60 percent of the lower-priced greased, coloured woollens, but some of this price differential was a function of the cloth being narrower, the rough rule being that the cheaper, the narrower the cloth.45 The wool for Beaulieu winter cloth was combed and spun with distaff and spindle for both warp and weft. The introduction of carding and wheel spinning of wefts, initially for the cheaper woollens, began soon after the date of these accounts, which both improved the intermingling of the short fibres and lowered the cost of weft thread by 50 percent.46 Chorley has found no evidence for carding before 1300.47 The spinning wheel was coming into use toward the end of the century for spinning wefts for coarser woollens. Some of the weft wools in less expensive cloth were bowed rather than combed to reduce cost.48 The transition appears to have been rapid, as carding 42 Chorley, “Cloth Exports,” 366–68. 43 John Munro, “The Origins of the English ‘New Draperies’: The Resurrection of an Old Flemish Industry, 1270–1570,” in The New Draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800, ed. Negley B. Harte, Pasold Studies in Textile History 10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 87–93. 44 Munro, “Origins,” 90–91. 45 Chorley, “Cloth Exports,” 354, 360. Nevertheless most worsteds and semi-worsteds participating in international trade were mostly five to six quarters wide, wider than many sixteenth-century light draperies. 46 Patrick Chorley, “The Evolution of the Woollen, 1300–1700,” in Harte, New Draperies, 10. 47 Ibid., 7. 48 Chorley, “Cloth Exports,” 376.

86

Cistercian Clothing Production and wheel-spinning of wefts was standard by the 1320s for coarser cloths.49 This must have worked as a catalyst for speeding up the transition from worsteds to woollens, and the dominance of greased woollens in international trade. BEAULIEU’S WOOLLEN AND WORSTED TEXTILES

The Cistercians were the leading English thirteenth-century wool growers, and Beaulieu was no exception, with wool contributing more than half of the abbey’s income.50 It was a difficult year for the abbey, as murrain diminished all grades of sheep, the flock falling from 6,107 to 5,155 sheep.51 This was a precursor of the scab epidemic in the 1270s, which probably caused rising prices from 1273.52 Further, 1270 was also a crisis year for the wool trade as Countess Margaret of Flanders confiscated all English goods in Flanders in retaliation for the arrest of Flemish goods at the St. Ives fair, and acts of piracy, which in turn led to a ban on wool exports from September 1270 to March 1271.53 Flemish merchants and goods were arrested in England in September 1270. It is not known if these events affected the prices paid for Beaulieu wool for the year of the accounts, but Terrance Lloyd’s price series shows no significant price increases.54 The bergerie, three miles from the abbey, collected and sold the wool from the abbey’s granges. Beaulieu produced among the highest priced late-thirteenth-century wools.55 In 1294 it was recorded that a Florentine merchant had bought Beaulieu good wool in an advance contract for £13 6s. 8d. a sack, the highest price paid for English wool in that year.56 The Cistercians carefully graded and prepared their wools, which to some extent accounted for their high prices.57 Beaulieu distinguished five grades of wool, unlike the usual classification of wools into good, medium, and coarse. The finest wools were sold, while much of the coarser wool was reserved for the abbey’s use. In 1269–70, prices received for a 360-pound sack (30 stones, 12 pounds per stone) of good wools was £10 6s. 8d.; for medium wools, £6 6s. 10½d.; for coarse, £4; for coarse lockets (poor quality wool from the sheep’s belly, legs, and tail), £2 10s.; for warpelok 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

Chorley, “Evolution,” 12. Hockey, Account-Book, 40; Hockey, King John’s Abbey, 65. Hockey, Account-Book, 31. Terrance Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 291; Lloyd, Movement of Wool Prices, 40. Lloyd, English Wool Trade, 28–30. Lloyd, Movement of Wool Prices, 40. John Munro, “Wool-Price Schedules and the Qualities of English Wools in the Later Middle Ages, ca. 1270–1499,” Textile History 9 (1978): 121–22, 159. For a 364-pound sack, the price of Beaulieu wools, according to a Douai schedule ca. 1270, was £13 2s. 4d., exceeded in price only by some Welsh wools; in the early-fourteenth-century Pegoletti schedule, Beaulieu wool was £16, exceeded in price only by other Cistercian abbeys in Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, and Monmouthshire. Douai and Pegoletti schedules are inflated because they include the costs of transport and marketing, and the profit from sale on the Continent. Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks, and Paul Dryburgh, eds., Advance Contracts for the Sale of Wool c. 1200–c. 1327 (London: List and Index Society, 2006), 209; Munro, “Wool-Price Schedules,” 121. Lloyd, Movement of Wool Prices, 10.

87

John Oldland (short clippings), £3 1s. 1¼d.; and gardus (remainings or combings), £1 17s. 6d.58 The price of Beaulieu’s good wools was double the average wool price reflected in Lloyd’s composite prices for 1270.59 The wardrobe purchased coarse wool from the bergerie to make all its winter clothing; white cloth was made from coarse wool worth £4 per sack, but the Exemplar account suggests that wool used to make winter grey cloth was worth only £3 11s. 6d. The wardrobe sold some coarse lockets for £2 10s., so part of the wool inventory was of low quality. During the year the abbey sold almost 17 sacks, of which 13 sacks and 8½ stones were of good quality. The wardrobe used 11 sacks and 16 stones of the coarser wools, so the best-quality wool was sold for export while most of the coarser wools were consumed at the abbey. Because the overall quality of Beaulieu wool was so high, its coarse wool was of similar price to medium wools from some other abbeys.60 Most of the cloth produced was winter broadcloth, forty-four cloths compared with perhaps eighteen summer narrow worsteds, each under half the size of broadcloth.61 Beaulieu broadcloth was different from most dry broadcloths of the period because it was very heavy. It was 25 yards by 2 yards after fulling and finishing, and made from 90 pounds of wool, presumably made to be so heavy because no undergarments were worn. The cloth made at Laleham used 65 pounds of wool, which must have been more typical. The average weight of English broadcloth increased substantially from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.62 The standard English mid-sixteenth-century broadcloth, 24 yards by 1¾ yards, weighed 64 pounds finished, using around 84 pounds of wool. According to the cloth assize, late-thirteenth-century commercially produced English cloth had no specified length, but cheaper cloth needed to be seven quarters wide, while imported cloth had to be 26 yards long and six quarters wide.63 Worsteds were not covered by the cloth assize. We are not told what the final Beaulieu cloth weighed. Valenciennes thirteenth-century, mid-quality, wide biffes lost 25 percent of their weight, so the final Beaulieu broadcloth probably weighed around 68 pounds (1.36 pounds per square yard), more than luxury broadcloth such as the 51-pound

58 Hockey, Account-Book, 33, 164–65. A 360-pound sack was typical; Denholm-Young, Seignorial Administration, 57. 59 Lloyd, Movement of Wool Prices, 39. 60 Munro, “Wool-Price Schedules,” 124. 61 The actual production of summer cloths is unclear. In the closing wool inventory, we are told that seven and a half summer cloths were made. This seems to fit the cloth required to produce the sixteen cucullas, three tunics, and four hose that were distributed during the year. However, under expenses, there is cost for weaving eighteen summer cloths, and the purchase of 11 stone of thread. Since each summer cloth used 2 stone and 3 pounds of wool, there was only enough thread bought to make less than five cloths. It is possible that there was enough thread in inventory at the beginning of the year, for which there is no accounting, to produce the necessary thirteen additional cloths. But what was then done with the extra cloths that were not made up into garments? The only possibility is that this cloth was sold or given away. There was the sale of cloth for new lay brothers amounting to 52s. 11d., but this would not have used up all the cloth. 62 John Oldland, “Wool and Cloth Production in Late-Medieval and Early Tudor England” (forthcoming). 63 Anthony Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking (London: Heinemann, 1982), 107.

88

Cistercian Clothing Production Ghent dickedinnen cloth (1.27 pounds per square yard) in 1462.64 It was 70 percent heavier than wide middling-quality continental cloths: for example, Valenciennes biffes at the end of the thirteenth century were 0.79 pounds per square yard, and the broad demi-draps at Arras in 1342 were 0.80 pounds per square yard.65 Beaulieu finished summer worsteds weighed around 20 pounds (0.84 pounds per square yard), around 38 percent lighter than winter cloth. For winter cloth, 40 percent of the wool was spun into warp thread, 60 percent into weft. Beaulieu cloth was unusual in that it had a very low warp thread count, presumably because the wools were coarse and threads were loosely spun, particularly weft threads. This was a heavier, but lower-quality woollen than usually appeared in international trade. Cloth remains discovered in early-fourteenth-century London excavations suggest that woollens had 50/50 warp/weft thread counts.66 The warp thread count was 1,100, or 550 per finished yard, which was low relative to luxury woollens, and far lower than the Bruges gheminghede woollen in 1282, with 903 warps per finished yard, and the Ypres plain woollens of around 1350, with 773 warps.67 At London in 1456, weaving costs were set for cloths from 600 to 2,000 warps a yard.68 Warp thread counts for late-sixteenth-century West Country short broadcloths ranged from 700 to 1,000 warps per yard on the loom, and long cloths from 1,200 to 1,400 warps per yard. Woollens always had a lower thread count than worsteds, the warps of which were spun to be more tightly twisted. Summer cloth was 30 yards in length finished (32 yards on the loom). We are not given the width, but it was probably ¾ yard wide, if we assume that summer cucullas were the same dimensions as in winter, since we know the amount of cloth used to make these garments in both seasons. The differences between summer and winter cloths, apart from their dimensions, and that summer cloth was much lighter in weight, are not clear. Summer cloth was made entirely from purchased worsted (stamen) thread, and therefore quite different from cloth made of abbey yarn, which had been beaten, combed, and spun under the close supervision of the wardrobe. Although a worsted, the cloth was fulled. This cloth may have been similar to the Arras demi-draps simples and rays, which shrank from 30 to 26 yards in length (13 percent) and from 11 to 7.5 quarters in width (32 percent).69 This would have made the Beaulieu summer cloth 1.1 yards wide on the loom.

64 This is the earliest documented weight for very high-quality cloth. Georges Espinas, Documents relatifs à la draperie de Valenciennes au moyen âge (Paris: F. Leviton, 1932), 183; Munro, “Origins,” 49. 65 Espinas, Documents, 182–83; George Espinas and Henri Pirenne, Recueil de documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie drapière en Flandre, 4 vols. (Brussels: Kiessling, 1906–24), 1:141–42; Munro, “Origins,” 89–90. 66 Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c. 1150–1450 (London: HMSO, 1992), 27, 30, 36, 45. 67 Munro, “Origins,” 91. 68 Frances Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (London: Clarendon Press, 1933), 204–12. 69 Espinas and Pirenne, Recueil, 1:141–42.

89

John Oldland MANUFACTURING COSTS

Although the accounts seem to provide complete costings for at least winter cloth manufacture, it must be remembered that they make no provision for the work done by monks and lay brothers. Cistercians emphasised manual labour; for monks, work was part of their daily ritual, and for lay brothers work was their primary occupation. The accounts suggest that there were sixty-seven or sixty-eight lay brothers. Of these perhaps forty-six worked on the granges, and another eighteen were working in identifiable departments of the abbey. From the clothing regulations we can determine that the weaver was a lay brother.70 Presumably lay brothers and monks would move from one department to another as work demanded. It seems likely that, while a monk was in charge and submitted the accounts, the weaver may also have supervised the daily operations of the fulling mill and the tailoring, although weaving forty-four winter cloths and seven and a half summer cloths in a year would have left little time for other work.71 Surprisingly there was very little paid help given to the monk and weaver. The only paid employee working in the weaving warehouse seems to have been a servant who was paid a stipend of 3s. a year. In addition, casual employment was given to a servant for carrying wool for 2s. Their wages were far less than the two famuli (servants) working in the mill for 7s. a year, portrayed in an illustration of a fulling mill in the account book, wielding mallets to pound the cloth.72 A famulus was employed in the laundry for a stipend of 5s. 6d. a year. These wages were supplemented with bread and mixed beer. The fulling mill expenses included bread worth 47s. 8¾d. and mixed beer worth 13s. 6¾d.; the weaving building required 28s. 8¼d. in bread and 8s. 7d. in mixed beer, far greater expenses than salaries. The estimate for manufacturing costs (table 4.3) is based on the best information from both the Exemplar and annual accounts. Unsurprisingly, the accounts raise many questions. There are mistakes, omissions, inconsistencies, and probably copying errors by the scribe who was producing the final document, which makes complete accuracy impossible. The information in the Exemplar account is more detailed for winter than summer cloth. Some information is missing because there is only one year of accounts. There was no opening inventory for work in progress, for instance thread, so some of the costs relating to 1279–80 production may have been made in the previous year. The actual costs do not always match those in the Exemplar account, as would be expected since it was based on historical information. There were

70 Hockey, Account-Book, 18–19. 71 H. T. Riley, ed., Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis (London: R. Griffin, 1859–62), vol. 1, Liber Albus, 121–26; vol. 2, Liber Custumarum, 547–50; Walter Endrei, “Manufacturing a Piece of Woollen Cloth in Medieval Flanders: How Many Work Hours?” in Textiles of the Low Countries in European Economic History, ed. Erik Aerts and John H. Munro (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1990), 18. It is estimated that late-sixteenth-century luxury broadcloth took two weavers a total of 130 hours, or approximately two weeks a cloth, or 26 cloths a year. However, in 1300, cheap London candlewick cloth, 24 yards by 1½ yards, took only three or four days to weave. 72 London, British Library, MS Add. 48978, 39v.

90

Cistercian Clothing Production Table 4.3: Estimated manufacturing costs (in pence), size, and weight for winter and summer cloth at Beaulieu, 1269–70 Component or process

Winter broadcloth

Percent of cost

Summer broadcloth

Wool

210d

51.0%

—

Beating wool

10.7d

2.6%

—

Combing warp

18d

4.4%

—

Combing weft

45d

10.9%

—

25.95d

6.3%

—

24d

5.8%

—

31.5d

7.6%

—

0.5d

0.1%

—

—

—

126d

Weaving

16d

3.9%

8d

Fulling and finishing

24d

5.8%

6d

Artinanda et miscenda (?scouring and sorting) Spinning warp Spinning weft Carriage to and from spinners Prepared thread

6.5d

1.6%

6.7d

Total manufacturing cost per cloth

Overhead

412.15d (£1 14s 4d)a

100.0%

146.7d (12s. 2¾d)b

Weight of wool used for cloth

90 lbs

25.5 lbs

50 sq. yards

22.5 sq. yards

8.24d

6.56d

Area Cost per square yard Estimated finished weight Weight per square yard

68 lbs

19 lbs

1.36 lbs

0.84 lbs

Source: Hockey, Account-Book, 214–20. The Exemplar account records that white winter cloth should cost £1 9s. 8d., with the wool costing 16s. 11½d., and grey winter cloth £1 11s. 6d., with the wool costing 17s. 10½d. Hockey, Account-Book, 215.

a 

The Exemplar account records that white summer cloth should cost 11s. 3d., and grey summer cloth 12s. 6d. Hockey, Account-Book, 215.

b 

some omissions in the Exemplar account’s estimates; for example, there is no cost for combing the weft wool. Wool The Rule stated that 90 pounds be used for each winter cloth and 27 pounds for sum91

John Oldland mer cloth. The 90 pounds is used for winter cloth in the inventory account, but there is also a 10-stone assessment for loss over the year in that account, which suggests that there may have been some lower-weight sacks, or that more than 90 pounds of wool was used in making each cloth. For summer cloth, the inventory states that seven and a half cloths required 16 stones of wool, approximately 25.5 pounds for each cloth, less than the 27 pounds stipulated in the Exemplar account. Over 10 sacks of wool were left over from the previous year. Just over 5 sacks were acquired (for £4 a sack), for a total of just over 15½ sacks. The £4 cost is the same as that estimated in the Exemplar account and that charged for the one sack of coarse wool sold on the open market. Eleven sacks and 16 stones of wool were used to make cloth, compared with 16½ sacks sold by the bergerie on the open market. One sack and 12 stones of “coarse lockets” wool were sold by the wardrobe for £2 10s. per sack, so it is likely that at least some of the cloth was made from wool that was cheaper than the £4 set out in the Exemplar account. In addition some small amounts of cloth were sold, leaving a closing wool inventory of over 2 sacks. The Exemplar account makes a distinction between white and grey cloth that is not reflected in the accounts. The cost of grey wool in the Exemplar account is £3 11s. 6d. per sack. In the cost calculations the assumption has been made that £3 10s. a sack, or 210d. a cloth, was the average price for winter cloth, assuming a mixture of coarse, grey, and coarse lockets wools. Preparation of the wools73 The bergerie had sorted the wools and washed them. Different costs for beating and combing were assigned to warp and weft wools, so we can assume that the betterquality, shorter wools were used for the weft. All the processes of wool preparation for winter cloths were outsourced, since there are costs assigned to them. The wools were beaten with willow branches or sticks to get rid of refuse (lane ad tascam excuciendis) for around 10d. a cloth, with similar prices in the Exemplar and annual accounts. Costs for beating wefts were higher than warps. Wools were combed with heated woollen combs to form a roving of parallel fibres. The accounts tell us that the cost of combing warp wool (albe lane in stamina pectinandis) was 6d. and weft (grosse lane) was 10d. per stone, so we have used these for the costing.74 In the Exemplar account, combing warp wool was meant to cost 6d. per stone but there is no cost given for weft wool. All the spinning we can assume to have been done with a distaff and spindle, since there was a single uniform charge for spinning.75 The cost of spinning winter wool was the same in the Exemplar and annual accounts. There is a cost in the Exemplar account for spinning summer wool of 8d. per stone, which was slightly higher than

73 For a fuller explanation for preparation of thread, see John H. Munro, “Textile Technology,” in The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer et al. (New York: C. Scribner, 1988), 11:694– 701. 74 Far less wool was combed than was either beaten or spun. There seems to be no explanation for this inconsistency. 75 Chorley, “Evolution,” 10.

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Cistercian Clothing Production 6.67d. for winter warp and 7.22d. for winter weft, indicating that worsted thread was more tightly spun. There was a small cost for carriage of the wool to the spinners, but this was minimal because the cost of the buying and caring for the wardrobe’s horse was included under fulling mill costs. For summer cloth all preparation was outsourced, because the only charge was for thread. This included the value of the wool, so non-abbey wool was probably used. In addition there is a somewhat mysterious entry, Artinanda et miscenda, which defies direct translation, but appears to involve sorting wools. This process seems to be unique to these accounts and is the reason why wool preparation costs are higher than would be expected. In the Exemplar account the item appears in the preparation of weft thread for grey cloth. In the yearly account, where no distinction is made between the production of white and grey cloth, the cost appears after combing of the wool, but before spinning. One probable interpretation is that the combed weft wool was sorted by colour. In many illustrations scapulars and hoods are dark in contrast to the whiter tunic, as in a painting by Jörg Breu the Elder in 1500 of Cistercians at work, in which the hoods and scapulars of some are brown and the habits white, while others are dressed entirely in brown cloth.76 Weaving, finishing, and overheads The cost of setting up the loom and weaving winter cloth was 16d., slightly more than the 14d. in the Exemplar account. Summer cloth cost 8d. to weave, in line with its reduced size. As discussed, these costs would have been the cost of the weaver’s assistant, paid as piecework (ad tascam), and not have included those of the weaver himself and any other monk or lay brother who assisted him. Based on the accounts, the fulling mill appears to have been an excellent investment, as it allowed the abbey to finish cloth very efficiently, and its costs were offset by substantial revenue, presumably from finishing local cloth. The Rule set a cost of 24d. to full, shear and prepare both white and grey winter cloths, and 14d. to full white summer cloth and 6d. to full grey summer cloth. But no costs appear in the yearly account, other than the separate accounting for the fulling mill, which seems to suggest that all the finishing activities were carried out that year by the two famuli working at the mill and perhaps some help from lay brothers. Finishing cloth involves a number of processes, only one of which is fulling, which involves compressing and intertwining the fibres by pounding on the cloth with mill hammers. The woven cloth first had to be scoured and washed in warm water using fuller’s earth or other scouring additive, sepi ad pannos in the fulling mill expenses. After fulling, the cloth was stretched on a tenter to make it even and dry. It was probable that the cloth was napped on the tenter with teasels, and there is a teasles cost of 10d. in the fulling mill account. It is likely that the cloth was lightly sheared to smooth the cloth surface, and then folded and stored. 76 Jörg Breu the Elder, Scene from the Life of St. Bernard (altarpiece), Germany, ca. 1500 (Stiftskirche, Zwettl, Lower Austria), available for view online at http://www.malerei-meisterwerke.de/bilder/­ joerg-breu-d.-ae.-bernhardsaltar-szenen-aus-dem-leben-des-hl.-bernhard-00865.html.

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John Oldland As the Cistercians were not trying to impress, finishing presumably was minimal and well below the standards for the commercial market, which required that the cloth be not just napped wet on the tenter, but draped dry over a bench and meticulously napped and sheared, often several times, to produce a fine, soft, smooth surface. If we assume that winter cloth would take one day to full, and three days to clean, tenter, and finish, then the abbey’s forty-four winter cloths and eighteen smaller, lighter summer cloths woven that year would have taken perhaps two hundred days, with plenty of flexibility for the abbey to take on other work. At Laleham the cost for fulling and finishing broadcloth was 44d.–49.3d. At 48d. per cloth, the fulling mill income would perhaps be equivalent to cleaning, fulling, and finishing some additional twenty-three broadcloths. Mill income was £4 14s. (1,128d.), mill expense was £8 1½d. (1,921½d.), a net loss of 793½d. The real cost for finishing fifty equivalent broadcloths required by the abbey would only have been 15.9d. a cloth, which was very efficient, and well below the 24d. quoted cost in the Exemplar account. Even applying the abbey’s cloth across all fulling mill expenses, the cost was only 38d. for each of fifty cloths. Of course there was no lease cost for the mill that a fuller would normally have to pay, which for a quality mill, like the well-constructed and efficient overshot mill at Beaulieu, might easily cost £4 a year. Since the income would have been variable from year to year, the Exemplar account cost of 24d. has been used in the costing. At the fulling mill, a little less than half of the total expense of £8 1½d. was in labour, food and drink. Forty-three shillings was spent on timber and carpentry, plus small expenses repairing the wheel and replacing metal parts. A horse was bought for 13s. and ate 2s. in hay; the horse was presumably used by the wardrobe to move wool and cloth around. Sixteen shillings was spent on soap, for cleansing the cloth during the fulling process, and on candles. Interestingly, there was also an expense for preparing and planting, which suggests that the buildings were surrounded by gardens (there was a similar expense attached to the cloth warehouse), and two gallons of honey were sold, so the wardrobe kept bees. It is impossible to determine accurate overheads for cloth manufacture, as the wardrobe had three discrete but interconnected functions: organising the production of the cloth, making and distributing the garments, and the laundry. It is impossible to allocate time and expense across the functions. The expenses for the year, other than for the laundry and mill, were £52, of which £2 16s. 3½d. was overhead, mainly the provision of food and drink to the wardrobe, and the cost of manpower. Of course, overheads are grossly understated, as there was no wage cost for the keeper of the wardrobe, the weaver, or another lay brother who might have helped. We have assumed that half of this overhead be allocated to the cost of producing cloth. If this overhead is allocated according to the number of cloths produced, then the overhead for a winter cloth was 6.51d. per cloth and 6.7d. for a summer cloth.77

77 Again this is a statistical amount.

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Cistercian Clothing Production Total cloth cost It is estimated that producing a winter broadcloth cost £1 14s. 4d., and a narrow summer worsted 12s. 3d. Worsted was only 20 percent cheaper to produce per cloth area, and this was a function of the cheaper wools used. Wool accounted for 51 percent of total costs, but it must be remembered that this was undyed cloth. Using a cost of 16d. for dyeing 8 pounds, the dyeing cost of a Beaulieu cloth would have been 180d. for 90 pounds of wool. Then the whole cloth would have cost £2 9s. 4d., dyeing would have been 30 percent of the cost, and wool would have been 35 percent, in line with traditional costs. In a comparison with costs at Laleham and Prato a century later, Beaulieu preparation costs were higher as a result of additional wool sorting costs, spinning costs were comparable, and finishing costs far lower because the quality of finishing was well below acceptable commercial standards (table 4.4). Table 4.4: Percentage distribution of costs for manufacturing cloth at Beaulieu (1269–70), Laleham (ca. 1294–95), and Prato (1384–85) Process

Beaulieu (winter cloth)

Laleham Laleham Prato (excluding dyeing) (including dyeing) (excluding dyeing)

49.3%

32.0%

22.1%

35.4%

27.7%

31.5%

21.7%

24.2%

7.9%

14.0%

a

9.7%

20.8%

Fulling and finishing

11.8%

22.5%

15.5%

16.0%

Other

3.2 %

—

—

3.6%

—

—

31.0%

—

Preparation (excluding raw material cost) Spinning Weaving

Dyeing

Sources: Hockey, Account-Book, 215–21; Lloyd, “Cloth Manufacturing,” 332–36; Federigo Melis, Aspetti della Vita Economica Medievale (Florence: Le Monnier, 1962), 561. The weaver at Laleham was paid 12d. a week for 31 weeks and a semiannual stipend of 10s. However, it seems that the weaver was hired out. Assuming that it took him only two weeks to weave a cloth, then the six cloths would have taken 12 weeks and cost 184d. to produce, or 30.67d. each.

a

CONCLUSION

The abbey made its own cloth and clothes for many reasons. Cistercian abbeys were usually isolated, which forced them to be self-sufficient; lay brothers were available to help make the cloth; there was a commitment to a life of work; and the abbey produced the required cheap wools. The simplicity of the cloth meant it was easy to make, as 95

John Oldland it was undyed and poorly finished, so that specialised workers were not required. It also seems to have been cost-efficient, because part of the workforce was in the abbey community. Wool preparation was outsourced as always, and thread for summer worsted was purchased, presumably because it required different wool and specialised preparation of the wool for weaving. The fulling mill, at least in this year, was efficient because it produced some revenue from outside the abbey. Unfortunately the ruins of the fulling mill and weaving shed at Beaulieu are of later construction, so we cannot determine where on the site the cloth and clothing was made. Both cloth and clothing reflected the abbey’s principles. They were simple, warm, and produced efficiently. Winter clothing was exclusively made of wool, which most of the abbey’s monks and lay brothers had to wear year-round. Winter cloth was hot and heavy, low-cost, and easy to manufacture. For an order dedicated to poverty, learning, and helping the poor, its clothing in the later thirteenth century reflected its simple, ascetic, Christian values. The clothing account is complete. We know exactly what Cistercian monks and lay brothers wore in the later thirteenth century and how frequently they received new garments. Their commitment to self-sufficiency came at a price. Dependency on their own wool meant that there was limited use of worsted, and no linen. Little thought was given to comfort. The abbot and senior officials wore the same clothing as the monks, and there was no deviation between one monk or lay brother and another. Clothing was less varied than that worn by the Benedictines. This is probably the most complete set of accounts for the production of woollen cloth in the thirteenth century. For the most part the costing is complete, and actual expenditures can be checked against the guidelines set by the abbey. But there are problems. The weaver was unpaid, and with only one year of expenses and revenues, we cannot be entirely sure that all the estimated costs are accurate. Unfortunately the cloth made at Beaulieu was different from most of the cloth made for the commercial market, because it was heavier, used only coarse wools, and was undyed and poorly finished. The cost seems to have been close to the price of second-quality cloth at that time, as the extra cost of the wool required to make the heavy cloth was offset by lower production costs.

96

Clothing and Textile Materials in Medieval Sweden and Norway Eva I. Andersson

This article examines the materials used for clothing in medieval Scandinavia, based on a variety of written sources. Archaeological finds of textiles from Scandinavia have been published to some extent, and there also exist some surveys on clothing in medieval literature. However, little work has been done on the textile information found in Scandinavian documentary sources from the Middle Ages. The production of textiles in Western Europe in the Middle Ages has been the topic of research for a long time, and in recent decades the study of textile consumption has also become

The paper represents findings from the author’s 2006 doctoral dissertation, “Kläderna och människan i medeltidens Sverige och Norge” [Clothing and the individual in medieval Sweden and Norway], University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Apart from a summary in English, the complete dissertation is available only in Swedish.    See for example: Margareta Nockert, “Clothing found in Scandinavia and Greenland,” in Fashion and Clothing in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Rainer Christoph Schwinges and Regula Schorta (Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abbegg-Stiftung, 2010), 107–13; Marianne Vedeler, Klær og formspråk i norsk middelalder (Oslo: Unipub, 2007); Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2003); Hanne Monclair, Forestillinger om kongen i norsk middelalder gjennom ritualene og symbolene rundt ham (Oslo: Norges Forskningsråd, 1995); and Anna Zanchi, “‘Melius Abundare Quam Deficere’: Scarlet Clothing in Laxdæla Saga and Njáls Saga,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008): 21–37. The philologist Hjalmar Falk and the historian Hans Hildebrand, working about a hundred years ago, both used medieval documents to study clothing, but Falk’s interest was mainly the language, and Hildebrand only studied clothing as a small part of his large project to write a history of the Middle Ages in Sweden: Hjalmar Falk, Altwestnordische Kleiderkunde mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Terminologie (Kristiania [Oslo]: J. Dybwad, 1919); Hans Hildebrand, Sveriges medeltid: Kulturhistorisk skildring, vol. 2 (1894; repr., Stockholm: Gidlund, 1983). The only recent substantial work which concentrates on clothing in documentary sources from Scandinavia is my own doctoral dissertation: Eva I. Andersson, “Kläderna och människan i medeltidens Sverige och Norge” (Ph.D. diss., University of Gothenburg, 2006). Since then there have also been some shorter articles published, such as Camilla Luise Dahl’s article on two-coloured clothing and fabric, “Mengiað klæthe and tweskifte klædher: Marbled, Patterned and Parti-coloured Clothing in Medieval Scandinavia,” in The Medieval Broadcloth: Changing Trends in Fashions, Manufacturing and Consumption, ed. Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen and Marie-Louise Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009).

Eva I. Andersson more prominent. Yet, Sweden and Norway, along with the other Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, and Iceland), have largely remained white areas on the map regarding the consumption of textiles. This is despite the fact that most of the preserved clothing from the Middle Ages has been found in the Nordic countries. My doctoral dissertation and this article are the first attempts to study the consumption of textiles and clothing in medieval Sweden and Norway according to the evidence in documentary sources. The article starts with a short discussion of the various kinds of documents used. Then it continues with the results of my research, starting with textiles and then continuing with furs. After that I consider the development over time and, finally, differences with respect to region, gender, and social status. THE SOURCES

Sweden and Norway have—compared for example to England, France, or Italy—very few surviving written sources from the Middle Ages. Those that do exist are primarily documents related to donations, purchases, pawning, and inheritance of land. The most common type of document is wills, the earliest dating from the thirteenth century. Wills are also by far the most common type to mention clothing or fabric, though there are also a few interesting inventories and lists of trousseaux. Some bills of sale have also survived, as well as a price regulation which lists types of fabric. For the later part of the fifteenth century, when wills containing information about textiles or clothing become increasingly rare, this article also considers magistrate’s records from the Swedish town of Arboga, a thriving town involved in the production and sale of iron. The data from the Arboga records are not, however, included in the quantitative surveys, in which I strived to use the same type of sources for the whole period investigated. For my quantitative analyses, I reviewed a total of 315 documents (197 from Norway and 118 from Sweden). This includes Finland, which was part of Sweden, but not documents originating in Iceland. The two largest social categories represented in the wills are the clergy and the nobility, groups that frequently overlapped, since the more important church offices often were held by members of the nobility. One should, however, keep in mind that

  See for example Vestergård Pedersen and Nosch, Medieval Broadcloth.   Research regarding the production of textiles in the Nordic countries in the Middle Ages has mainly been concerned with weaving techniques. An exception is the Icelandic fabric known as vadmal, due to its economic importance, but here the focus of research has been production, not the individual’s consumption of textiles and clothing. See for example Helgi Þorlaksson, Vaðmal og verðlag (­Reykjavik: Háskóla Íslands, 1991).   Nockert, “Clothing.”   Medieval documents from Sweden are published in the series Svenskt Diplomatarium (Stockholm: Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien/Riksarkivet, 1829–), henceforth abbreviated as SD. Documents from Norway are published in the series Diplomatarium Norvegicum (Kristiania/Oslo: Norsk Historisk Kjeldeskrift-institutt, 1849–1995), henceforth abbreviated as DN.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway also within these groups there were large differences regarding income and social status. At the lower end of the social scale we find rural parish priests, servants, and peasant tenants among the testators. The earliest wills all originate from the clergy, since this group did not have any natural heirs. This does not mean that there is no secular clothing mentioned in their wills. On the contrary, what they had to give away was to a large extent their secular clothing. From the beginning of the fourteenth century up to the Black Death in 1349, there are growing numbers of wills in general and also wills containing loose property, such as clothing. After the plague, however, wills generally list only land and sums of money. There is no consensus among scholars as to why this change occurs, but it is indeed a sad fact for the historian of dress and textiles. Terms for clothing and fabric are ambiguous; even today there can be uncertainties and misunderstanding when two people talk about clothing and materials. When we are dealing with texts written five or six hundred years ago, the problems are of course amplified. Some of the names for fabric which were used in the Middle Ages are also used in modern Swedish and Norwegian, but with slightly different meanings, which naturally is confusing, and the exact meaning of many of the medieval terms is unknown. With these reservations, there is still a lot of information that can be deduced from the written sources—information that can be interpreted with the help of previous research on medieval textiles. Not all documents that mention clothes also give information about the materials they were made of. There does not appear to be any clear difference between those that do and those that do not, and likewise there does not seem to be a tendency to identify more expensive materials over simpler ones—homespun and cheap imports are represented as well as Flemish woollens. It is therefore likely that the variation has more to do with the habits of the individual scribes than with the content of the testators’ wardrobes. The information about clothing materials in the documents can thus, at least tentatively, be treated as representative for the larger body of clothing mentioned in medieval wills. This analysis includes both items of clothing and bolts and pieces of fabric, when they can be assumed to be intended for clothing from the context or the type of fabric. Bequests of fabric to churches and convents are left out, as are naturally those instances when another intended use is stated in the text. Mostly, however, the items mentioned are garments. The exception is vadmal, the native wool fabric, which is much more common in the documents as continuous lengths than as garments. There are some clothes made from vadmal in the documents, but it is mainly found in lists of rents and taxes from Norway and Iceland (which was then part of Norway). Though the amount of fabric in these documents is substantial, the occurrences are few, making their influence on the general result small. The way garments are described in the documents varies a lot, which makes statistical treatment of the data difficult. For example, some documents list every item of clothing, while others list sets of clothes. A similar difficulty occurs for lengths of fabric, which mostly are described only as “a piece,” but when a length is given, it could be three ells or a hundred. It is thus impossible to count either individual garments or 99

Eva I. Andersson the exact number of ells. Likewise it is impossible to convert the garments to a certain amount of fabric; even if some estimates can be made on the fabric needed for the different garments, they are too inexact to be used in a quantitative study. The accumulated unavoidable mistakes would throw the results off considerably. The method chosen is instead to count each entry that names a specific material. This means that if three individual garments in a specific material are enumerated, such as “a woollen cloak, a woollen hood, and a woollen tunic,” they are counted as three entries; if the document says “woollen cloak, hood, and tunic,” this is counted as only one entry, since it is impossible to know if the word “woollen” refers to all the garments or just the first one. A set of clothes is also counted as one entry, since we cannot say how many garments were included. Finally, only the main material in the garment is counted and not the lining, which could be fabric or fur. That means that the fur and leather occurring in the figures represent garments made wholly from fur or leather. Fabric by the piece or ell is treated likewise, by the number of entries in the documents, not the yardage, mainly because that is seldom given. This leads to the absurd consequence that an 800-ell length of homespun counts the same as a three-ell length, but in general the differences are much smaller than that. Despite the obvious drawbacks, there are also advantages with this method: The obvious one is that it is actually possible to work with, and another is that it gives an idea of the dissemination of the different materials, since individually mentioned garments and pieces usually belonged to, or were intended for, different people. TEXTILES

Wool was the most common material. Regardless of social class, the majority of the garments mentioned in the documents were made from some type of wool fabric. The wealthiest wore scarlet and fine woollens, while the poorest wore coarse homespun. Several types of wool fabric are mentioned, both fine and coarse, fulled and unfulled. Despite the plethora of fabric names, three types make up approximately three-quarters of the total amount: imported woollens; scarlet, which of course also was an imported woollen, but of a certain kind; and the homespun wool fabric called vadmal. Other names occur much less frequently, and in the analyses that follow, I have divided them into groups based either on fibre content, like “silk” or “plant fibres,” or on quality, such as the group “lighter woollen fabrics.” IMPORTED WOOL TEXTILES

Woollens and other wool fabrics were among the main commodities in medieval trade, a fact that is reflected also in the written documents, where wool is the most common material both for garments and pieces of fabric. The words used are the Scandinavian kläde and the Latin pannus, both meaning an imported, usually both fulled and shorn, wool fabric. We find this both as the main material in garments and as lining under 100

Materials in Sweden and Norway fabric in another colour. In general the words kläde or pannus are omitted and only the place of origin is mentioned, such as engelst (from England) or gentz (from Ghent). We cannot be 100 percent certain that all fabrics which bear a town’s name were woollens, but the ones from Flanders and the rest of the Low Countries, which make up the majority, probably were. The most prized of all woollens throughout the Middle Ages was scarlet, its price sometimes equalling or even surpassing the cost of silk. What made scarlets so expensive was above all the way they were dyed, with the most expensive of all dyestuffs in the Middle Ages: kermes. Kermes is a red dye extracted from scale insects; however, kermes was used not only for red fabrics but also with other dyestuffs to provide a wide range of colours. In the Swedish and Norwegian documents we find scarlets in red, murrey, brown, and “dark.” Other colours mentioned in European medieval sources are green and blue. At the other end of the imported wool fabrics we find the German and Polish wool fabrics. Those were probably lighter and coarser and made at least partly from worsted yarn; wool fabric produced in what is now Poland was mainly of this type. For example, marknist, a fabric from the duchy of Mark in Westphalia, was cheaper than both say and kersey, two fabrics in the lower price segment of imported fabrics, according to a 1347 price regulation from Kopparberget, a copper mining area in Sweden now known as Dalecarlia or Dalarna. In this price regulation (see   The exact nature of scarlet, as well as the origin of the term, has been disputed for at least a century. Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin proposed at the beginning of the 20th century that the word came from a Flemish word meaning “shearing” and that the defining characteristic was that it was shorn many times; Weckerlin, Le drap “escarlate” au moyen âge: Essai sur l’étymologie et la signification du mot écarlate (Lyons: A. Rey, 1905). John H. Munro has, however, shown that other woollens were often shorn as many times as scarlet. He has also shown that the shearing was a minor part in the cost of the woollens and suggested that what made a scarlet a scarlet was that it was dyed with the costliest of dyestuffs: kermes. Though the dye gives a strong pink or red, Flemish dyers’ manuals show that it was used also in mixtures producing other colours, such as blue, green, and grey. John H. Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, ed. Negley Boyd Harte and Kenneth George Ponting (London: Heinemann Educational, 1983); John H. Munro, “Three Centuries of Luxury Textile Consumption in the Low Countries and England, 1330–1570,” in Vestergård Pedersen and Nosch, Medieval Broadcloth, 30. For the Swedish and Norwegian documentary references, see SD 4, 1327–1340 (1853), no. 2685; SD 9, 1366–1370 (1970–2000), no. 7955; SD 10:2, 1373–1374 juni (1974), no. X301; DN 4 (1858), no. 363; DN 19 (1910–1914), no. 390.   Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Textile Trade of Poland in the Middle Ages,” in Harte and Ponting, Cloth and Clothing, 254.   Says, which were produced in the Low Countries and France, were worsted-type fabrics, made from the longer wool fibres and with a weaving structure clearly visible in the finished product; while kersey, which originally came from the Suffolk village with that name but later was also made in other parts of England and exported to many regions of Europe, was a woollen fabric, though narrower and obviously not of the same quality as the finer woollens. John H. Munro, “Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology, and Industrial Organisation, c. 800–1500” and “Medieval Woollens: The Western European Woollen Industries and Their Struggles for International Markets, c. 1000–1500,” both in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1:182–85, 244. D. C. Coleman, The Economy of England, 1450–1750 (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 53–54 and 76–77.

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Eva I. Andersson Table 5.1: Prices for fabrics in Kopparberget, Sweden, 1347 Fabric

Price per ell

From Ypres

4 öre

From Courtrai

4 öre

From Poperinge

3 öre

From Toruń

2⅓ öre

Say or silfar

2 öre

Good kersey

1 1/16 öre

From Mark

1 öre

Good vadmal

⅔ öre

Repæ [ribbed?] linen

½ öre

Linen

2 penningar

Note: One öre (24 penningar) was worth about 5 or 6 grams of silver. As a comparison, the wage for a day’s unqualified work was a few years later stipulated to be 20 penningar, while a cow ready for slaughtering was worth 12 öre. Source: SD 5, 1341–1347 (1858–65), no. 4142.

table 5.1), the most expensive materials were woollens from Ypres and Courtrai, followed by those from Poperinge. Then come wool fabric from Toruń; say; and silfar, which is an unknown type of fabric, but which is equated with say and thus ought to be a similar type of fabric. Five types of fabric named after their place of origin are found in the price regulation, and it is worth noting that four of them are the most expensive materials mentioned. When only the origin of the fabric is mentioned, I have chosen to define fabrics from Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and England as woollens, while those from areas in present-day Germany and Poland are assumed to be lighter wool fabrics.10 The most common of the lighter wool fabrics in Swedish and Norwegian documents is say, which also is mentioned in the price regulation. According to that, say should cost half as much as woollens from the more exclusive towns of Ypres and Courtrai and two-thirds of woollens from Poperinge, a town that belongs to the “new” producers of woollens, which arose in the fourteenth century.11 The prices of the lighter wool fabrics varied, but they were never as expensive as woollens. Other lighter wool fabrics mentioned   Stella Mary Newton’s assumption that it is sealskin has no foundation in the sources. Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 1980), 98. 10 Whether they were made from worsted yarn, woollen yarn, or a mix of both cannot always be deduced, hence the broad category. 11 John H. Munro, “Industrial Transformations in the North-West European Textile Trades, c. 1290–c. 1340: Economic Progress or Economic Crisis?” in Before the Black Death: Studies in the “Crisis” of the Early Fourteenth Century, ed. Bruce M. S. Campbell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 114–15.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway Table 5.2: Sources of imported woollens, in order of frequency of references in documents Region

Towns named

Flemish woollens

Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Courtrai, Arras, Wervik, Comines, Poperinge

Brabantine woollens

Nivelles

Netherlandish woollens

Leiden, Deventer, Amsterdam

English woollens

London

in the documents are silfar, sarduk, and foderduk, as well as the fabrics imported from German and Polish towns. Sarduk was a fabric with a linen warp and wool weft, and while we have no exact definition of the term foderduk, the meaning of the word is clear: fabric intended for lining. This does not mean that it was exclusively used for linings; the lighter wool fabrics appear to have been used both as main fabric and as linings. Just like woollens, the lighter wool fabrics came in different colours. In the Swedish and Norwegian documents we find red, black, blue, green, and grey; the latter was probably undyed, in the natural colour of the sheep. As noted above, wool fabric was imported from Flanders, Brabant, Holland, England, and areas in present-day Germany and Poland. The towns mentioned in the documents are Amsterdam, Arras, Bruges, Comines, Courtrai, Deventer, Ghent, Leiden, London, Lübeck, Malbork (German: Marienburg), Nivelles, Poperinge, Toruń (German: Thorn), Wervik, and Ypres (see table 5.2). These are mainly towns in the Low Countries, which was the most important cloth-producing region in the Middle Ages, though England became gradually more important toward the end of the period. The Flemish textile industry reached its zenith at the end of the thirteenth century, though the output of Ypres, for example, continued to increase during the first decade of the next century. Ghent was the dominating Flemish textile town throughout the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century; for instance, the town managed to get a ban on the production of woollens within an eight-kilometre radius around the town. This meant that the towns and villages around Ghent could produce only cheaper wool fabrics, such as says or mixed fabrics with warp from worsted yarn, flax, or hemp.12 From the 1330s onward, competition increased within Flanders, and the three great textile towns—Bruges, Ypres, and Ghent—tried in vain to resist the competition from the so-called nouvelles draperies, where Poperinge, Wervik, Diksmuide, Courtrai, Comines, Menen, and later, Neuve-Eglise and Armentières were the most important.13 Of these, as can be seen above, Poperinge, Wervik, Courtrai, and Comines are represented in Swedish and Norwegian sources. Of the “old” textile towns, Ghent is dominant in the documents, mentioned six times more frequently than Ypres. The 12 David Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London: Longman, 1992), 202–7. 13 Munro, “Industrial Transformations,” 114–15.

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Eva I. Andersson changing role of Ghent in the Flemish economy is, however, seen also in the Swedish and Norwegian sources, where the woollens from Ghent disappear after 1334. Both Ypres and Bruges are found later: woollens from Bruges up to the beginning of the fifteenth century, and Ypres woollens throughout the Middle Ages. Still, neither of these two towns belongs to the most frequently mentioned in the sources, and they become rarer with the progress of time. Woollens from England, which are the most common woollens in Norwegian documents, show the opposite trend and increase their share throughout the Middle Ages. Textiles from the West Prussian towns Malbork and Toruń mainly occur in documents from the period after the Black Death. The textile production in this area was mainly directed toward cheaper wool fabric, both for the regional market and for export, for example to Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Russia, and apparently also to Sweden.14 These fabrics are not found in the Norwegian sources, but that does not have to mean that they were not exported there; information about origin is much rarer in the Norwegian documents than in the Swedish ones. SCANDINAVIAN WOOL TEXTILES

The word vadmal is still used in Swedish, with the specific meaning of a fulled, but not shorn, wool fabric. In the Middle Ages the definition was based not primarily on quality, but on origin, and thus vadmal could probably also mean unfulled wool fabric as long as it was made in the Nordic countries. In the Latin sources, which are the majority among the documents from Sweden, the word burello, meaning coarse fabric, is used for the same material. In medieval Iceland, which for much of the Middle Ages was a part of Norway, vadmal was one of the most important economic resources and was also used as the main standard of value.15 In Sweden it did not have the same important economic role, but we find it in the 1347 price regulation shown above, where good vadmal should cost ⅔ öre per ell. Even if the value of the öre varies, the relation between the cheapest woollen, which cost 3 öre per ell, and the price of vadmal shows that there was a significant difference in value. Vadmal was narrower than the imported woollens, but it was also made from wool of lesser quality and without the repeated shearings and expensive dyeing that characterized the finest imported woollens. However, vadmal was also cheaper than kerseys and says, which probably were of a more similar quality. Vadmal is found 40 times in the studied documents, usually in the form of tunics, cloaks, and hose. In this category I also put Icelandic hafnarvaðar, a finer type of vadmal, which can be found in a few Norwegian documents. Colour is never given in the wills and other documents, but the rule for the Birgittine Order from the mid-

14 Wyrozumski, “Textile Trade of Poland.” 15 Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 147–49.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway fourteenth century mentions grey and white vadmal, probably the natural colours of the wool.16 PLANT FIBRES

The plant fibres that can be found in written sources from Sweden and Norway in the Middle Ages are flax, hemp, and cotton. Both flax and hemp were grown in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, while cotton, which is mentioned only once—in a royal inventory from 1365—was imported from the Mediterranean. Clothing from linen (flax) is probably underrepresented in the sources compared to how widely it was used, since its main use was for undergarments, which had small economic value and thus seldom occur in wills and bills of sale. Sheets and other household linens are more common in the sources (though not always made of flax or hemp; there were also bedsheets of wool), but these fall outside the scope of my research. Linen as material in clothes is mentioned only eleven times in the 315 documents used in my survey. Flax was grown and made into linen fabric in the Nordic countries, both for the household’s own consumption and for sale to a regional or national market. Most of the linen sold was probably of native origin, but since the price regulation describes one type of linen tabby as “Swedish,” some import of linen seems to have taken place. This import increased during the sixteenth century, when fashion decreed that the previously hidden underwear should be visible at the neck and wrists. It then became more important to have clean underwear, and people acquired more shirts and smocks.17 Hemp was used during the Middle Ages for underwear in much the same way as flax, but is not specifically mentioned in the documents used in the survey.18 Other uses for hemp were in tents and as linings in garments. SILK

To this category belongs fabric described as sericum, the Latin word for silk; silke, the Norse equivalent; cendal, a type of thin silk taffeta; velvet; and baldakin and samite, both silks with complicated pattern weaves. Cendal occurs only once, and it is likely that most scribes preferred one of the two more general terms. The words sericum and silke say nothing about weave or quality, and silk of this nondescript variety is found

16 St. Bridget of Sweden, Regula Salvatoris, ed. Sten Eklund. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftssällskapet, ser. 2, 8:1 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1975), 147. 17 Frederik Troels-Lund, Dagligt liv i Norden på 1500-talet, vol. 4, Dräkt och smycken (Stockholm: ­Bonnier, 1940), 124. 18 DN 19 (1910–1914), no. 390; Ludvig Holm-Olsen, ed., Konungs skuggsiá (Oslo: Norsk historisk ­kjeldeskrift-institutt 1983), 45.

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Eva I. Andersson mainly as linings, but also as tunics and cloaks. It is likely that in most cases it was a plain tabby or twill weave. The colours given for silk fabric are red, green, and blue. Striped silk is mentioned in a mid-fourteenth-century inventory of the belongings of King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden (and at times of Norway) and Queen Blanche. Also in this inventory is the only reference to velvet where it is not explicitly said to be a church vestment: one piece of blue and two pieces of striped velvet.19 However, clothing made from the more luxurious silk materials, such as velvet, samite, and baldakin, were probably very rare, even among the high nobility. FURS AND LEATHER

Medieval clothing was often lined with fur. In the medieval documents from Norway and Sweden, more than half of the garments mentioned are lined in fur. Fur linings were worn not only for warmth, but also for reasons of fashion—summer clothing as well as winter garments could be lined with fur.20 Fur coats with the fur on the outside were worn in winter. Which furs were used depended on the wearer’s wealth and social status and on fashion. Most common in the documents are vair, marten, and ermine, but the very exclusive sable can also be found. There are single occurrences of linings in sheepskin, reindeer, fox, polecat, and wolf as well, and several garments where the lining is described only as “fur.” Vair Vair is the name for the winter fur of the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), which turns more or less grey in the winter. The farther north, the greyer and thicker it gets, and furs from the North were exported all over Western Europe. The most exclusive was miniver, consisting of vair furs trimmed so that only the white bellies and some grey around them remained. The word miniver comes from the Latin minuto vario. When the grey backs were used, it was called grosso vario, or some form of the word gris (“grey”).21 Vair is the most common fur in the documents examined and is found 99 times in references to clothing. Apart from that, vair furs also occur as timbers of pelts (a timber is usually 40 pelts). Vair is common in Norwegian and Swedish medieval art, for example on the early-fourteenth-century altar frontal in Nes Church in Norway, where all but one of the cloaks depicted are lined with vair. St. Olaf, the patron saint 19 DN 3 (1855), no. 344. 20 One example can be found in the French thirteenth-century romance Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole: “Un sorcot qui fleroit la graine / qui fu fez en cele semaine / descarlate et de vairs entiers / … com ci a / biausorcot et net poreste” [a tunic, which still smelled of scarlet dye, and had been made the week before of fine cloth and whole squirrel furs. “ … That’s a nice summer tunic!”]. Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or of Guillaume de Dole (Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole), ed. and trans. Regina Psaki (New York: Garland, 1995), lines 1816–18, 1823–24. 21 Newton, Black Prince, 66.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway

Fig. 5.1: Aristocratic man wearing vair garment. Fragment showing the month of April, from the Baldishol Tapestry, Hedmark, Norway, twelfth century (Oslo, Norway, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, no. OK-02862), detail. Photo: Ørnelund, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, by permission.

of Norway, who is always depicted wearing aristocratic dress, very often wears a cloak or mantle lined with vair.22 On the Baldishol Tapestry (see fig. 5.1), a twelfth-century

22 Martin Blindheim, Gothic Painted Wooden Sculpture in Norway 1220–1350 (Oslo: Messel Forlag, 2004), 63, 66, 70.

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Eva I. Andersson textile from Norway that shows aristocratic pursuits during the months of the year, we can see a whole garment in vair, with the fur on the outside. This time the fur consists of the grey backs, the grosso vario, with only a small rim of white around the edges of each skin. Even though miniver was the most exclusive, grosso vario was also a prized fur. This is shown not only by the nobleman on the Baldishol Tapestry, but also by a suit of clothes lined with gros vair in Isabellea de Bruce’s trousseau.23 The summer and autumn furs of the red squirrel were also used, but these were thinner and had a reddish colour and did not have the same status. The autumn fur was called bissis or bishe and is found in an English document listing gifts to the Norwegian king’s emissaries, but not in documents of Swedish or Norwegian origin, indicating perhaps that it was rare in these countries.24 Marten The marten (Martes martes) has a dark and thick fur which was commonly used in linings, but also in fur coats. Marten furs are also found as pelts in wills or as payment. In all, marten occurs 34 times in the documents. Ermine In Norwegian documents, ermine (the fur from Mustela erminea) is referred to as vitskinn (“white fur”); it is the second most common fur, after vair. In Sweden and in both countries put together, it is the third most common of the furs, marten being the second. Unlike the other two, ermine is mentioned only as linings, never as pelts. Ermine is found in Scandinavian art much less frequently than vair, but can for example be seen on the Madonna in Røldal church in Norway, who wears a mantle with ermine.25 Sable Sable (Martes zibellina) is a Siberian animal of the marten family with a very valuable fur. Sable is found in Norwegian documents, but not Swedish ones, and even there it is rare: It is mentioned only five times, all occurrences before 1390, most before 1340. The disappearance of this most prized fur probably reflects the disastrous effect of the Black Death on Norwegian society and its nobility. Sable, quite naturally, always occurs together with other expensive materials, such as scarlet and vair. In four of the five cases it is in women’s clothing.26

23 DN 19 (1910–1914), no. 390. 24 Newton, Black Prince, 66; DN 19 (1910–1914), no. 156. 25 Henrik von Achen, Norske frontaler fra middelalderen i Bergen museum (Norwegian Medieval Altar Frontals in Bergen Museum) (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen & Bergen Museum, 1996), 92. 26 DN 2 (1852), no. 165; DN 4 (1858), nos. 217 and 363; DN 5 (1861), no. 69.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway Leather and skinn Some garments in the documents are also said to be made of leather or of skinn. The latter is a problematic word, since it can mean both fur and leather. Unless it is specified, such as gråskinn (“vair”) or vitskinn (“ermine”), one cannot know if skinn refers to fur or leather. Hose made from skinn, which are found in a few documents, were most probably made from leather. This is one of the approved materials for hose in the thirteenth-century Norwegian King’s Mirror (the others were scarlet or brown woollen cloth).27 Two tunics made from skinn and a cloak from the same material are also found in documents from the fourteenth century, and here we cannot know if they were made from fur or leather.28 CHANGES OVER TIME

Changes in the kinds of materials found in the documents may reflect both real changes in the choice of materials for clothes and changes in the practices of what is listed in wills; we definitely see a change of the latter kind in the fifteenth century, where references to clothing and other loose property became increasingly rare in the wills. Differences can also, of course, be a reflection of which documents happened to be preserved. To avoid as far as possible the results being affected by chance variations in the composition of the source material, this quantitative study uses fairly long time periods and treats Norway and Sweden as one. This way the results are based on a considerable number of documents, making it possible to draw more general conclusions and decreasing the impact of chance variations. The differences that do exist between the two countries will be discussed later. The three time periods I used for my analyses (1200–1339, 1340–89, and 1390–1500) are not of the same length. They are constructed partly to get a more even distribution of the documents over the examined duration, since most of the texts derive from roughly 1320 to 1370, and also to correspond to the larger changes in fashion during the High and Late Middle Ages.29 As figure 5.2 shows, different types of wool fabric are by far the most common. This is the expected result; linen was mainly used for underwear, which is seldom found in the sources, and silk was an expensive material which was rarely used as the main fabric in garments. As a group, wool fabrics make up 89 percent of materials mentioned in 1200–1339, 80 percent in 1340–89, and 89 percent again in 1390–1500. Thus for the whole period, over 80 percent of the noted clothing materials are wool fabrics of some kind. Leaving aside linings, underwear, and kerchiefs and looking only 27 Holm-Olsen, Konungs Skuggsía, 45. 28 DN 2 (1852), no. 305; DN 4 (1858), no. 564; SD 9, 1366–1370 (1970–2000), no. 7753. 29 This article is, as previously stated, based on my dissertation where the same time periods are used throughout to make it practical to compare results. The division according to larger fashion changes may thus not be the most obvious one when studying the materials in the written sources, but makes sense when seen in the larger context.

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Eva I. Andersson 100% 90% 80%

"Skinn” (fur or leather) Silk

70%

Linen (flax)

60%

Native wool fabric

50%

Scarlet

Lighter wool fabrics English woollens

40%

Netherlandish woollens Brabantine woollens

30%

Flemish woollens Woollens, no origin given

20% 10% 0% 1200–1339

1340–1389

1390–1500

Fig. 5.2: References to main materials for clothing in Norway and Sweden, by period, as percentages of the total. Figures 5.2–5.7 by author based on data from documents in Diplomatarium Norvegicum and Svenskt Diplomatarium.

at the larger garments, wool makes up very close to 100 percent, with exceptions being a few garments from fur or leather and a tunic and three cloaks from silk. Of the wool fabrics, and thus of all fabrics mentioned, imported woollens make up the main part—71 percent in 1200–1339, 62 percent in 1340–89, and 56 percent in 1390–1500. Most of the time the material is described only as “woollen cloth,” but when the origin is given, it is mainly from Flanders or Brabant. Scarlet was an exclusive form of woollen, and it too was in all likelihood made in Flanders or Brabant, at least in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The percentage of Flemish woollens and of scarlet decreases in the last period, while unspecified woollens and cheaper and lighter wool fabrics increase their share. Likewise Netherlandish and English woollens, which had lower status than their Flemish counterparts, increase. From the fifteenth century onward, woollens from these areas gained in status and earned a more prominent role in international trade.30 In addition to the differences between Flemish woollens and those from other countries, there were differences among the Flemish towns. Flemish woollens were not all the same. In that category we find products of both the old textile towns and the new, so-called nouvelles draperies, which did not have the same prestige. Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and Arras belong to the first category, while Wervik, Comines, and Poperinge are examples of the new towns that are found in the sources.31 The change 30 Munro, “Industrial Transformations,” 133–37. 31 Ibid., 114–15.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway 50 45 40 35 30 "Old" textile-producing towns

25

"New" textile-producing towns

20 15 10 5 0 1200–1339

1340–1389

1390–1500

Fig. 5.3: Numbers of references to sources of Flemish woollens from “old” and “new” textileproducing towns, by period.

from the most exclusive materials to materials with somewhat lesser status could thus be even larger than what is seen in figure 5.2. In figure 5.3, the Flemish towns are divided between “old” and “new” towns. In 1200–1339, the old prestigious textile towns dominate in the documents, but during the second half of the fourteenth century they are surpassed by the new towns, which sold woollens at a lower price, but also with lesser status. The trend that could be seen in figure 5.2 is thus reinforced by the results seen in figure 5.3. In addition, the change can be already seen in the middle period. While this change could be caused by a change in the composition of the sources regarding social class, this appears not to be the case. Most of the documents from all three periods emanate from the upper strata of society: the secular nobility and men of the church. Within those groups there were of course large differences in status and wealth; a bishop, for example, cannot be compared with a rural parish priest. Still, this variation is found in all three periods, and there is nothing that suggests that the composition of the sources changed significantly in regard to which social groups were represented. From the fifteenth century a few burghers occur in the sources, but they are so few that the general result is not affected. Servants were also sometimes bequeathed clothing, and in those wills it is common that a great many servants get clothing which is to be made up from the same materials, which means that they have a large impact in the statistical data. From 1329, for example, the will of the nobleman

111

Eva I. Andersson Magnus Niclesson and his wife Ingrid gives tunics and cloaks in imported wool fabric from Nivelles in Brabant to thirteen servants, tunics only to fifteen, and cloaks to two.32 The total number of entries for woollens from Nivelles in the 1200–1339 period is 40, so this will is the source for a large part of the entries with Brabantine woollens in this period. Yet even though the givers are the same, the fact remains that thirty men owned clothes in this material. These wills with bequests of clothing to servants are all from the first period in the analysis and thus cannot be the reason for the increase of somewhat cheaper materials in the last period (and to some extent in the middle period). The proportion of garments either belonging to or intended for the lower social strata is actually larger in the first period than in the other periods. The change we can see in the materials therefore in all likelihood reflects an actual change in consumption within the group that created most of the source material: the nobility. Among the cheaper wool fabrics, we find fabric from the duchy of Mark in Westphalia during the first half of the fourteenth century, but why it disappears after 1359 is hard to tell. Fabrics from West Prussia are found already in the 1340s, in the form of fabric from the (now) Polish town of Toruń, but do not become common until the fifteenth century, and then are from Malbork. It is hard to tell if there was a difference in price or quality between fabrics from Toruń and Malbork, but from the 1347 price regulation from Kopparberget, mentioned above, we can at least see that fabric from Toruń, called thornist, was a finer material than fabric from the duchy of Mark, since thornist cost 2⅓ öre per ell and marknist 1 öre per ell. The shares of both linen and the homespun vadmal are fairly constant, while silk becomes much rarer in the third period. Most of the silk can be found in the middle period, but the figure for this period reflects a royal inventory from 1340, which contains several costly silk fabrics. If that document is omitted, the share is roughly the same as in the earliest period.33 Figure 5.4 shows the distribution of furs in garments in the first two periods. In 1200–1339, fur is mentioned 93 times in connection with clothing, while the 1340–89 period only has 50 occurences. Fur in clothing is mentioned only four times in 1390–1500, which is why this period is left out of figure 5.4. Those four garments are said to be lined with “fur,” fox, otter, and polecat respectively; interestingly, none of these are the furs popular from earlier periods. Since the evidence consists of only four garments, this may be due to chance. In the magistrate’s records from the town of Arboga, which date from the second half of the fifteenth century, vair is still the most common fur. Since there is no sign in other sources, nor internationally, that fur linings were no longer used, it is clear that the lack of references in the third period reflects changing habits in how much information was given about garments in wills and other documents: With fewer garments (and other personal belongings) listed in this period, the need for more detailed descriptions diminishes. This means that we cannot say if the trend toward cheaper materials also included the choice of furs.

32 SD 4, 1327–1340 (1853), no. 2744. 33 DN 3 (1855), no. 202.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway 100% 90% 80% 70% 60%

"Fur" Ermine

50%

Marten Vair

40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1200–1339 (n=93)

1340–1389 (n=50)

Fig. 5.4: Furs mentioned five times or more for use in garments, 1200–1389, as percentages of the total.

Marten and ermine increase their shares somewhat during the second half of the fourteenth century, while vair decreases. The decline in the popularity of vair is in accordance with international fashion trends from the last decades of the fourteenth century and onward, when darker, thicker furs like marten and sable were increasingly preferred over vair. Of course vair was still used, but it was now a fur for the middle class and not the nobility. In the fifteenth century, ermine also became rarer in European fashion,34 but because so few furs are mentioned in Swedish and Norwegian sources from this period, changes cannot be proved with any certainty. However, that vair is the most common fur in the fifteenth-century magistrate’s records from Arboga may be an indication of the same development as in the rest of Europe: that vair increasingly became the fur of the middle class, not the nobility.35 In addition to the furs mentioned in the figure, sable, reindeer skin, fox, polecat, otter, sheepskin, and wolf skin are mentioned in the sources. Sable is found only in Norwegian documents, mainly from the earliest period, and not as linings but as trimmings on garments lined in other furs, usually vair.36

34 Elspeth M. Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (London: London Record Society, 1966), 134–42. 35 Erik Noreen and Torsten Wennström, eds., Arboga stads tänkebok, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftssällskapet 53, vols. 1–3 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1935–50), nos. 1/4 1465, 10/5 1462, 4/7 1470, 18/11 1472, 16/10 1486, and 7/11 1496. Apart from vair, polecat, fox, and otter fur are found as linings for clothing. 36 DN 2 (1852), no. 165; DN 4 (1858), nos. 217 and 363; DN 5 (1861), no. 69.

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Eva I. Andersson REGIONAL DIFFERENCES

Generally in this article (and the dissertation it is based on), Norway and Sweden are treated as one. The reason for this is that there were very few differences in dress between the countries. The same garment terms were used in written sources, and dress is depicted in the same way in art from the period and region.37 There are, however, differences in how much and what information the sources give about the clothes. The information about materials is richer in Swedish documents than in the Norwegian ones, especially regarding the origin of the imported woollens. Other materials, such as furs and less common textile materials such as linen or silk, are mentioned as often in Norwegian as in Swedish documents. Since there are no Swedish wills containing clothing dated after 1420, and very few other documents which mention fabric intended for clothing, the Norwegian material naturally dominates in the 1390–1500 period (80 against 26); but for the other periods the situation is the reverse. For 1200–1339, material is noted 62 times in Norwegian sources and 127 in the Swedish ones, while for 1340–89, the figures are more equal: 75 and 94. Despite these circumstances, it is possible to detect some clear differences between the two kingdoms. These are illustrated in figure 5.5, which shows textile materials in documents from Sweden and Norway. (All fine woollens, regardless of origin, including scarlet, have been put in one category.) A few differences between the countries are easily spotted. In both countries woollens are the most common material. However, with the exception of the period 1390–1500, where the Swedish source material is very scant, the share of imported woollens is much larger in Sweden than in Norway. In 1200–1339, we find more homespun as well as cheaper imported wool fabrics in the Norwegian sources compared to the Swedish ones. Silk is, on the other hand, much more common in Norwegian documents. In 1340–89, it is instead the respective share of imported woollens and silk that differ between the two countries, while the shares of plant fibres and native woollen fabric are identical. The 1390–1500 period is, as stated above, special—the Swedish results are based on only 26 garments or pieces of fabric. It is thus impossible to draw any conclusions about the regional distribution of types of fabric in the fifteenth century. It also has to be stressed that for the whole period, the sources are not precise enough to say anything with absolute certainty concerning regional differences, except that imported woollens were relatively more common in Sweden than in Norway, while the opposite is true for silk clothing.

37 There is also the complication of the modern national borders not being the same as the medieval ones—medieval Sweden, for example, included Finland, but not the southern provinces of Scania, Blekinge, and Halland, which belonged to Denmark, or the western and northwestern provinces of Bohuslän and Jämtland, which belonged to Norway. To Norway also belonged the Faroe Islands, the Orkney Islands, Iceland, and Greenland in the early Middle Ages and parts of the High Middle Ages. The borders were changeable, and during most of the fifteenth century, the three Nordic kingdoms—Sweden, Norway and Denmark—were united under one ruler.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway 100% 90% 80% 70% Silk

60%

Textiles from plant fibres Native wool fabric

50%

Lighter imported wool fabric

40%

Imported woollens

30% 20% 10% 0% 1200–1339 1200–1339 1340–1389 1340–1389 1390–1500 1390–1500 Sweden Norway Sweden Norway Sweden Norway (n=26) (n=80) (n=94) (n=75) (n=127) (n=62)

Fig. 5.5: Materials mentioned for clothing and fabric, by country and period, as percentages of the total.

120

100

80 Sweden

60

Norway

40

20

0 Flemish woollens

Brabantine woollens

Netherlandish woollens

English woollens

Wool fabric from Germany

Wool fabric from Poland

Fig. 5.6: Numbers of references to specific places of origin for imported wool fabrics in Sweden and Norway, 1200–1500.

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Eva I. Andersson Figure 5.6 shows the origins of imported wool fabric in Sweden and Norway respectively. This figure shows the exact number of entries for each type of fabric, not the percentage of a whole; we can clearly see that Norwegian documents give much less information about the origin of the fabric used for clothes. Here there are more obvious differences than in the previous figure: In the Swedish documents, we find fabric from Flanders, Brabant, and present-day Germany and Poland, and in the Norwegian documents we find fabric from Flanders, England, the Netherlands (not exactly the same as the modern state with that name), and present-day Germany. What can not be seen is that up to 1370, the only place of origin given in Norwegian documents is England. The first time that Flemish woollens occur in a Norwegian document is in a letter to King Håkon VI in 1371, and Netherlandish woollens are not mentioned until 1429.38 These differences are not easy to interpret. There is nothing that suggests that they are due to a difference in the social background of the issuers of the documents. It is likewise not likely that the reason the Norwegian nobility did not buy the more exclusive Flemish woollens was that they could not afford them; the Norwegian documents, for example, have a much higher percentage of both silk and scarlet, the latter very likely from Flanders, than their Swedish counterparts. This seems to indicate that the Norwegian nobility bought Flemish woollens when they wanted the very finest, i.e. scarlet, but when buying woollens of which the price and status were below the luxurious scarlet they preferred the cheaper English woollens to the ones from the Low Countries. One possible explanation for this is that Sweden and Norway had their primary trade exchange with different areas. The Norwegian political ties with the British Isles in and before the Middle Ages are well known, and it is only reasonable that they would also affect economic relations.39 The (mainly) German Hanseatic League was, however, the most important intermediary of trade goods for the whole region. Trade contacts or lack thereof can thus maybe explain the absence of English woollens in the Swedish wills, but not the fact that Flemish and Brabantine woollens are absent in Norwegian documents at the time when they were the most popular in the rest of Europe. Given that the origin for the clothing materials is more seldom given in Norwegian documents than in Swedish ones, any conclusions can only be tentative. In addition, Norway and Sweden differ in that the Swedish documents more often give the main fabric of the garments in question, while the Norwegian descriptions more commonly specify only the garment’s colour and lining material. This might to some degree explain the higher number of silk fabrics mentioned in Norwegian

38 DN 3 (1855), no. 202; DN 5 (1861), nos. 331 and 586; DN 6 (1864), no. 278. Later in the fifteenth century and in the sixteenth century, there is evidence of Dutch traders sailing to Norway, exchanging cloth for timber, hides, etc. Bjørn Poulsen, “Trade and Consumption among Late Medieval and Early Modern Danish Peasants,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 52, no. 1 (2004): 65. 39 Knut Helle, “Growing Inter-Scandinavian Entanglement,” in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, ed. Knut Helle, vol. 1, Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 411–12.

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Materials in Sweden and Norway documents, since silk was used primarily for linings. There are, however, also garments where silk is the main fabric in Norwegian documents.40 In the choice of furs there is also a visible difference. Figure 5.7 shows the percentage of the various furs by country for the whole period 1200–1500. The share held by vair is roughly equal for both countries: about half of all fur mentioned in connection with clothing is vair. The share for the category “fur” (that is, when the type of fur is not specified) is also the same. The differences that can be seen are regarding the use of ermine and marten, where the Swedish documents show a much larger percentage of marten and a much smaller percentage of ermine than Norway. This could actually be explained partially by geography: The marten lives in forests, while the ermine prefers alpine terrain. Alpine terrain is more common in Norway and also much closer to human settlements than it is in Sweden. Sweden, on the contrary, had and still has more forest than Norway, which would be favourable for the hunting and use of marten. These differences in geography affect the availability of the furs in question, but availability of course rarely rules fashion, as can be seen in the popularity of, for example, ermine and sable in European fashion. The sources could therefore simply reflect differences in taste, but since dress was very similar in Sweden and Norway otherwise, it is tempting to make the connection. 100% 90% 80% 70%

Reindeer skin "Fur"

60%

Wolfskin Sheepskin

50%

Sable Ermine

40%

Marten Vair

30% 20% 10% 0% Norway (n=70)

Sweden (n=85)

Fig. 5.7: Furs mentioned for use in garments, 1200–1500, by country, as percentages of the total.

40

DN 4 (1858), nos. 363 and 457; DN 12 (1888), no. 99.

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Eva I. Andersson SEX DIFFERENCES

Men’s and women’s clothes in the documents were in general made from the same materials, though the cheaper materials were mainly used for men’s clothing. This is probably not a reflection of actual differences in manners of dress, but a consequence of the fact that fewer women than men from the lower social strata are represented in the sources. Clothes made from domestic wool fabric and cheaper imports are mostly found in wills where there are instructions that new garments are to be made up for servants; female servants are not only more unusual in the documents, but also do not get gifts of clothing to be made up for them. If we exclude the servants and concentrate on the references to the nobility, both genders seem to wear the same types of fabrics, with the same types of fur and other linings and in the same colours. SOCIAL DIFFERENCES

As stated above, the majority of the information concerning medieval dress stems from the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy. Exceptions to this include wills made by rural parish priests and burghers as well as bills of sale, a type of document in which a broader social group is represented. The latter, however, contain so few details about clothing that they cannot be used alone for studying the dress of the lower estates. However, by studying not only the donors but also the recipients of gifts in wills, we are able to get more information about which garments were worn by the lower estates and from which materials they were made. It was common both to will one’s own clothing to servants and to instruct in one’s will that clothing should be made up for them. It is likely in the latter case that these new clothes were of the same kind as those that were part of the servants’ livery. Garments specified to be made for servants were tunics, cloaks, hoods, and underwear. Not every will mentions all of these; the most common combinations are a tunic, a cloak and a hood; and a tunic and a cloak. The variation among wills is small, so the composition of a servant’s dress appears to have been relatively constant. These garments, except for underwear, are also the ones most frequently mentioned in reference to all levels of society, which leads to the conclusion that the composition of dress did not differ much among the estates. The main difference instead is in the kind of materials the garments were made of. The material of servants’ clothing was usually—and maybe surprisingly—woollens from Brabant or one of the less prestigious textile towns in Flanders. Domestic wool fabric also occurs, but is not common. The reason for this may be both that the persons who willed clothing to their servants were part of the richer strata of the nobility (after all, they had their own gardeners and cooks), and that bequests like this were in all likelihood seen as benefitting the soul of the deceased. For most servants, like most of the population, the imported woollens, even if not from the most prestigious towns, were of course well out of reach. 118

Materials in Sweden and Norway It is harder to say something about the dress of the urban population than about the servants’, since so few documents mention clothes belonging to this group. However, wills issued by burghers and appraisals of items of clothing undertaken by the town council of the Swedish town Arboga, or their appointees, suggest that the urban population at least in Sweden used mainly woollens from Holland and wool fabric from West Prussia, i.e., materials with somewhat lower status. Use of fur linings was common in this group, as with the nobility, but cheaper furs, or furs no longer fashionable, are dominant in the sources. For example, vair is common in the second part of the fifteenth century, when the nobility preferred darker, thicker furs such as marten. A large group, in fact the largest group in medieval society, whose clothing we unfortunately can say very little about, was the peasantry. For Denmark, where the sources are richer, Bjørn Poulsen has shown that peasants not only wore but also traded in imported woollens in the later Middle Ages and early modern era.41 Unfortunately the consumption of textiles in medieval Sweden and Norway by farmers and their families is very rarely seen in the sources. The exception is when peasant tenants receive bequests of fabric from their landlords, but those examples are very few. They do seem to show that the peasant tenants used the same types of fabric as the servants, but that may, of course, be only because the donors are the same. There is no evidence from the Middle Ages indicating that the higher estates in Sweden and Norway tried to stop the lower estates from dressing according to fashion or in exclusive materials, as one can see in sumptuary legislation from other European countries. The Swedish and Norwegian medieval sumptuary legislation lacks regulations according to estate. The arguments put forward in these decrees are instead primarily of economic nature; the goal was to avoid competition among the members of the nobility, thus protecting both their own and the country’s economy.42 One reason for this may of course be that the middle classes in these largely rural countries were small and unlikely to compete with the nobility in the consumption of textiles and clothing. SUMMARY

The most common material for clothes in the Middle Ages in Sweden and Norway was some kind of wool fabric, usually what was known as kläde, a word that strictly speaking meant just an imported wool fabric, but which in most cases was a woollen. The imported woollens mentioned in Swedish documents usually had their origin in Flanders or Brabant. English woollens are more common in Norwegian sources, which, however, only rarely mention the origin. Cheaper, lighter wool fabrics were also imported, for example from Prussia and Westphalia in present-day Poland and Germany respectively. Domestic wool fabric is also found in the documents and ­becomes more

41 Poulsen, “Trade and Consumption,” 61–68. 42 The other purpose was to make distinctions between honourable and “loose” women.

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Eva I. Andersson frequent with time. Over all, the cheaper materials increase at the expense of the more costly in the documents as we enter the fifteenth century. Other textile materials, such as linen and silk, are also mentioned in the documents, linen usually in the form of undergarments and silk mainly as linings, though in three cases as the main material in luxurious cloaks and once in a tunic. Clothing could also be made from leather, but there are few examples in the sources, including hose and possibly a few tunics, though the multivalent nature of the word skinn, which can mean both fur and leather, makes the latter uncertain. Clothes were commonly fur-lined, and fur coats were also used. The most common fur was vair, but ermine and marten are mentioned frequently in the documents as well. A difference between Norway and Sweden is that ermine is much more common in Norwegian documents, while the reverse is true for marten. This could possibly be explained by geographical differences and, thereby, availability of different types of fur. Men’s and women’s clothes were in general made from the same materials, though women’s clothing is rarely said to be made from cheaper materials. This is, however, likely to be a consequence of the fact that fewer women than men from the lower social strata are represented in the sources. As for the differences between classes, the biggest difference between the clothing of the nobility and that of the lower estates was the materials from which they were made, while the names of garments appear to be the same. It was, however, not unusual to will clothes and fabric to servants and other inferiors, which means that even high-status materials could reach peasant tenants and servants.

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The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist Writers John Block Friedman

The subject of the present study is dagging—ornamenting fabric edges by snipping with shears or scissors—as a common feature of male and female attire in the late Middle Ages. To judge by the evidence of medieval manuscript painting and the archaeological remains of dagged clothing, this form of decoration was very popular among the upper and, later, the lower classes in the mid-fourteenth through the late fifteenth centuries, though the actual historical range of the practice is considerably wider. Dagging is depicted in twelfth-century manuscript painting and in Late Antique sculpture, for example, on a bronze statuette of a female mime from Syria made about the year 200, now in the Princeton University Art Museum (fig. 6.1), on which the costume, as Ruth Mellinkoff notes, “is a stunning example of dagging: pointed scallops are everywhere.” As this fashion feature became widespread among all levels of society, it excited the scorn of moralists both for being wasteful of fabric and for signifying unmerited higher status when used in the dress of the lower and middle classes, or so it was claimed. In certain cases, moreover, manuscript artists and designers associated ­dagging with the

I am grateful to Thelma Fenster, Kristen Figg, Sarah-Grace Heller, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Sarah Peverley, Kathleen L. Scott, and Melanie Schuessler for advice and information.    Shears had been available since prehistory. Two-piece scissors came into general use about 1300. See Sarah Thursfield, “Sewing: cutting and construction” in Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 503–8, at 504.    See the examples of dagging in Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150–c.1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 4, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2006), 194–98. See also 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 Archaeological Society, 1978), 223–34.    Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (­Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1:17. An image of this statuette appears in vol. 2 as fig. 1.19.

John Block Friedman

Fig. 6.1: Dagged costume on female mime dancer. Bronze statuette from Syria, late second century (Princeton, NJ, Princeton Museum of Art, accession no. y1956-101). Photo: Art Resources and Princeton Museum of Art, by permission.

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Dagged Clothing clothing styles of fools, marginal social groups such as entertainers and courtesans, devils, and brutal Eastern tyrants and their minions. Dagging as a medieval fashion term indicates the snipping of pointed, rectangular, or otherwise shaped tags on an outer garment, usually on the edges of bombard or poke sleeves, chaperons, tippets or other sleeve ornaments, and gown hems. It can also refer to the insertion of such snipped pieces of fabric into the edge or hem of an outer garment. Typically, the cloth of the hem or edge was cut in patterns ranging from diagonal slitting, such as that used to create the simple oak-leaf-like shapes found on the mantle of the mid-fourteenth-century alabaster tomb effigy of William Hatfield, the second son of Edward III, to much more complex forms, such as those fashioned to reveal the fur of a lining along the edges of pointed or rectangular hem shapes in outerwear. Thus, dagging as a term generally pertains to edges and is to be distinguished from the somewhat later fashion of slashing or slitting the sleeves and bodices of garments. This worked ornamentation, fostered by technological changes in fulling and shearing of woolens that resulted in a cloth that did not fray, involved cutting the cloth to show positive and negative spaces. It could also be done in conjunction with fur, silk, contrasting fabric, leather trim, or thin metal tags. Dagging was then an important element of the International Gothic Style of the last decades of the fourteenth century. The earliest clear written reference to dagged edges (Latin decisos) on garments appears in a document of 1188 relating to dress prohibitions on the Third Crusade of 1189–92. The English chronicler William of Newburgh (1136 to ca. 1198), in giving an account of the outremer voyage of Phillip Augustus of France, details the conflicting desires for fashion and for sanctity that coexisted in many of the crusading nobles and which were partly responsible for a variety of sumptuary regulations ordaining simple attire. One such edict useful for its specificity warns the voyagers   Bombard sleeves were large and trumpet-shaped; poke sleeves were similarly constructed but drawn in at the wrist to form bags. The chaperon, a hood with a shoulder-cape and often a hanging tail (variously called a cornet, liripipe, or tippet), was later fashionably worn arranged on top of the head as a hat. The term tippet was also applied to long decorative strips of fur or other material hanging from short sleeves. See, among many others, Anne H. van Buren, Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325–1515 (New York: Morgan Library, 2011), 295, 298, and 314, and Robin Netherton, “The Tippet: Accessory After the Fact?” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 117.   An image of this tomb effigy, located in York Minster, appears in Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 195, fig. 178.   I am indebted on this point of fabric technology to Gale R. Owen-Crocker’s forthcoming paper “Fools in the Bayeux Tapestry,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: Essays in Memory of David Hill, ed. Shirley Ann Brown and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, as well as the same author’s essay “Dagging,” cited below. See also Anne F. Sutton, “The Early Linen and Worsted Industry of Norfolk and the Evolution of the London Mercers’ Company,” Norfolk Archaeology 40 (1989): 201–25. For scholarship and archaeological examples of dagging, see Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 194–98 and figs. 179, 181, 183; Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:346, s.v. “dagging”; Andrea Denny-Brown, “Rips and Slits: The Torn Garment and the Medieval Self,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 223–37; Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 302–3 and passim; and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Dagging,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 167.

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John Block Friedman no vair, gris, or sable fur or scarlet cloth may be possessed; and … all clerks as well as laymen, shall be content with two circular cloaks … no one may have a dagged … cloak [pannos decisos].

Decisus in this period means “‘cut,’ slashed, or tagged (of cloth).” In a chronicle of 1403, possibly by Nicholas Hereford, treating the styles common at the court of King Henry IV of England, the author mentions enormous bombard sleeves which were “plene scissuris et demoniis” [full of snipping and devilry]. These Latin words then focus largely on the process and the tool: scissors. The earliest instance of the English word used to denote a fashion element occurs in the Brut of about 1346 and thus is contemporary with what Anne van Buren sees as the first appearance of courtly dagged costume in English and French medieval manuscript painting.10 The Brut author refers to dagged garments as already a part of what Chaucer will, ca. 1390, call the “newe jet.”11 In thys tyme, Englisshemen so muche haunted & clyvd to the wodnes and foley of the strangers [foreigners] that … they changed ham every yere … cloþyng, of long, large & wyde cloþis, destitu & desert from al old honeste & good usage … schorte cloþis &

  “Et quod nullus vario, vel grisio, vel sabellinis, vel escarletis utatur; et quod omnes tam clerici quam laïci duobus serculis ex empto sint contenti, … et quod nullus habeat pannos decisos.” Joseph Stevenson, ed. and trans., The History of William of Newburgh (1066–1194) (Lampeter, Wales: Llanerch, 1996), book 1, chap. 23, pp. 546–48. On William of Newburgh, see recently Lisa M. Ruch, “William of Newburgh,” in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. Graeme Dunphy (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 2:1512–13 and bibliography. I am most grateful to Sarah-Grace Heller for drawing my attention to this passage in Newburgh’s work. On French sumptuary laws see Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy, and Appearance in Thirteenth-Century Sumptuary Laws and the Romance of the Rose,” French Historical Studies 27, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 311–48. Dagged edges were prohibited to certain estates in English sumptuary law as early as 1383 in a statute, “Concerning Diet and Apparel 17 Edward III 1383,” though it is unclear if the edict was ever actually promulgated or enforced; The Statutes of the Realm: Printed by Command of His Majesty King George the Third … from Original Records and Authentic Manuscripts (London: Dawsons, 1963), 1:380–81. As Heller observes for France, “enforcement of sumptuary laws is notoriously obscure” (322).   R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 134. Another Latin term to denote dagging was fractillus, which can mean both modern “jagged” and also Middle English “dagged.” This term appears in a Latin-English glossary of 1420 to 1440 compiled by Walter Anglicus. See Albert Way, ed., Promptorium parvulorum (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 255.   All translations in this article are my own unless otherwise noted. The verbal connection of “scissoring” or dagging with demons—such bombard sleeves were supposedly used by thieves to hide stolen goods—may indicate a critical attitude toward dagging, though this passage in the chronicle is of uncertain meaning. See for the scissuris passage George B. Stow, ed., Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 168–69, lines 4167–77. See most recently on this work Susan Foran, “Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi,” in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 1:805–6 and bibliography. 10 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 50. 11 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), I (A), line 682, p. 34.

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Dagged Clothing stret-wasted, dagged & ket … that if y soþ schal say, they were … liche to turmentours & devels.12

William Langland in Piers Plowman by ca. 1378 associated dagging with social frivolity when he spoke of one who “lowgh lyf and leet dagge his clothes” [loved worldliness and ordered dagged clothes].13 The Alliterative Morte Arthure of about 1380–1400 mentions the cloth “daggeswayn,” defined in the Middle English Dictionary as a coarse or shaggy blanket-like fabric, as part of a horse-cloth-like decoration—presumably with cut or fringed edges—on the gunwales of the Saracen ships in the fleet of the treacherous Mordred: “Haythen men … Prowdliche purtrayde with payntede clothys … Dubbyde with dageswynnes dowblede they seme.”14 These references in the second half of the century indicate from their very lack of explanation that the audiences for such writing would have easily understood the cultural significance of dagging, both its connection with vanity at home and with alterity abroad. One especially detailed account of the ornamentation techniques of late-fourteenth-century fashions is that in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale (1390), a sermon with a portion of sixty-one lines devoted to Pride, where the word “dagged” occurs three times. This passage of fashion criticism offers considerable detail about different ornamental treatments of worked fabric, mentioning the application of decorative strips of contrasting color or fabric, undulating stripes, vertical striping, pleating of the cloth, decorative borders, fur trimming, punching and embossing designs with stamps, punching ornamental holes, and notching of edges with scissors. These are all forms of excess: “superfluitee of clothynge, which that maketh it so deere, to harm of the peple; nat oonly … the degise endentynge [and] … so muche daggynge of sheres … And forther over, if so be that they [the rich and fashionable] wolde yeven swich pownsoned and dagged clothyng to the povre folk, it is nat convenient to were for hire estaat.”15 The Parson then, complains about two things: the expense and damage to the body politic when the wealthy over-ornament their clothing, and the danger 12 Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or the Chronicles of England, vol. 2, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., 136 (1908; repr., New York: Kraus, 1971), chap. 227, p. 297. On this work see most recently Elizabeth Bryan, “Prose Brut, English” in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2:1239–40 and bibliography. 13 William Langland, Piers Plowman: The C-text, ed. Derek Pearsall (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994), 267, passus 22, lines 142–43. 14 Valerie Krishna, ed., The Alliterative Morte Arthure (New York: Burt Franklin, 1976), 138, lines 3605–9. 15 Benson, Riverside Chaucer, 300, lines 416–23. Though Laura Hodges, in Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005) mentions this important passage at several points, e.g. p. 246, she does not discuss its “sartorial excesses” (161) in detail, nor does “dagging” or its variants appear in her index. That Chaucer disliked dagging particularly, among other fashion excesses, is shown by his assigning it as a fashion detail to friars in his translation of the Roman de la Rose, where he amplifies his French original to associate dagging with showiness and moral hypocrisy: “beggers [mendicant friars] with these hodes wide … And highe shoos, knopped with dagges, / That frouncen lyke a quaile pipe” (lines 7254–59). The French reads “houseaus fronciez e larges botes, / Qui semblent bourse caillier” [pleated hose and large boots which look like a bag for carrying quail]. Thus, Chaucer adds the specific fashion detail

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John Block Friedman of giving such clothing when worn out or outmoded to the poor because wearing it takes them out of their God-ordained social class. We will examine these two themes in detail shortly. Not much is revealed by the English word itself. Of uncertain origin, the term may have developed, as Andrea Denny-Brown argues in a provocative article on cut and slashed clothing, from the Middle French word for a dagger,16 though in fact no French term for dagging uses this root. Dagged clothing’s great period of popularity, of course, comes when the dagger or short tapered knife, anlas in Middle English and daguette in Middle French, was common as a sign of status on the belts of knightly men and often of women; accordingly the shape of this implement was part of the culture’s visual memory. Though in Middle English “dagged” and occasionally “cut” seem consistently to be the terms used for this feature, Middle French employs several different words deriving more directly from Latin. For example chiqueturer, decoupurer, or decopper often describe this form of ornamentation. The first term is used by Guillaume Coquillart (1452–1510), a canon of Rheims, in a poem on novelties of fashion, Droitz nouveaulx, from 1480; it shows from a clerical perspective how the fashion element was used: Pensez, se dame mincerie Nous empoigne ung peu aux costes, On verra bien par fringuerie Porter maintz habitz chicquetez, Trouez, percez, fringuelotez, Feuilletez par jolliveté.17 [Imagine, if Madame Skinniness should grab our sides a bit / We would see through clever fringing / people wearing many a dagged garment / full of cuts, pierced, trickily made, / leafed all over for delight.]

The reference to “leafed” edges, feuilletez, suggests that the oak-leaf patterns of diagonal cuts in edges and strips were common enough for Coquillart to use the term without explanation. As larger pieces of worn fabric and outmoded whole garments were increasingly recycled from the upper to the lower classes in the later Middle Ages,18 it is evident that Chaucer’s Parson’s fear that worked ornamentation could filter downward to the lower levels of society was well founded. For the bourgeoise there was a time delay for the use of dagging in both English and French society; they adopted aristocratic fashions with dagged clothing just as the style was starting to lose popularity among the nobility, as John Hardyng (ca. 1378–ca. 1465) pointed out in his popular verse and term to the boots and compares them to the multiple tubular passageways of a trap for luring quail, in a dig at the friars’ grasping and deceitful ways. 16 Denny-Brown, “Rips and Slits,” 228–29. 17 M. J. Freeman, ed., Guillaume Coquillart Oeuvres (Geneva: Droz, 1975), 154, lines 519–25; translation mine. 18 This point is made by Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 196.

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Dagged Clothing Chronicle (1450): “cut werke was greate both in court and tounes / Both in mennes hoddis and also in their gounes.”19 There is considerable literary evidence for the popularity of dagging in the attire of well-to-do villagers and the urban bourgeoisie. For example, Margery Kempe, the well-known female mystic and sometime brewer, in her Boke, ca. 1438, exhibits knowledge of this fashion detail, mentioning it in connection with her son’s clothes, her own clothes, and the attire of the Bishop of Worcester’s retainers. She speaks of her son, a merchant, who returns to England after a long absence: “For a-for-tyme hys clothys wer al daggyd & hys langage al uanyte; now he weryd no daggys, & hys dalyawns was ful of vertu.”20 Margery herself had enjoyed fashionably worked overgarments in her old, unredeemed life in an effort to attract the envy of the townspeople: “Hir clokys also wer daggyd & leyd wyth dyuers colowrs be-twen þe daggys þat it schuld be þe mor staryng to mennys syght.”21 So too, she speaks of her dagged hoods and remarks on the unfavorable attention they received, though she does not specify from what social class: “Men seyden hir ful mech velany, for … hir hodys wyth þe typettys were daggyd.”22 Though Margery recognizes the vanity of dagging and eventually rejects it, she does not see it from a class perspective. This was not the case for some French writers. An anonymous Dit de Chacun of ca. 1460 speaks of these dagged clothes in relation to social class: “Chacun veult robbe chiquetée, / Chacun veult avoir estat gent.” [Each wished for a dagged robe; each wished to have gentle status.]23 As the period of dagging was also one that saw the rapid expansion in the number of wills made by middle-class persons, particularly in England, where clothes were increasingly passed downward

19 Henry Ellis, ed., The Chronicle of John Hardyng (1812; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1974), 347. An edition by Sarah L. Peverley of John Hardyng’s Chronicle is forthcoming. See Sarah L. Peverley, “Hardyng, John,” in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 1:751–54. 20 Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, eds., The Book of Margery Kempe, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), book 2, chap. 2, p. 223. A similar example of dagging among the bourgeoisie appears in the near-contemporary “conversion” lyric The Tixt of Holy Writ: “She repreueþ my dagged cloþes / And longe pyked crakowed shon.” J. Kail, ed., Twenty-Six Political and Other Poems from the Oxford MSS. Digby 102 and Douce 322, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., 124 (1904; repr., Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1975), 137. 21 Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, book 1, chap. 2, p. 9. 22 Ibid., book 1, chap. 2, p. 16. In the light of these passages from Margery Kempe, it is hard to imagine a sufficient disconnect between English and French fashion of this period which could account for Van Buren’s claim that at least for France “dagging was not applied to womens’ clothing in real life,” Illuminating Fashion, 97 and also 50. To my knowledge, the only Middle English favorable or neutral references to dagged clothes on women—in both cases hoods—are those in a lyric from 1500 in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Poet. 36, O fresche flower: “With dagged hood leyd on pancake wyse, and al your nyce aray, / Treuly, me semyth ye ar a louely may!” and a similar lyric from London, British Library, MS Harley 2255: “She weryth a daggyd hood of grene.” These passages are cited in the Middle English Dictionary, online ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), s.v. “dagged.” 23 Anatole Montaiglon, ed., Recueil de poésies françoises de XVe et XVIe siècles (Paris: Jannet, 1855–78), 1:224.

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John Block Friedman through legacies to poorer relations and household servants,24 dagging was especially visible as evidence of class transgression. It is clear from manuscript painting of the mid-thirteenth century that dagging in its earlier forms was not an aristocratic fashion but rather was associated with servants, musicians, and entertainers (the last two quite often presented by artists as marginal and deeply suspect social groups) and that it was even presented as a livery for the minions of pagan tyrants. One of the earliest depictions of dagging occurs in the twelfth-century John the Baptist Roll, made in Alsace.25 As the roll unfolds, placed between depictions of the saint imprisoned and Herod feasting are two secular scenes. Two huntsmen of King Herod’s court, wearing particolored green and red outerwear, hold game animals, seemingly for the feast. One aims a bow at a bird in a tree, while the other holds a bird; his garment is particolored and dagged deeply at the hem, and he also wears particolored hose. This garb, Mellinkoff argues, is “the putative livery of Herod.”26 As we shall see, this quite early association of dagging with Eastern, Saracenic, and tormenting figures like Herod and Pontius Pilate was to have a very long life. Dagged garments were also worn by musicians, who symbolized worthless classes of mankind or temptation to human damnation well before the period in which such ornamentation appears in scenes of aristocratic life. For example, in a manuscript of Guillaume le Clerc’s moralized bestiary painted in England about 1265,27 a musician playing the fiddle leads souls to a Hell Mouth peopled by demons; significantly, one devil reaches out to clutch the fiddler’s dagged garment. Another musician in a dagged gown symbolizes payments of wergild to persons without social worth, in a scene from a manuscript of the Sachenspiegel.28 In the complex iconography of dagged garments, this type of ornamentation was also long associated with fools and folly. It was very common for fools to be depicted in the bows of the historiated initial D opening Psalm 52 (AV 53) in manuscripts of the Latin Psalter. This is called the “Dixit Insipiens” psalm from the first line of the psalm: “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” Thus, the fool stands for the atheist stupid enough to deny God.29 24 For discussion of wills among English civic elites, see John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 15–28, 287–89. 25 London, British Library, MS Additional 42497, reproduced in Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 2, figs. 1.3, 1.4. 26 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:7. 27 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 14969, 25r, reproduced in Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 2, fig. 1.9. 28 Heidelberg, Germany, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, MS Cod. Pal. Germ. 164, 20r, dating from 1375, reproduced in Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 2, fig. 1.16, fourth register from the top. 29 The literature on fools in the Middle Ages is extensive. Some recent studies with an iconographic focus are Marco Assirelli, “L’immagine dello ‘Stolto’ nel Salmo 52,” in Il Codice Miniato: Rapporti tra Codice, Testo e Figurazione: Atti del III Congresso di Storia della Miniatura, ed. Melania Ceccanti and Maria Cristina Castelli (Florence: Olschki, 1992), 19–34; Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool (Brighton, UK: Harvester Press, 1984), which contains an appendix listing English manuscripts with fool illustrations; François Garnier, “Les Conceptions de la folie d’après l’iconographie médiévale du psaume 52 ‘dixit insipiens,’” in Actes du 120e Congrès national des sociétés savantes,

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Dagged Clothing Historically, dagging appears in the garments of fools as early as 1280 in illustrations such as that in the Huth Psalter.30 Fool overgowns and hoods typically have long, dagger-shaped points, often with bells on the tips. Gradually, as the tradition of actual court jesters and fools developed, artists depicted them in a variety of works. Though their clothes vary widely in character, a considerable number of fools in images from the thirteenth through the early sixteenth centuries wear dagged garments, and as Malcolm Jones notes of such scenes, “nothing in the costume of the fool … is accidental.”31 Such a fool appears in an English Psalter manuscript painted by the Wingfield Master in about 1460 (fig. 6.2).32 In this picture the artist has clearly hinted at excess both in the quantity of the dagging and its use with particoloring, saying to the viewer, in effect, this style is foolish and befits a fool. Dagging then, seems to symbolize foolishness and vanity here. Malcolm Jones also points out that if the central figure in an image designed to convey folly is not itself given any standard attributes such as the fool loaf, bells, fool stick and so on, often a fool will be present somewhere in the scene to connect folly with the action being depicted.33 Such a connection between folly, sexual license, and dagging appears in an illustration for Psalm 52 in an English manuscript now in Turin where a fool in heavily dagged sleeves and gown hem regards a riotous group, one of whose members inserts his hand into the front of a woman’s skirt. God looks down from above.34

30 31 32

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Limoges, 1977, vol. 2, Etudes sur la sensibilité au Moyen Age (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1979), 215–22; D. J. Gifford, “Iconographical Notes Toward a Definition of the Medieval Fool,” in The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford, ed. Paul V. A. Williams (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979), 18–35; Maurice Lever, Le Sceptre et la marotte: Histoire des fous de cour (Paris: Fayard, 1983); Philippe Ménard, “Les Emblèmes de la folie dans la littérature et dans l’art (XIIe-XIIIe siècles),” in Hommage à Jean-Charles Payen: Farai chansoneta novele: Essais sur la liberté créatrice au Moyen Age, ed. Hugette Legros (Caen: Université de Caen, 1989), 253–65; Malcolm Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2002), 100–20; and Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 1, especially 15–18, 28–31, and 89–90. London, British Library, MS Additional 38115, 60v, reproduced in Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 2, fig. 1.5. Jones, Secret Middle Ages, 101. Los Angeles, University of Southern California Doheny Memorial Library, MS 3970, discussed in Kathleen Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 6 (London: Harvey Miller, 1995), no. 107, 2:295–96. The illustration (fol. 42v) appears in vol. 1, fig. 406. Scott gives a very useful list of fools in English psalter illustration at 2:378–79, table 1. Jones, Secret Middle Ages, 119. Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MS I.1.9, 46r, reproduced and discussed in Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, no. 17, vol. 1, fig. 118, and 2:106–9. An interesting analog to this scene occurs in Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Der Ring of ca. 1390–1405, which exists today only in a single copy in Germany’s Meiningen State Archives, MS Nr. 502, Hs. 29. This parchment codex is very plain and crudely illustrated; it could even be the author’s holograph. There is an opening drawing of a bearded, hooded peasant in dagged attire, with a belt pouch, embracing a woman while putting two fingers of his right hand between her legs. An excellent overview in English of the Ring is Albrecht Classen, “Heinrich Wittenwiler (before 1387–circa 1414?),” in German Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation 1280–1580, ed. James Hardin and Max Reinhart (Detroit: Gale Research, 1997), 326–31. The standard edition is Edmund Wiessner, ed., Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring, nach der ­Meininger ­Handschrift

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Fig. 6.2: Fool in dagged costume, from an English psalter illuminated by the Wingfield Master, ca. 1460 (formerly at Camarillo, CA, St. John’s Seminary, MS 3970, 42v; current whereabouts unknown). Photo courtesy Kathleen L. Scott.

A rise in the detailed renditions of male and female fashion in late medieval manuscript illustration in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy has made it possible to generalize cautiously about the prevalence of dagging as an aristocratic fashion, though archaeological remnants of actual dagged garments of all classes are not as common as artistic depictions of dagging in manuscript painting. It is difficult to know how closely actual fashions in dress correlated to those shown in the visual arts. The remains of dagged fabric examined by Elisabeth Crowfoot and her colleagues in their study of fourteenth-century London archaeological textiles finds were of quite modest quality and suggest use by persons of lower social station. Whatever the realities of actual dress may have been, however, late-fourteenthcentury artists were now looking closely at courtly attire and even at that of persons of lower social station as subject matter for manuscript illustration.35 By mid-century, specific fashion trends such as tight hose, short doublets calling attention to buttocks

(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964) and his commentary on the work, Kommentar zu Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974). Just out is Anneka Goldenbaum and Werner Röcke, eds., Heinrich Wittenwiler, der Ring: Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012). 35 See the well-illustrated study by Perrine Mane, La Travail à la campagne au moyen âge: Etude iconographique (Paris: Picard, 2006), for numerous examples.

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Dagged Clothing and genitalia for men, and fitted waistlines, low bodices, and elaborate headdresses36 on women were becoming quite common in manuscript illustrations of courtly scenes. By 1360 to 1400, manuscript illustrations often include extremely detailed renditions of dagged chaperons, hems, sleeves, and tippets in courtly contexts, apparently observed from contemporary life. By the mid- to later fifteenth century, artists began to render the local landscape of churches, law courts, guildhalls, markets and fairs, confraternity processions, town entries, and other opportunities for bourgeois display of finery that often included dagged garments worn by people like Margery Kempe. Anne van Buren’s invaluable Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325–1515, though providing the fashion historian with a convenient single-volume compendium of examples of dagged apparel, should be used somewhat cautiously with respect to chronology of this feature. While she locates the first appearance of dagged garments of any sort in manuscript painting in a Roman d’Alexandre codex painted by Pierart dou Tielt in 1344,37 her range of reference is only to courtly and French or Dutch artistic contexts. Written evidence for the popularity of dagged garments among royalty begins to appear in wardrobe accounts at the end of the fourteenth century, where words with an etymological root of “cutting” are used to describe the style. In the argenterie or wardrobe accounts of King Charles VI of France (d. 1422), the noun decopure and the adjective decoppees characterize fabric delivered to the king’s tailor. In one instance, larges bandes are paired with decoupures to apply to the armhole seams of a houpellande (a type of overgown characterized by a voluminous body and large sleeves), and there is payment “pour la facon d’un chaperon decoppé, taille de v quartiers de vert de Rouen” [for the making of a dagged chaperon, cut from five measures of Rouen green cloth]. In another case, the word describes a cornet, a piece of fabric hanging from a chaperon brim: “larges cornectes decoppees a chaperons” intended for lords of the court.38 For the first time, too, there is evidence for the “crenellated” or squarely dagged hems lined with marten fur that are clearly noted in the accounts just mentioned: “decope tout autour par dessoubz a carreaulx” [dagged all around the bottom edge

36 See Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 317–18, for examples and discussion. 37 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, 128v, reproduced in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, plate 4, B.6. The clothing contains what she describes as “large U-shaped dags in the men’s gowns and chaperons… . the romance contains the first examples of the new fashion for dagging, and almost ten years before it appears in France” (50). 38 These passages occur in the Argenterie of Charles VI, Paris, Archives nationales, MS KK 21, 14r, cited in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 303. The English wardrobe account book of King Richard II, mentions a gown with dagges: “j goune de sanguino frisio, una cum dagges”; see W. Paley Baildon, “A Wardrobe Account of 16–17 Richard II, 1393–4,” Archaeologia 62 (1911): 497–514, at 507. There is also mention of “j dag de coreo” in Baildon’s “The Trousseaux of Princess Philippa, Wife of Eric, King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,” Archaeologia 67 (1916): 163–88, at 182. I am indebted to Celeste Andrews for help with these references.

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John Block Friedman with little squares].39 Thus, these, and many other contemporary references, suggest dagging was quite popular on actual garments worn by the upper strata of English and French society well into the fifteenth century. As could well be imagined, the striking changes in clothing fashion—tightness of fit (through the development of set-in sleeves, bias-cut hose, and the use of buttons as well as piecing of fabric, especially for upper-body garments), shape and height of necklines, garment length, fabrics, colors, and ornamentation, both applied and worked—from about 1340 onward in the dress of upper-class persons, and later that of the urban bourgeoisie and even of inhabitants of small villages, produced an outpouring of complaints from conservative English and French clerical and secular writers. These ranged from gibes about the long, pointed, stiffened, or stuffed shoe tips of poulaines to the elaborate lateral and vertical extensions of female headgear satirized in the poem In Praise of Womens’ Horns.40 Such criticism is hardly new or obscure in audience. For example, we have the detailed attack on excess of color, use of silk, and particolored garments in clerical dress, especially that of monks, as early as 1190 in the Verbum Adbreviatum, a handbook of moral theology intended for preachers, compiled by the French scholastic theologian Peter the Chanter (d. 1197), existing in over one hundred manuscripts.41 Perhaps owing to the popularity of the houpellande, often trimmed with fur, from the 1360s onward some new themes in French and English fashion criticism are the excess of fabric employed in making this garment,42 and what was imagined as a socially transgressive use of small quantities of silk and fur in the attire of members of the urban bourgeoisie and even of villagers.43 Within this larger context of fashion criticism, dagging was singled out—openly by moralist writers, and more casually by artists from about 1250 onward—to signal a wide variety of vices or unacceptable social behaviors such as vanity; worldliness; sexuality; pagan, Eastern, and Saracenic brutality, particularly toward Christians; and human folly, as was evident with regard to the fools in the manuscript painting just discussed. Dagging also contributed more neutrally to pagan, antique, and Eastern exoticism in settings. 39 See Léon de Laborde, ed., Les Ducs de Bourgogne: Etudes sur les lettres, les arts, et l’industrie pendant le XVe siècle et plus particulièrement dans les Pays-Bas et le duché de Bourgogne (Paris: Plon, 1849–52) vol. 1, 52.1, no. 339. 40 Frederick W. Fairholt, ed., Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume from the 13th to the 19th Century (1849, repr., New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1965), 29–39. 41 Monique Boutry, ed., Petri Cantoris Parisiensis Verbum adbreviatum: Textus conflatus, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 196 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004). 42 Jean Froissart’s pastourelle on this garment treats its fabric excess ironically through the comments of shepherds. See Kristen Figg, The Short Lyric Poems of Jean Froissart: Fixed Forms and the Expression of the Courtly Ideal (New York: Garland, 1994), 108, and Geri L. Smith, The Medieval Pastourelle Tradition: Poetic Motivations and Generic Transformations (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2009), 155–58. 43 For general discussion and bibliography see John Block Friedman, Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, & Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), s.v. “furs,” “silk”; and specifically for Chaucer’s England, Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing, 117–23.

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Dagged Clothing These many specific unfavorable associations for dagging in earlier medieval art cannot fail to have affected its reception by moralizing writers, particularly in Middle English and somewhat less in Middle French. It appears that written criticisms of dagging during its period of greatest popularity in the late fourteenth through the early fifteenth centuries were partly influenced by the much earlier and highly unfavorable depictions in Western art, which left traces of cultural freight, so to speak, among these later writers. If, in the writings of Middle English and Middle French moralists, dagging is disparaged since it seems already to have been contextualized in the minds of the writers, the situation is more nuanced in works of art. It is the context of the picture, the situation shown, as for example in the garb of pagan executioners, tormentors, whores, and fools, which immediately controls how we should understand dagging. Moralists often inveighed against foreigners as a source of fashion excess, as we saw in the comments in the Brut, and the practice continued in the fourteenth-century alliterative Richard the Redeless, where the author tied the “newe gysis” to Germans: “And dryue out the dagges and all the Duche cotis.”44 To the French, dagging and slashing seem to have been particularly associated with England; Geoffrey de la Tour Landry, in the conduct manual he wrote for his daughters in 1372, warns them against these fashion elements, which he connects with “Englishmen.”45 Among artists, however, the geographical source was much further East. As early as 1250, nearly a century before dagging became part of courtly fashion, it appeared in English and continental manuscript painting on the garments of classical-pagan, polytheistic, Old Testament, and what might be broadly called Eastern and Saracenic tyrant figures such as Herod or Pontius Pilate, where the wearers engage in some sort of particularly brutal action toward Christ and martyrs. This is one of the earliest contexts for pejorative uses of dagging by artists. In a manuscript Life of St. Alban of around 1200, the saint’s executioner wears a dagged garment (fig. 6.3). Though not a pagan, the French oppressor of prisoners pictured in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora (1250) is the only figure in the extensive cycle of illustration to wear dagged costume.46 Dagging in Eastern, classical-pagan, Old Testament, and Saracenic scenes in medieval painting, especially well after the period of dagging’s actual fashion popularity, contributes toward invoking alterity and an “antique” and Eastern flavor. For example, Van Buren points out a similar use of dagged clothing in the illustrations for the mid-fifteenth-century Chronicles of Hainaut where “exotic costumes and armor 44 James M. Dean, ed., Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), passus 3, lines 192–93. 45 Thomas Wright, ed., The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., 33 (1906; repr., New York: Greenwood, 1969), 30–31. 46 The miniature from the Life of St. Alban, Dublin, Trinity College, MS E.I.40, 38r, appears in Cynthia Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of the Saints from the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pl. 8. That of the French oppressor of prisoners is from Matthew Paris, Chronicles, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 16, 48v. On this work, see Lisa M. Ruch, “Matthew Paris,” in Dunphy, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2:1093–95.

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John Block Friedman are used to present Trojans, ancient Belgians, and their Saxon successors as pagans and foreigners.”47 Exotic Eastern figures also appear in dagged garments, where dagging can signal alterity generally and anti-Semitic attitudes in particular (fig. 6.4). The contrast between Saracenic dagging and the moderate dress of Europeans is made clear in an illustration by the Master of the Geneva Boccaccio, ca. 1460, in the Secrets de l’Histoire Naturelle, showing an encounter of pagan “Others” with modestly dressed visiting Europeans. In it, the dagged edges of clothing are highlighted by the presence of the Saracenic scimitar.48 One of the most complex and fascinating images in which the artist used the iconography of dagging to convey this feeling of Eastern alterity appears in the lower part of an illustration from Jean de Vignay’s French translation of Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale, dated 1464, showing a scene from the lives of Barlaam and Josaphat (fig. 6.5).49 Vincent presumably used the version of the story as retold in Jacob of Voragine’s Golden Legend.50 Josaphat, the virtuous son of the Indian king Avenir, is tempted by a beautiful princess in a context of Eastern luxury, but refuses her. The scene shows all that he is offered in the way of worldly amusement and entertainment by various devils and their human agents to persuade him to reject Christianity. A fool in a dagged particolor garment leads dancers identified as Eastern and vainglorious by their poulaines, turbans, and bowed and knotted fabric sashes, standard symbols of pagan and Saracenic alterity. The temptress woman’s companion dances frenetically. All of these figures wear heavily dagged clothing. Even in the first years of dagging’s popularity as a courtly fashion, it could in certain pictorial contexts symbolize vanity and worldly frivolity. In one instance, the same artist in two different types of manuscripts quite consciously uses dagging in this way. In the mid-fourteenth-century Bible Moralisée of John the Good, monks turn their heads away and leave two worldly figures; one holds a board game and the

47 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 30. In the same place, she also remarks on “the Coronation of the bearlike Ursus as the first king of the Belgians” and “the noblemen, doffing a variety of fantastic hats to acclaim the new king, wear[ing] short gowns … decorated with long fringes and a good deal of dagging.” 48 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.461, 31v. My edition, translation, study, and facsimile of the latest version of this work (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 22971, with 56 illustrations by Robinet Testard) is forthcoming as John Block Friedman, Kathrin Giogoli, and Kristen Figg, Libro de las Maravillas del Mundo (Burgos: Siloé, in press). 49 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 51, 171r. The story in the Speculum Historiale occupies book 15, chapters 1–53, with the particular details being illustrated appearing in chapters 5 and 41. See Alison Stones, “Prolegomena to a Corpus of Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations,” in Vincent de Beauvais: Intentions et réceptions d’une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen-Âge: Actes du XIVe Colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales, ed. Serge Lusignan, Monique Paulmier-Foucart, and Alain Nadeau (Saint-Laurent, Quebec: Bellarmin, 1990), 301–44. This manuscript is briefly discussed by Van ­Buren, ­ Illuminating Fashion, 341. See also Isabelle Delaunay, L’Enluminure en France au temps de Jean Fouquet (Paris: Somogy, 2003). 50 See Teodor de Wyzewa, trans., La Légende Dorée (Paris: Perrin, 1935), chap. 170, pp. 663–76.

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Fig. 6.3: Executioner in dagged garments, from a French-language manuscript of the Life of Saint Alban, illuminated by Matthew Paris, England, ca. 1200 (Dublin, Trinity College, MS 177, 38r). Photo: Trinity College Library, Dublin, by permission.

Fig. 6.4: Meeting of Europeans and Saracens in dagged garments, from Secrets de l’Histoire Naturelle, illuminated by the Master of the Geneva Boccaccio, France, ca. 1460 (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.461, 31v). Photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, by permission.

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Fig. 6.5: Josaphat and tempters in dagged attire, from Jean de Vignay’s translation of Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale, France, 1464 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 51, 171r). Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, by permission.

other a falcon.51 The falconer wears a dagged short gown and poulaines. The same artist shows, in a Roman de la Rose manuscript of 1352, the Lover and the man embracing the personification of Wealth (the man’s hand resting suggestively in Wealth’s lap) wearing hoods with dagged shoulder-capes.52 The connection of dagging with 51 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 167, 7v, reproduced in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, plate 6, F.12. 52 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 1565, 66r, reproduced in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, plate 6, fig. F.15.

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Dagged Clothing sexuality suggested in this second illustration is considerably more explicit in other manuscripts, and Van Buren has noted that “dagging … designates sexual activity, both in courtship and in behavior less condoned.”53 The fifteenth-century guide composed by Jean Lebègue for the illuminators of a Sallust manuscript makes this link in words just as the picture makes it for the eye. Very few instructions to illuminators still exist, as they were often placed on the margins of the leaves and trimmed off in binding, or else written in the space of a picture that was subsequently painted over. Lebègue’s instructions are particularly interesting and unusual as they explain in detail how the artists should paint the clothing of the figures. Thus, we can learn the exact significance of dagging to artist and audience in a miniature of Sallust’s Conspiratio Catilinae.54 The scene is that in which Catiline seduces Sempronia. The instructions read “Let Catiline be … dressed … with long dagged sleeves [manches decouspée] and before him a loose [gaillarde] woman wearing … a gown close to the body with sleeves dagged [manches decoupées] down to the ground.” In fact, in the corresponding illumination in one manuscript associated with Lebègue, Catiline has dagged bombard sleeves, with elaborate dagging of the type mentioned earlier in royal inventories covering the shoulder seams, while Sempronia’s one visible sleeve breaks at the elbow and hangs as a dagged panel to the ground.55 In the famous “Terence of the Dukes” manuscript of Terence’s plays, the artist used dagging to convey the seedy sensuality of the relationship depicted in The Brothers.56 The two brothers Aeschinus and Ctesipho wear houpellandes, one with a dagged shoulder-cape, and the other with dagged sleeves and a dagged chaperon. The slave courtesan or music girl, the object of Ctesipho’s passion, but who is being stolen away by Aeschinus, wears a gown with elaborately dagged bombard sleeves. To the right is the slave dealer and pimp Sannio, whose foreign origin is suggested by a gown heavily dagged at shoulders, sleeves, and hem. He also wears particolored hose. Particolored stockings were often associated with torturers, sinister figures, and as we saw, fools; such hose were sometimes called “harlots.”57

53 Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 17. 54 The manuscript with the instructions is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS D’Orville 141, published as Jean Lebègue and Jean Porcher, Les histoires que l’on peut raisonnablement faire sur les livres de ­Salluste (Paris: Giraud-Badin, 1962), 43v. See also Donal Byrne, “An Early French Humanist and Sallust: Jean Lebègue and the Iconographical Programme for the Catiline and Jugurtha,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 41–65, especially n. 87, and see generally on instructions to illuminators, with many examples, John Block Friedman, “‘Monstres qui a ii mamelles bloe’: Illuminator’s Instructions in a MS of Thomas of Cantimpré,” Journal of the Early Book Society 7 (2004): 11–32. 55 Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, MS lat. 54, 9r. The scene in which Catiline seduces Sempronia is reproduced along with a translation of the instructions in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 18–19, fig. 4. 56 Paris, Bibliothèque d’Arsenal, MS 664, 131v, dated ca. 1413, reproduced in Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, plate 31, F.81, and discussed at 128 and 336. 57 See the discussion by Van Buren, Illuminating Fashion, 7, who stresses that particoloring showed “allegiance and subservience.” A detailed account of particoloring is that of Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:5–28.

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John Block Friedman What appears in this survey of a popular fashion element is that dagging was in use much earlier than usually thought by fashion historians and was first associated with a different social class from that which it later graced. Though most dagged garments depicted in art are of the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the visual evidence from manuscripts shows that the style was familiar to English and continental illuminators of a much earlier period and that it had a definite moral significance to them. Sumptuary legislation indicates scorn of dagging even earlier than the first pejorative depictions of it in art. Though the moralists discussed earlier in this article do not point directly to art as a possible confirmation for their attitude toward dagging, it is likely that the large number of unfavorable treatments of it in painted books influenced such writers. Evidence that this is the case is suggested by the passage from the Brut offered earlier, pointing out how “schorte cloþis & stretwasted, dagged & ket … if y soþ schal say … were … liche to turmentours & devels,” where dagged styles in life clearly remind the writer of those seen on demonic figures in art and perhaps the vice figures of contemporary morality plays. Thus, from the first appearance of this fashion idea in Latin sumptuary legislation, its cultural context is pejorative and it is associated with vanity and lack of seriousness, whether of ecclesiastical or of lay persons. An illustration of this perspective occurs in a little-noticed passage in Margery Kempe. As we have already seen, she was a shrewd observer of the social life and fashions of her age. Just before she was to go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, she was summoned to appear before the Bishop of Worcester, who was in temporary residence near her home in Lynn, and she saw many of his retainers “alto-daggyd in her clothys.” Margery recoiled in horror and lifted her hands to bless herself, asking what manner of men were these, and the retainers said “what deuyl eyleth þe?” She explained that to her, in their fashionable garb “forsoþe, ȝe arn lykar þe Deuelys men,”58 again a recollection of demonic dagged figures in art or possibly in morality plays. In sum, these early examples of dagged attire, with their ties to a violent pagan, Islamic, and Biblical alterity,59 suggest that dagging may have started as a fashion understood as entirely pagan or worn only by marginalized groups like mimes and entertainers and then, though it became acceptable as an element of generic Eastern splendor more or less Christianized in Europe, was never to be accepted by Middle English and French moralists, who inveighed against dagged clothing from its inception as an element of high fashion in the West.

58 Meech and Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, book 1, chap. 45, p. 109. 59 For example, a scene of Jezebel being eaten by dogs, in the illustrated German History Bible of Evert van Soudenbalch, from Utrecht, made in 1460 (Vienna, Austrian National Library, MS Cod. 2771, 218v), shows her with dagged garments as well as long, loose hair and low-cut bodice, common signs in medieval art of licentious character. This manuscript is discussed in Andreas Fingernagel and Christian Gastgeber, In the Beginning was the Word: The Power and Glory of Illustrated Bibles (Cologne: Taschen, 2003), 282–93. The scene of Jezebel appears on p. 289.

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Domestic Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England: Imagery, Placement, and Ownership Susan E. James

Of all the common pieces of interior domestic decoration to be found in the households of sixteenth-century England, the stained or painted cloth wall hanging was the most ubiquitous. From the cottages of poor widows to the homes of city merchants, from the halls of country farmers to the palaces of princes, these movable household furnishings could be found everywhere. In 1577, William Harrison wrote in his Description of England, “The wals of our houses on the inner sides … be either hanged with tapisterie, arras worke, or painted cloths, wherin either diverse histories, or hearbes, beasts, knots, and such like are stained ….” Such household furnishings were to a great extent hanging storybooks that told tales both entertaining and edifying. On the practical side, painted cloths covered blank walls, kept out drafts, brightened a room, offered ornament, and lent an air of status and gentility to upwardly aspiring families. More profoundly, through painted combinations of words and images, these cloths My thanks for their advice and suggestions go to Jo Kirby Atkinson of the Scientific Department at London’s National Gallery; to curator of manuscripts Elizabeth Morrison, assistant curator of manuscripts Christine Sciacca, and conservator Nancy Turner at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; to Clare Browne, curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum; to Gareth Bellis of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; to Dr. Ian Friel; and to Robin Netherton and Gale Owen-Crocker, editors of Medieval Clothing and Textiles. This paper was developed from research I am undertaking for a forthcoming book, tentatively titled Women’s Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence, and Material Culture.     For an overview of English and continental fabric decoration, see Nicholas Mander, “Painted Cloths: History, Craftsmen and Techniques,” Textile History 28, no. 2 (1997): 119–48.     Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Harrison’s Description of England in Shakspere’s Youth: Being the Second and Third Books of His Description of Britaine and England (London: New Shakespeare Society, 1877), 1:235. Technically the term “tapestry” meant a woven hanging whose designs were formed by a weft of exposed colored yarns or threads, but this term was also used to describe a variety of other types of hangings, including those that were painted or embroidered (Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 129). In the fifteenth century, the town of Arras in Artois was famous for its finely woven tapestries, which could include silk, gold, or silver threads in the mix. By the sixteenth century, the term “arras” could be used to indicate a woven hanging, but it had also become a generic term for any wall hanging, including stained cloths. This paper deals only with painted and stained hanging cloths specifically described as such in primary documents.

Susan E. James provided a delivery system for instruction in the cultural idiom and the transference of approved societal memes. Among the more affluent, the display of heraldic devices or clan-specific emblems put the stamp of family ownership on a particular living space. More than any other household object, the nation’s hanging cloths illustrated in readily understandable forms the eidos or cultural sum of its intellectual character and spiritual beliefs. By the end of the sixteenth century there were hundreds of thousands of these pieces hanging in homes of all incomes the length and breadth of the country. The purpose of this article is to discuss what they may have looked like, how they were used within the household, and the value that those at different income levels placed on them. Unfortunately for such widespread and popularly displayed ephemera, their perishability has ensured that only fragments survive today. Yet that peerless pool of primary material, probated Tudor wills and inventories, has much to offer in the way of information on this subject. From these documents can be deduced something of the nature of both stained and painted cloths and their importance within the material culture of this society. Certainly no household object speaks more eloquently to the tastes and cultural tropes of Tudor England than the decorated cloths that hung upon its walls. NOMENCLATURE AND MATERIALS

As with so many descriptions found in Tudor documents, word usage can be confusing. Inventories from Essex, Surrey, and Southampton list both stained and painted cloths together in the same household. Such listings raise questions of whether the listmakers regarded these terms as interchangeable or discrete and whether the techniques used to produce a stained cloth were in any way different from those used to produce a painted one. Certainly in the fifteenth century the work of stainers and painters were separate professions, stainers working with water-soluble colors on cloth and painters working with oils on wood and metal. With the union of the two guilds in 1502 and the subsequent expansion of the painter’s craft into cloth ornamentation, this line ap   F. G. Emmison, ed., Essex Wills: The Archdeaconry Courts, vol. 5: 1583–1592, Essex Record Office Publication 101 (Chelmsford, UK: Essex Records Office, 1989), 51; D. M. Herridge, ed., Surrey Probate Inventories, 1558–1603 (hereafter Surrey Inventories), Surrey Record Society 39 (Woking, UK: Surrey Record Society, 2005), 38; Edward Roberts and Karen Parker, eds., Southampton Probate Inventories 1447–1575 (hereafter Southampton Inventories), Southampton Records Series 34–35 (Southampton, UK: University Press, 1992), 2:347, 359, 368.    Beginning as early as 1483, a battle that lasted over a century was enjoined by painters and stainers, and after 1502 by their amalgamated guild, to control the craft industries they were incorporated to produce. Details appear in a series of statutes and ordinances designed to protect native production from cheaper foreign imports. The iteration of these statutes by the government at regular intervals demonstrates the increasing futility of the effort. See R. H. Tawney and Eileen Power, eds., Tudor Economic Documents (London: Longmans, 1924), 1:138; Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 131; and W. A. D. Englefield, The History of the Painter-Stainers Company of London (London: Chapman and Dodd, 1923), 42–44.

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Painted Cloths in England pears to have blurred. A variety of techniques were used to produce decorated cloths, and it is unclear whether their owners and those who drew up inventories in the early decades of the century either consistently identified specialized categories of cloths in their documents or perceived them to belong to distinctly individual groups. As the century progressed, the terms seem to have become more or less interchangeable. The textiles employed for hanging cloths were for the most part various weaves of wool or linen. The most common weave of wool mentioned in wills and inventories was say, a lightweight, finely twilled fabric related to serge. The 1559 inventory of John Smith of Southampton, for instance, lists “hangynges of redde saye with a border, [valued at] Xs,” while a 1573 inventory of Southampton mercer Richard Goddard describes his “henginges of grene saye wth the story, 20s.” In 1562, John Fletcher, a grocer, owned green say hangings, as did Alice Aberie in 1565; Thomas Mill, a gentleman, in 1566; and Thomas Edmondes, a cloth merchant, in 1570. Say remained a popular textile support for decoration throughout England, although Southampton is unusual in the level of detail that survives describing individual pieces in inventories. In woven linen fabric, canvas and buckram were the textiles most frequently mentioned for hanging cloths. Charles Harrison, a physician in Southampton in 1559, owned both hangings of buckram with painted borders worth 20s. and a green buckram hanging with a border of canvas painted with antique work, worth 13s. 4d. In 1564, a priest named William Morrell owned “a buckram stained cloth” worth 2s., and in 1566, Thomas Mill owned hangings of stained canvas in green and red worth 3s. 4d.10 Generally, the colors most frequently mentioned for stained cloth were red, yellow, blue, or green, but green appears to have been the most popular. PROCESSES AND TECHNIQUES

According to Jo Kirby, “The materials used for all classes of painting in sixteenthcentury England, from formal portraits to ephemeral decorations, miniatures to wall paintings, were drawn from the same range as those used all over Europe.”11 It is likely    For early treatises on the art of cloth painting, including that practiced in England, see Mary Merrifield, Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting (1849; repr., New York: Dover, 1967), also Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 127–28, who gives European examples as early as the sixth century.    Southampton Inventories, 1:159, 2:356.    Ibid., 1:179, 225; 2:244, 265.    Sixteenth-century buckram was a fine, costly cloth of linen or cotton, not the stiffened plain-weave linen or cotton which the name signifies today; see Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Buckram,” in Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 102.    Southampton Inventories, 1:145–47. “Antique work” generally refers to designs inspired by classical motifs.  10 Ibid., 1:225, 2:249.  11 Jo Kirby, “Trade in Painters’ Materials in Sixteenth-Century London,” in Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon (London: Archetype, 2010), 341.

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Susan E. James that, together with materials, techniques were similar as well, and from the evidence available, it seems that the most frequently employed technique for decorating hanging cloths was a distemper using water-soluble pigments mixed with chalk, lime, or white lead and size of paste, glue, wax, or gum.12 Cloths were also produced by the encaustic process (which used wax to bind pigment to the cloth); by a process using lye, alum, and saltpeter to bleach a design into a colored cloth;13 and by the use of painted appliqué, in which a white cloth was painted and then fixed to a larger colored background.14 Kay Staniland has described how during the fourteenth century, predyed textiles could form a ground for painting, offering a more luxurious look and longer-lived colors. It is likely that such a process continued in England together with other earlier techniques, such as the application of gold thread or strips of gilded leather attached to a cloth ground as embellishments.15 Other decorative processes found in the sixteenth century included the use of wood blocks to print repeating images. The 1601 inventory of Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, one of the wealthiest women in England, lists “a canapie of Ash coloured saye printed” and “A canapie of yallowe and white buckeram printed.”16 Stencils copied from the plethora of pattern books available would have been used as well. Less costly hangings could be produced by attaching lengths of prepared decorated borders, bought by the roll, to the edges of a solid or particolored fabric. While the designs used in these prepared borders are rarely mentioned in detail, the descriptions that do exist suggest that they included both representational and abstract patterns. A possible example of such a border survives in a rare block print on linen in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (fig. 7.1).17 Such hangings were common particularly in the second half of the century. Charles Harrison of Southampton in 1559 owned hangings of blue, red, and green buckram, one of his green hangings decorated “with a border of canvas painted with antique work,” and “hangings of buckeram with a border of painted cloths.”18 Fellow townsman John Smith in the same year owned “hangynges of redde saye with a border” and hangings

 12 Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 137–40.  13 Merrifield, Original Treatises, 7, and Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 129, 137–38.  14 Embroidered appliqué pieces were used in the same manner as painted appliqué. In 1509, Edmund Dudley owned “vij peces of ymagerie, enbrodrid for the monethes of the yere to set upon a cloth.” Charles L. Kingsford, “On Some London Houses of the Early Tudor Period,” Archaeologia 71 (1920– 21): 41, quoting London, National Archives, King’s Remembrancer Inventories 2(17).  15 Kay Staniland, “Court Style, Painters, and the Great Wardrobe,” in England in the Fourteenth Century, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1986), 237–38.  16 NA 11/111: image reference 699, 193r, and NA 11/111: image reference 704, 206v. English will registers from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and related probate jurisdictions from 1384–1858 are recorded in the searchable online database of the National Archives, London, at http://discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C12122. In this article, references to these wills are abbreviated NA 11 followed by the probate register number, the National Archives’ image reference number, and the folio number.  17 Peter Parshall and Rainer Shoch, Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 22.  18 Southampton Inventories, 1:145–47.

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Painted Cloths in England

Fig. 7.1: Block-printed linen (ca. fourteenth century), possibly part of a border for a hanging cloth. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1888.1745. Photo: Victoria and Albert ­Museum, by permission.

of green saye “with a border to the same,” and the inventory of grocer John Staveley, also made in 1559, describes say hangings with borders in the hall, the parlor, and the bedchamber.19 This type of hanging could be found throughout England. In 1582, Isabel Rood of Durham owned “a painted cloth, and a border,” and in 1583, Marione Chapman, a widow who ran a salt factory in Newcastle, owned a border with “a story of Herod persecutinge Christe and the children in Jury [Jewry].”20 Several decorated cloths with geometric borders in the engraving of the 1547 procession of Edward VI into Cheapside seem to illustrate this type of hanging (fig. 7.2); shown draped in front of four of the windows of Goldsmiths’ Row are plain colored fabrics sewn with repeating patterned borders. Oil painting on canvas was coming into fashion on the Continent, and some oil paintings were certainly owned by English citizens. For instance, in 1540 in his house in Calais, Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, the uncle of Henry VIII, owned “a stayned clothe of themperor and empryse” that, given Lisle’s status, could refer to portraits of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal by the emperor’s favorite artist, Titian.21 In 1542, Henry VIII owned numerous paintings described as stained cloths, including a full-length image of the Prince of Wales and portraits of Suleiman the Magnificent,

 19 Ibid., 1:159–60, 165–66.  20 William Greenwell, ed., Wills and Inventories from the Registry at Durham, Part 2, Publications of the Surtees Society 38 (London: Surtees Society, 1860), 65–66, 74.  21 Muriel St. Clare Byrne, ed., The Lisle Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981), 6:200.

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Fig. 7.2: Entry of Edward VI into Cheapside, 1547; detail of an engraving (ca. 1800) by James Basire from a watercolor by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733–94), based on an original painting. Photo: Society of Antiquaries, London, by permission.

Charles V, and the Prince of Orange, all likely to have been oils on canvas.22 Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, had his portrait painted in oils on canvas while still Earl of Hertford, and examples exist of foreign painters in England, such as Antonio Toto del Nunziata (serjeant painter from 1544–54), producing portraits on cloth, which were probably done in oils.23 Yet during this period in England, the ownership of oil paintings on canvas seems to have been primarily confined to the court elite. IMAGERY AND DESIGN

From both written documents and the tangible evidence of imagery used in media that have had a greater survival rate than cloth (stained glass, manuscript illuminations, wood-block prints), it appears that the same popular canon of stories was used  22 Maria Hayward, The 1542 Inventory of Whitehall, vol. 2 (London: Illuminata Publishers for the Society of Antiquaries, 2004), nos. 710, 816, 823; Maria Hayward, “The London Linen Trade, 1509–1641, and the Use of Linen by Painters in Royal Service,” in Kirby, Nash, and Cannon, Trade in Artists’ Materials, 378.  23 Susan E. James, “Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset? Re-examining a Tudor Portrait,” The British Art Journal 2, no. 2 (Winter 2000/01): 14–21; Susan E. James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 1485–1603 (London: Ashgate, 2009), 226 n. 88.

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Painted Cloths in England throughout the Tudor period for most decorative items. This was an eclectic mix of Biblical and classical histories, Christian martyrologies, English folklore and country scenes, military exploits, hunting and hawking tableaux, heraldry, and William Harrison’s “hearbes, beasts, [and] knots.”24 Images drawn from the common cultural heritage of Western Europe, including tales from the Bible and Christian martyrology and from classical history and mythology, hung in halls beside others that stressed the idea of English exceptionalism, including legendary tales like Robin Hood or King Arthur. Such images reflected a common cultural mythology peculiar to a select population and in replicating form stood as pictographic shorthand for entire story cycles instantly recognizable to an English audience. Proverbs, wise saws, family mottos, and other forms of lettering could also be incorporated in cloths as they were in paintings. An inventory of the goods of Alice Aberie of Southampton in 1565 lists “a littell paynted cloth wth L[ette]res.”25 Such intermixed strands of imagery in a society where literacy was the exception rather than the rule were designed to instruct, entertain, and reinforce ideas and beliefs specific to English culture. Hanging cloths depicting scenes from the life of King Arthur, for instance, introduced a well-known story cycle predicated upon themes of English uniqueness but also interwoven with a much more widely embraced vision of a hierarchical society ruled by the divine right of kings. This Tudor passion for multiple meanings in singular themes can be seen in the engraving of the procession of Edward VI into Cheapside (fig. 7.2). As the procession passes Goldsmiths’ Row, the cloths with which its balconies and windows are draped display the emblematically English St. George and the Dragon, a metaphor for England Triumphant, and the Annunciation, which in this context not only references the coming of the Prince of Peace but also the coming of the Prince of Wales, soon-to-be head of the English Church and recipient of the divine mandate to rule on earth. Unsurprisingly, religious themes were particularly common subjects for hanging cloths. In 1467 a London merchant named Margaret Bate bequeathed to her family church in Houghton, Bedfordshire, three stained cloths from her home: one of the Crucifixion with Mary and St. John, one of St. John the Baptist, and one of the Trinity.26 Nearly a century later, in 1558, Robert Erryngton, a Southampton mercer, hung a cloth with a picture of St. James “in the chamber over the hall,” and in 1563 John Hull of Hambelden, Surrey, owned a cloth of Adam and Eve.27 Popular scenes from the Old Testament included the stories of David and Bathsheba, Esther, Judith and Holofernes, and David and Goliath; and from the New Testament, the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Three Kings. In his plays Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2, Shakespeare refers to painted cloths decorated with the parable of the Prodigal Son

 24 James, Feminine Dynamic, 93–96; Furnivall, Harrison’s Description, 235.  25 Southampton Inventories, 1:226.  26 Margaret McGregor, ed., Bedfordshire Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1383–1548 (Bedford: Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 1979), 24–25.  27 Southampton Inventories, 1:103–5; Surrey Inventories, 40.

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Susan E. James and the story of Lazarus.28 The Judgment of Solomon, the Tree of Jesse, and the love story of Tobias and Sarah were also common. In 1547, William Knight, bishop of Bath and Wells, owned hangings of “t’Historie of Thobye,” and John Wood, a mercer from Earls Colne, Essex, left to his daughter, Mary, in 1584, “a little story of Tobias that hangeth over [my old cupboard in the chamber].”29 Christian martyrs such as St. Sebastian, St. Stephen, and St. Catherine were popular subjects, and painted cloths with the image of the Virgin Mary, like small carved heads of St. John the Baptist, were commonplace in homes across the economic scale before the Reformation. While religious statuary seems to have declined dramatically due to the onus of idolatry after the Reformation, decorated cloths with religious themes maintained an important place in many households.30 Episodes from well-known classical story cycles such as the Labors of Hercules, Daedalus and Icarus, Paris and Helen, or the History of Ulysses were widespread, their subtexts reinforcing core values and underlying assumptions of Christian morality by stressing such concepts as faith in the divine, filial obedience, the sin of vanity, or the virtue of fidelity. Groups—of pseudo-historic personages such as the Twelve Paladins or the Nine Worthies; of sequences such as the Seven Ages of Man, the Wheel of Fortune, or the Triumph of Death; or of personified attributes such as Vices and Virtues or Faith and Her Opposites—were frequently employed in the messaging of the collective ideal and demonstrated the Tudor love of mixed mythologies. The Nine Worthies, for instance, included an eclectic grouping of heroes both mythic and real from antiquity (Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar), from the Bible and Jewish history (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus), and from European history and legend (King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godefroy de Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade). Together with battle, hawking, hunting, and picnicking scenes, tableaux incorporating classical figures—who, to judge by other visual references, probably appeared in contemporary clothing—appear in descriptions of hanging cloth, as does “antique” work incorporating classical designs and devices, fretwork in geometric patterns, coats-of-arms, heraldic animals, birds, flowers, and garlands. Another popular category was called “forest work,” or verdure. These pieces featured patterns of painted foliage, which could intertwine small religious images, human heads, birds, beasts, or flowers. As a category, “verdure” referred to the design rather than to the components of a hanging, which could be a wool tapestry but could also be a stained or painted cloth. Agas Herte, a widow in Bury in 1522, owned “a hallyng of steyned clothe wt rynnyng vynys and leves wt bests and birds,” and in 1585, Margaret Hallyday of South Ockendon owned “i piece of stained cloth of forest work

 28 William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2, in Peter Alexander, ed., The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (London: Collins, 1981), 4:2, lines 21–22, and 2:1, line 139.  29 F. W. Weaver, ed., Somerset Medieval Wills (London: Somerset Record Society, 1901–5), 3:98; Emmison, Essex Wills 1583–1592, 192.   30 James, Feminine Dynamic, 110–13.

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Painted Cloths in England hanging about the south and west part of the parlor.”31 Henry VIII owned dozens of verdure hangings, decorated “with birdes,” “with apples and a flower … and a poundegrarnett with readde flowres and blewe,” “with beasts and fowls,” “with trees,” and “with children”; some of these were probably painted.32 Evidence of the presence of trompe l’oeil cloths can be found in a sixteenth-century distempered canvas cloth in Northamptonshire that imitates a length of wainscoting.33 Multiple examples of trompe l’oeil wall paintings imitating cloth hangings also survive, demonstrating the Tudor love of decorative visual sleight-of-hand.34 Repeating geometric patterns were also popular, and two of the hanging cloths depicted in the full engraving of Edward VI’s procession into Cheapside are patterned in bold vertical stripes (one of them visible in fig. 7.2). In 1509, Edmund Dudley owned several hangings striped in contrasting colors of red and green, blue and yellow, and blue and red, and in 1573 Southampton merchant Richard Goddard owned both “a henginge clothe stayned whit and blacke” and hangings of say dyed blue and yellow with attached decorated borders.35 At the upper end of the income scale, in 1588 Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, owned “a sparver of stayned clothe of goulde and silver ….”36 In the fourteenth century, grounds for heraldic banners were formed by stitching together different-colored worsteds, and this technique no doubt survived.37 In 1566 in Southampton, Thomas Mill owned hangings of stained canvas in green and red worth 3s. 4d., as well as blue and yellow say “in panes” worth 20s. and hangings of old stained canvas “in panes” worth 3s. 4d.38 Panes were small pieces of cloth in various shapes and colors that could be sewn together to form a larger patterned hanging. They could also be appliquéd onto a larger cloth to form a raised design. An entry from about 1532 in the account books of William More, prior of Worcester, describes “panes of seynts with steyned clothes” and “steyned panes of cloth,” which may refer to prepared pieces of decorated fabric that could be appliquéd to a larger cloth, much like the notation for “vij peces of ymagerie, enbrodrid for the monethes of the yere to set upon a cloth” owned by Edmund Dudley in 1509.39 The size of hanging pieces varied greatly, from small private works hung beside a bed to lengths 20 to 50 feet long (about 6 to 15 meters) that wrapped around an entire room. Pieces of fabric could be sewn together to provide a continuing narrative and   31 Samuel Tymms, ed., Wills and Inventories from the Registers of the Commissary of Bury St. Edmunds and the Archdeacon of Sudbury (London: Camden Society, 1850), 115; Emmison, Essex Wills 1583– 1592, 51.   32 Hayward, Inventory of Whitehall, nos. 4065, 4066; David Starkey, ed., The Inventory of King Henry VIII: Society of Antiquaries MS 129 and British Library MS Harley 1419 (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), 1:321–22.   33 Edward Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England 1537–1837 (London: Country Life, 1962), 1:187b.   34 James, Feminine Dynamic, 101.   35 Kingsford, “London Houses,” 39; Southampton Inventories, 2:357–58.   36 NA 11/74: image reference 316, 249v.   37 Staniland, “Court Style,” 240.   38 Southampton Inventories, 2:248–49.   39 Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 125; Kingsford, “London Houses,” 38.

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Susan E. James later divided for bequest and inheritance purposes. In 1584 Anthony Bret of Langford, Essex, paid 51s. 8d. to “goodman Laye the painter for painting the cloths” and 2s. 6d. to his wife for sewing them together.40 In 1480 Margaret Hancok of Northampton left to her cousin, Anne Bryde, “one hallyng” painted with the pictures of St. John the Baptist, St. Christopher and St. John the Evangelist, and also bequeathed a cloth painted with angels and garlands to be shared in thirds between the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, the fraternity of the Church of St. Michael, and the almshouse of St. Thomas the Martyr, all in Northampton.41 Rather than requiring anyone to take a pair of shears to a valuable wall hanging, it is more likely that Hancok’s bequest consisted of three pieces of fabric sewn together that could be easily disassembled for division. Many of the cloths left in wills or listed in inventories are described as “old.” Jhone Mychell of Chertsey, Surrey, left a number of “old payntyd clothes” worth 4s. 8d. in her hall in 1561 and “to olde payntyd clothes” worth 5s. in her loft.42 In 1596, Elizabeth Nott of Stratford-on-Avon owned “ix old paynted clothes” hanging in her chamber.43 In 1587 Joan Kidwelle of Rotherhithe hung her hall with “the hangings of old stained Clothes,” worth 2s. 6d., and in the same year Margaret Parkehurst of Godalming had “an old painted clothe” worth 1s. hanging in her hall.44 Although it is possible that in some instances the use of this term designated an antique or particularly valuable piece or one with an implied sentimental value, generally the term appears to have been used simply to indicate age or wear. The 1547 inventory of the belongings of Henry VIII lists hangings “so olde broken and torne that they cannot be measured.”45 Yet as Mychell, Kidwelle, and Parkehurst all hung their old cloths in their halls, the public face of their homes, and as so many considered them proper items for bequest, these older pieces must have had value for their owners. Although the heritability of hanging cloths to some extent ensured the transference and continuity of traditional themes and the moral imperatives they illustrated, after Henry VIII’s break with the papacy, subjects for paintings in private houses, at all levels of society that could afford them, began to change. New works reflected the growing popularity of personal and ancestral portrait display, demonstrating an emerging need to visualize familial, dynastic, and patronage connections and exhibit evidence of those connections to a select audience. This trend merged with a rising recognition of and openly declared allegiance to a special English identity embodied in the monarchy and marked by an increasing number of royal portraits and painted

  40 F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Home, Work and Land: From Essex Wills and Sessions and Manorial Records (Chelmsford, UK: Essex County Council, 1976), 7.   41 Dorothy Edwards et al, eds., Early Northampton Wills (Northampton: Northamptonshire Records Office, 2005), 88.   42 Surrey Inventories, 28–29.   43 Jeanne Jones, ed., Stratford-upon-Avon Inventories 1538–1699, vol. 1, 1538–1625 (Stratford-uponAvon, UK: Dugdale Society, 2002), 156.   44 Surrey Inventories, 233–34, 249.   45 Starkey, Inventory of Henry VIII, no. 13252.

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Painted Cloths in England royal heraldic devices put to a widespread domestic use.46 Nicholas Mander quotes a Frenchman named Estienne Perlin, who commented in 1558 that “the English use many hangings, painted cloths, which are well done, with magnificent crowned roses, or fleurs-de-lis and lions, for you can enter few houses but you find such cloths.”47 Such prevalent reproductions on cloth of the Tudor rose and other royal emblems affirming loyalty to the crown, as well as the public’s overwhelming appetite for hangings dyed in the Tudor royal color of green, suggest that an awareness of the changing notion of national identity, together with its various manifestations in the popular aesthetic, was not lost on the manufacturers of decorated fabric. OWNERSHIP

The wills cited in this article demonstrate that over the course of the sixteenth century painted cloths were acquired by households in all parts of the country. In port cities and their outliers, which served as depots for imported goods, households appear to have been particularly rich in painted cloth inventories. In the port of Southampton, for instance, ownership of painted cloths appeared among the wills of the city’s merchants as early as 1495 and increased gradually over the first half of the century.48 Numbers expanded dramatically in the second half of the century in terms of both the quantity owned by individuals and the diversity of owners’ incomes. This dramatic increase is reflected at different levels in wills throughout England and suggests that not only was there a plentiful market in painted cloths for all tastes but that affordability and widespread availability had opened that market to even those of modest means. At the lower end of the economic scale were men and women like Christopher Stevens and Katherine Pawdone. Stevens was a ship’s carpenter from Southampton who in 1573 left household possessions worth £4 8s. 4d. and stained cloths worth 5s., while Pawdone was an impoverished widow from Great Waltham, who owned nine painted cloths at her death in 1594.49 In 1564, on her deathbed, Margaret Mettam of Chigwell left to the woman who was nursing her a selection of her meager belongings: a candlestick, an old frock, a small kettle, and a painted cloth.50 Alice Wood, a widow living in High Roothing, Essex, left 4s. 8d. at her death in 1596, together with a bed, a tablecloth, a pair of gridirons, a sheet, a kettle, a hutch, some miscellaneous

  46 “Mural of King Henry VIII Uncovered in Somerset,” BBC News Somerset (Jan. 28, 2011), http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-12306904, accessed Oct. 4, 2012.   47 “Les Anglois se servent fort des tapisseries, des toilles pinctes, qui sont bien faicts, ausquelles y a forces magnifiques roses couronnees, ou il y a des fleurs de Liz & Lions, car en peu de maisons vous pouves entrer que vous ne trouvies ces tapisseries.” Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 120; his translation.   48 Southampton Inventories, 1:10–11.   49 Ibid., 2:390–91; F. G. Emmison, ed., Essex Wills: The Archdeaconry Courts, vol. 6: 1591–1597, Essex Record Office Publication 114 (Chelmsford, UK: Essex Records Office, 1991), 55.    50 F. G. Emmison, ed., Essex Wills: The Bishop of London’s Commissary Court, vol. 8: 1558–1569, Essex Record Office Publication 124 (Chelmsford, UK: Essex Records Office, 1993), 116–17.

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Susan E. James household items, and 13 pieces of painted cloth.51 Margaret Feast, a widow from Roydon in Essex in 1597, left household goods worth £2 13s. 4d. and a hall decorated with painted cloths.52 Nicholas Mander has detailed examples of owners of decorated hangings among the poor in Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Right down at the lower reaches of the economic ladder, such household decorations were acquired, valued, and passed on as legacy. Those with middling incomes were no different. An early example is Matthew Salman, a prosperous cloth merchant from Southampton, who in 1495 had a stained hanging and painted cloths worth 14s. 4d. in his hall, as well as a painted cloth worth 20d. in the parlor, a painted cloth worth 8d. in the chamber, and four others around the house.53 Margaret Pecoke, the widow of a London alderman, owned in 1549 “a squar painted clothe of the birthe of our lorde” and “a paynted clothe of the ­marterdmn of Saint Stephen,” both “comonlie used to hang in the hall.”54 Andrew Boke, a ­Southampton shoemaker, hung painted cloths in five rooms of his house in 1569, including the servants’ chamber.55 John Hull, a self-described gentleman of Hambeldon, Surrey, in 1563, had a cloth of Adam and Eve worth 6d. in his hall and “a little cloth painted with two pictures” worth 6d. hanging in the old parlor.56 The 1597 will of well-to-do Bristol widow Elizabeth Williams describes stained cloths in the hall, the upper hall, and “the chamber where I lie.”57 London merchant Margerye Clark hung painted cloths worth 8s. in her hall in Southwark in 1602 and kept others valued at 2s. for sale in her shop.58 In addition to private homes, commercial establishments frequently had hanging cloths on their walls. Inn owner Joan Hall of Farnham, Surrey, had 11 stained cloths decorating her rooms in 1563, and Thomas Dixon, who owned an inn at Stratford-onAvon in 1603, hung painted cloths in the maids’ chamber and others worth 2s. 6d. in the lower parlor.59 In 1570 Edward Willmott, landlord of The Dolphin in Southampton, hung themed cloths in the Dragon Chamber and the Lion Chamber and owned just under £11 worth of painted cloths that he hung throughout the rest of his establishment, including the kitchen.60 Among the affluent, hanging cloths mixed frequently with more expensive tapestries. Together with their inventoried tapestries, in 1540 Lord and Lady Lisle also displayed “a paynted cloth of Olyfernis [Holofernes]” that hung in Lady Lisle’s dining

Emmison, Essex Wills 1591–1597, 226. Ibid., 225. Southampton Inventories, 1:10–11. NA 11/32: image reference 494, 353v. Southampton Inventories, 2:262–63. Surrey Inventories, 40–41. Sheila Lang and Margaret McGregor, eds., Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society Publications, 1993), 38.   58 Surrey Inventories, 401–2.   59 Ibid., 38–39; Jones, Stratford-upon-Avon Inventories, 203, 208.   60 Southampton Inventories, 2:280–89.   51   52   53   54   55   56   57

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Painted Cloths in England chamber in Calais.61 Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who owned a substantial collection of tapestries, hung painted cloths in the low gallery at her Lincolnshire seat of Grimsthorpe in 1560, and in 1566 Thomas Mill, a gentleman of Southampton, displayed in his home both tapestries and a stained cloth with the story of Hercules.62 Other tapestry owners include Bess of Hardwick, who in 1601 also owned a “suite of hanginges … being eighte peeces of woollen clothe stayned with frett and storye and silke flowers,” and the king, Henry VIII, who in 1542 owned numerous “stayned cloths” depicting classical and religious subjects, portraits, and even maps.63 In 1553 six stained cloths hung in London’s Westminster Palace.64 Apart from a handful of miscellaneous surviving pieces that show subjects as diverse as St. George and the Dragon, the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Labors of Hercules,65 the most outstanding surviving examples of painted cloths still in existence in England are the nine superb panels by Andrea Mantegna, titled “The Triumphs of Caesar,” now at Hampton Court, London (fig. 7.3). Painted in the late fifteenth century in thin tempera on canvas for Ludovico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, these exemplify the highest quality of work available to the Tudor elite. LOCATIONS AND DISPLAY

In a sixteenth-century English household there were no socially sanctioned venues for particular subjects or genres of art. Whether paintings, embroideries, cloth hangings, or tapestries, visual decoration was placed in whatever mix or location suited the tastes of the householder. Paintings were hung over tapestries or hallings; decorated protective cloths were hung over paintings. The 1509 inventory of the goods of Edmund Dudley records “a litell auter cloth of Arys, steynyd, in a frayme, with a litell courteyn of whit and blake palye (striped) afore ytt.”66 The exception to eclectic placement was religious iconography displayed in areas set off within the house for religious worship and in wealthier homes for private chapels. Yet while hanging cloths showing suites of saints, images of the Virgin, and popular scenes such as the Annunciation or the Nativity would have appeared in religious cul-de-sacs carved from domestic spaces,   61 Byrne, Lisle Letters, 6:202.   62 Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Ancaster Preserved at Grimsthorpe (Dublin: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1907), 468; Southampton Inventories, 2:244.   63 NA 11/111: image reference 701, 198r; Hayward, “London Linen Trade,” 378; and Hayward, Inventory of Whitehall, nos. 710, 816, 823, 841, 850.   64 Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury Preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1883), 1:130.   65 For examples, see “Painted Textiles in England,” Shakespeare & Hospitality, http://www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org/index.php?id=818, accessed Nov. 5, 2012, and “Painted Cloths,” Owlpen Manor Estate, http://www.owlpen.com/manor/painted-cloths, accessed Nov. 5, 2012.   66 Kingsford, “London Houses,” 39. For other examples of mixed visual displays, see Hayward, Inventory of Whitehall, nos. 694, 704–6, 709, 711, and the portrait of Mary Neville, Lady Dacre, by Hans Eworth, ca. 1555, in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (reproduced in James, Feminine Dynamic, 157, fig. 33).

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 7.3: “The Vase Bearers,” detail from “The Triumphs of Caesar,” tempera on canvas, by Andrea Mantegna, late fifteenth century; now at London, Hampton Court. Photo: The Royal Collection Trust, copyright Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, by permission.

they could also be found on any wall in the household hanging next to Cleopatra clasping an asp, the Labors of Hercules, a family portrait, or a genre painting of a maid with a basket of fruit.67 On the other hand, as with tapestries, specific subject matter painted on cloth could be used to define a particular space. In households like Bess of Hardwick’s or in public inns like The Dolphin in Southampton, decorated hangings were used to create themed rooms, such as the countess’s Prodigal Chamber with its hangings illustrating   67 Inventory of the household goods of William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke, Dec. 12, 1561 (London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS L.30-1982, fols. 85a–92a); NA 11/111: image reference 701, 198r, 199r (the collection of Bess of Hardwick).

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Painted Cloths in England the parable of the Prodigal Son or The Dolphin’s Dragon Chamber with its hangings of the story of St. George and the Dragon. Rooms decorated around color schemes— ­recorded with such names as the “blue chamber” or the “green chamber”—were also popular and depended on their hangings to set the color palette. The concept of workaday versus special-occasion pieces also pertained to painted hangings. Barbara Thomplinson, the widow of two Newcastle merchants, describes her “work-a-day hallinges” in her will of 1577.68 Bess of Hardwick owned two sets of hangings for the “highe greate chamber,” the more valuable one of “faire tapistrie” decorated with the story of Ulysses and “An other Suite of hanginges for the same chamber being eighte peeces of woolen clothe stayned ….”69 The frequent use of the term “halling” to indicate a stained or painted hanging suggests that originally their traditional location in the household was the domicile’s main hall. As early as 1404, the will of Johanna de Mohun of Dunster describes an old “hall[ing]” of red decorated with lions, and in 1467 Margaret Bate left to a legatee her “chamberyng of green worsted for to make him [a] halling thereof.”70 The terminology endured over the next two centuries. John Sotheren of Newcastle-upon-Tyne had two painted hallings worth 3s. 4d. in his home in 1582, and Margery Chapman of Hempstead in Essex mentioned “my painted halling” in her 1588 will.71 The mention of hallings is commonplace, but by the middle of the century—and probably a great deal earlier, to judge by the 1463 will of John Baret of Bury72—halling as a term indicating household location had become an anachronism. Hanging cloths could be found everywhere throughout the average household, in halls, parlors, chambers, servants’ quarters, kitchens, butteries, and chapels, suggesting that over the course of the century select pieces that had originally hung in domestic halls had become popular, plentiful, and cheap enough for use anywhere. Surplus cloths could be collected and were stored in chests or forms. In 1559, a Southampton widow named Jane Rigges kept “the paynted clothes” in “oen forme”; in 1558, Alice Note kept in her hall “a great chest with all my hangings,” and in 1574, Lawrence Williams had six painted cloths worth 5s. stored “in the shop chest.”73 The way in which hanging cloths were mounted and displayed varied. Sometimes they were lined. Bess of Hardwick owned “A peece of Lynnen clothe to lyne a hangyng,” and Henry VIII owned two pieces lined with canvas to hang above a chimney.74 Small

Greenwell, Wills and Inventories from Durham, 14. NA 11/111: image reference 701, 198r. Weaver, Somerset Medieval Wills, 2:303; McGregor, Bedfordshire Wills, 24. Greenwell, Wills and Inventories from Durham, 68; Emmison, Essex Wills 1591–1597, 124. Tymms, Wills and Inventories from Bury, 15–44. Baret owned a houseful of stained hangings. He left to his niece Jone “my steynyd cloth wt vii agys” and to his niece Jenete “my grene hanggyd bedde steynyd with my armys,” “the selor and the steynyd clooth of the Coronacion of our lady,” and a banker of green and red. He also bequeathed to another relative “the clothes in the halle, costers of chambrys, alle the steyned clothes wt ymages, and other consceytes longyng to the seid place … and alle the bankers ….”   73 Southampton Inventories, 1:130, 157; 2:412.   74 NA 11/111: image reference 703, 205v; Starkey, Inventory of Henry VIII, no. 13251.

  68   69   70   71   72

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Susan E. James cloths might be stretched for hanging on lightweight strips of wood referred to as a “lattice.” In 1572, Margery Hancock, a soap- and candlemaker from Southampton, owned “certain painted clothes aboute the hall wth a lettich back” and kept in her shop “an olde forme and certain old hanginges abowte it wth a letttys and a grate.”75 Such cloths might also be displayed in frames. A 1509 inventory notes “a litell auter cloth of Arys, steynyd, in a frayme.”76 They might be fastened onto boards. In 1563 in Surrey, Joan Hall owned three painted cloths and “a Jenyd bord ffor the bake [a joined board for the back]” worth 5s., and in 1587, the inventory of Elizabeth Kirkhouse of Durham mentions “ij boordes, with certaine paynted clothes” worth 4s. hanging in her hall.77 It has been suggested that a number of the ways in which these cloths were physically mounted on the walls of a room may be deduced from the surviving medieval trompe l’oeil wall paintings that imitated them.78 Among the depicted cloths, some were hung from loops sewn to their upper ends, which were attached to hooks set into the wall. Some were hung from rods thrust through a pocket sewn along the upper edge. Another trompe l’oeil painting imitates a cloth hanging from “points of support arranged at regular intervals and falling in vertical folds with the intervening festoons represented by V-shaped lines.”79 At Ely, wall paintings show trompe l’oeil images of cloths of a stiff material, heavily bordered, hanging flat against the wall, flanked by plain painted hangings of a much lighter material, draped in curves. This arrangement matches the visual organization of the hangings in Goldsmiths’ Row on the engraving of Edward VI’s procession into Cheapside, where stiffened flat cloths are interspersed with lighter-weight draped ones (fig. 7.2). In Tudor material culture, as in Tudor social culture, ranked order within an accepted hierarchy was a standard trope. Even paint pigments were organized into a pyramid of graded value, with the most expensive—lapis lazuli and vermilion—at the top, and red lead and ochre, called “alehouse colours,” at the bottom.80 In inventories and wills, descriptions of individual objects show that they were habitually considered as parts of a greater whole. Measured against a culturally accepted set of variables defining value, including size, cost, intricacy of workmanship, age, and condition, everything from silver plate to clothing and from pots and pans to pieces of furniture was invariably rated by precedence from best to worst. Groups of related possessions were reckoned in pairs, sets, nests, suites, and garnishes, each individual item functioning as a unit of a larger collective, the lares and penates of the householder. Hangings were no different. Tapestries, too, which generally came in sets or suites, were graded, but as a class sat at the top of the value pyramid. Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, owned “six peeces of hanginge of tapestry of the better sorte” in

Southampton Inventories, 2:332–33. Kingsford, “London Houses,” 39. Surrey Inventories, 38; Greenwell, Wills and Inventories from Durham, 308. E. W. Tristram and Monica Bardswell, English Medieval Wall Painting: The Thirteenth Century, vol. 2, part 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 389.   79 Tristram and Bardswell, Wall Painting, 390.   80 Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, 1:137.   75   76   77   78

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Painted Cloths in England 1588.81 Painted or stained cloths took positions below, yet this did not render them valueless. According to Shakespeare’s Falstaff, they were “worth a thousand of these … fly-bitten tapestries.”82 Generally, decorated cloths were ranked in wills and inventories according to their location in the home, where location was the indicator of graded value. Hangings in the hall, for instance, were of greater value than those hung in antechambers. They were often paired, too, with furniture or with domestic architectural features as a collective unit of installation given a single value. The 1554 inventory of the household goods of merchant Thomas Huttoft lists as worth 3s. 4d. “the bench with the battellmenntes for the hangings about the hall.”83 The 1559 inventory for grocer John Staveley lists as a unit worth £4 the joined work about the hall together with the say hanging and the border above the joined work.84 In 1558, mercer Robert Erryngton’s inventory lists his painted cloths and the joined benches beneath them as a unit worth 14s. 4d., and the 1562 inventory of John Fletcher’s household goods contains a description of a “ceiling with hangings of green saye and a border to the same praised [appraised] with a portal” and a “wainscot ceiling and stained hangings” worth 13s. 4d.85 In halls and parlors the length and breadth of the country, hanging cloths were placed “over the table and bench,” “over the bench in the hall,” “between the doors,” “all a length of the table” and “over the desse [dais].”86 That cloths were often valued as a unit with other movables suggests that their placement within the household was given some care and consideration by that household’s owners and that when installed, the hangings were intended to be viewed as one component of a larger architectural partnership. Together with the halling, another category of domestic decorated cloth was the chimney cloth attached to a chimney piece above the fireplace. Chimney cloths, too, hung in households rich and poor. The 1547 inventory of Henry VIII’s possessions lists two chimney cloths “of verdure lined with canvas.”87 In 1558 Richard Mershe of Southampton owned “a chemney cloth stayned” worth 12d., and in 1575 a sailor named William Barat owned “a paynted clothe before the chymne” in the kitchen.88 Painted and stained cupboard cloths also appear in inventories, many of them made of calico or imported cotton. Henry VIII’s inventory lists “one Callycute clothe striped longe wayes and overthuarte with redd.”89 In the early 1570s, painted calico cupboard cloths valued at 5s. were being imported at Southampton in not insignificant numbers.90 The   81 NA 11/74 image reference 316, 2549r.   82 Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, 2:1, lines 140–41.   83 Southampton Inventories, 1:62. The bequest would suggest that to Huttoft, the bench formed a set, with a wooden frame carved in the shape of a battlement with merlons and crenels used to suspend the painted cloths against the wall.   84 Ibid., 1:165.   85 Ibid., 1:103–5, 179–80.   86 Emmison, Essex Wills 1583–1592, 178–79, 192, 329; Southampton Inventories, 2:425; David Hickman, ed., Lincoln Wills 1532–1534 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2001), 343.   87 Starkey, Inventory of Henry VIII, no. 13251.   88 Southampton Inventories, 1:128, 2:418.   89 Starkey, Inventory of Henry VIII, no. 11390.   90 Southampton Inventories, 1:162; 2:323, 346.

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Susan E. James market for these still existed forty years later, at least in the north, but at far greater cost. Scottish rate books for 1612 list “calico copboord claiths, the piece … xls.”91 Besides hanging in a hall, parlor, chamber, or chapel, decorated cloths hanging from iron rings were popularly used to enclose a bed. In 1522 Agas Herte owned “a testor steyned wt Seynt Kateryn at the hed and the crusifixon on the selor” and “a testor steyned wt fflowers, and iij curteyns,” and in 1538 Alyce Harvy of Bury owned “one seller steynyd clothe with V wounds and iij curtayns thereunto steynyd.”92 In 1560 Phylyppe Collen of Langley hung “the new painted cloths in the chamber about the bed,” and Margaret Reinold of Childerditch noted in her will of 1588 “the painted cloths about the bed.”93 At a more affluent level, Bess of Hardwick’s 1601 inventory describes “a canapye of yellowe saye stayned with Birdes and Antiques.”94 Such cloths could also be used as window curtains. The inventory of Thomas Harrison of Southampton notes in 1554 “two painted curtains for the window of buckeram 10s.”95 Another function for a domestic stained cloth was specified by William Place, a priest from Bury in 1504, who ordered its use as a bier covering. Place left “a blak clothe steyned wt an ymage of deth” to a local friar with the injunction that “the sam cloth be set upon my hers in the day of my buryying.”96 Whether they covered the windows or a bier, enclosed the bed, lined the cupoard, decorated the walls, or hung above the fireplace, painted and stained cloths were common, acknowledged items of English household decoration with both cultural and economic importance and, given their preponderance in wills and inventories, a socially recognized heritable value that allowed for generational transference of both the cloth and its intrinsic messaging during the lifetime of the fabric. PRODUCERS AND DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

Despite readily available ingredients97 for producing decorated cloth hangings in England, it is apparent from surviving records that in the cities, at least as the

  91   92   93   94   95   96   97

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), s.v. “calico,” def. 3. Tymms, Wills and Inventories from Bury, 115–16, 136. Emmison, Essex Wills 1558–1569, 17; Emmison, Essex Wills 1583–1592, 113. NA 11/111: image reference 701, 197r. Southampton Inventories, 1:55. Tymms, Wills and Inventories from Bury, 105. Pigments and dyestuffs, manufactured locally or imported, could be purchased from a variety of merchants, including grocers and apothecaries. See Brian Dietz, ed., The Port and Trade of Early Elizabethan London, Documents (Leicester: London Record Society, 1972), 432–33, 435, 462–63, 465–66, 523, 525, 539, 576, 624, 627, 647; Susan Flavin and Evan T. Jones, eds., Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent, 1503–1601: The Evidence of the Exchequer Customs Accounts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 72; Jean Vanes, ed., The Ledger of John Smythe, 1538–1550: From the transcript made by John Angus (London: HMSO, 1974), 48, 190; Peter Spufford, “Lapis, Indigo, Woad: Artists’ Materials in the Context of International Trade before 1700,” in Kirby, Nash, and Cannon, Trade in Artists’ Materials, 10–28, and Filip Vermeylen, “The Colour of Money: Dealing in Pigments in SixteenthCentury Antwerp,” in Kirby, Nash, and Cannon, Trade in Artists’ Materials, 356–65.

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Painted Cloths in England c­ entury progressed, imported finished goods had taken the urban market away from local manufacturers. In 1598 John Stow wrote: “In Trinity Lane, on the west side thereof, is the Painter stayners hall, for so of old time were they called, but now that workmanship of stayning is departed out of use in England.”98 By 1601, a proposed bill in Parliament stated, “Painting of cloths is decayed and not an hundred yards of new Painted Cloth made in a year here by reason of so much Painted Flanders pieces brought from thence.”99 Inventories and port books support these claims that “Flanders work,” “overseas work,” “pannum depictum,” and “draps de Bruges” were flooding the country during the sixteenth century. A 1507 book of rates for the port of London notes that “Payntyd clothes the dossen” were common enough to have their own rating category and were taxed at 6s. 8d.100 By 1582, this had risen to 13s. 4d.101 The London Customs Book for April 21 to June 23, 1509, has four listings for merchants who imported 33 dozen pannorum depictorum, and in the same year in Southampton, three ships coming from the Low Countries are listed with painted cloths in their cargo.102 The London Port Book for 1537–38 has ten entries for large quantities of imported painted cloths, and in that year a single merchant named Peter Koftman imported at least two lots on different ships, one of which contained 240 painted cloths.103 In Southampton, merchants with strong ties to the Channel Islands, such as Lawrence Williams in 1574, listed among their trading stock painted cloths, which probably arrived in England via Rouen.104 Imported from continental producers or through factors, stored in shop chests and sold on by merchants in sizes that ranged from narrow rolls of ornamented borders to wall-spanning lengths as long as 50 feet, decorated hangings enjoyed a brisk trade, and from the numbers of cloths listed in the surviving inventories of the nation’s private homes, the market for these desirable foreign goods must have seemed inexhaustible. Despite the apparent plight of the native English decorated cloth industry, some manufacturing still went on. In 1527, Richard Gibson recorded wages at court for the staining of 600 yards of cloth, and Sir Thomas More designed a series of painted cloths “with nyne pageauntes, and verses ouer every of those pageaunts,” presumably produced locally.105 The 1560 account records of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, show her commissioning painted cloths from a local Lincolnshire painter,

  98 John Stow, A Survey of London, introduced by Charles L. Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 2:3–4.   99 Tawney and Power, Tudor Economic Documents, 1:138. 100 My thanks to Jo Kirby for sharing this information with me. N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), 70. 101 T. S. Willan, ed., A Tudor Book of Rates (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), 45. 102 Gras, Customs System, 562–63, 575. 103 Courtesy of Jo Kirby: Particulars of Account of R. Warner, collector of petty customs on imports, 28–29 Henry VIII, records for Peter Koftman (London, National Archives, Exchequer Accounts 122/81/18, Port of London). 104 Southampton Inventories, 2:412. 105 Quoted in Hayward, “London Linen Trade,” 384.

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Susan E. James as do the 1539 records of Edward Seymour, then Earl of Hertford, in Somerset.106 ­Anthony Bret of Langford, Essex, paid 51s. 8d. in 1584 to “goodman Laye the painter for painting the cloths,” and in 1599–1600, Bess of Hardwick’s accounts note that John the Paynter was supplied with “paynting stuff … for stayning the cloth” at Hardwick Hall.107 Eighteen men described themselves as painter-stainers in their wills probated in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in the second half of the century, and the 1591 will of Alice Gammage of Essex, with its description of her painting tools and paraphernalia, suggests that she too may have produced painted or stained cloths, having learned her craft from the dyer John Whyghte, who was probably her father.108 In order to satisfy the demonstrably robust market for hanging cloths, those imported from the Continent would have featured designs appealing to an English audience. After the Reformation, imports with religious subjects must have taken into account English sensibilities, but apart from this there is little to indicate whether cloths exported to England by foreign manufacturers were different in design from those sold to other parts of Europe. It is also unclear whether continental producers had developed a targeted market for cloths with such specifically English subjects as King Arthur, Robin Hood, or the Tudor rose. The sheer number of these referential cloths, described by Estienne Perlin in 1558, suggests the possibility that some of them may have been produced in England. In port cities such as London, Southampton, Newcastle, and Bristol and in major towns with close trading ties to them, foreign imports of decorated fabric sold through local merchants seem to have dominated the market. Yet farther out in the countryside, local manufacturers may have had greater importance to rural populations, and English workshops may have used niche markets to focus on specialized parochial images to supplement more generic continental imports. CLOTHS IN CONTEXT

In his 1549 Discourse of the Common Weal, Sir Thomas Smith divides England’s imports into three categories. In the second category, goods essential to civilized living, he lists wines, spices, various fruits, dyes, linen, and painted cloth.109 In use as ornamentation for domestic spaces at least as early as the fourteenth century, painted cloths had saturated the country by the sixteenth. While inventories show that people at all levels of income owned them, wills indicate that those of middling and lower income placed a greater value on that ownership. Far more frequently in their wills, particularly in the second half of the century, such cloths are invested with heritable properties, listed among prized possessions and passed on as legacies to friends and

106 Manuscripts of the Earl of Ancaster, 468; John E. Jackson, “Wulfhall and the Seymours,” Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 15 (June 1875): 145. 107 Emmison, Elizabethan Life, 7; Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting, 1:181b. 108 Emmison, Essex Wills 1591–1597, 106; Emmison, Essex Wills 1583–1592, 294. 109 Quoted in Nicola Costaras, “Early Modern Blues: The Smalt Patent in Context,” in Kirby, Nash, and Cannon, Trade in Artists’ Materials, 402.

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Painted Cloths in England relations. Those at the upper end of the income spectrum possessed woven tapestries, hangings of greater intrinsic worth, and it is these which appear most frequently in their wills. However, a grey area does exist in the testaments of the affluent whenever the general term “wall hanging” appears. Such a term could and probably did denote an intermingling of imported tapestries, “counterfaite arras,”110 embroidered pieces, and painted cloths. One advantage that painted hangings had over the more expensive tapestries was that because of their lower cost and availability, their imagery could be more sensitive to changing tastes and fashion trends. For most people, it was far easier to exchange a painted wall hanging than a valuable tapestry in an altered political or religious environment. A painted cloth that featured the Tudor rose entwining the pomegranate emblem of Catherine of Aragon could, in a politically progressive household, be exchanged without much difficulty for one in which the Tudor rose embraced the three feathers of the Prince of Wales. A cloth showing the martyrdom of St. Sebastian could, with the Reformation, easily give way to a hanging featuring a portrait of the monarch enthroned. In 1558, when Henry Russell of Little Malvern, Worcestershire, died, he owned “a hanging with a image,” probably of the Virgin Mary. Seventeen years later, when his widow, Milburgha Brockton, died, the cloth had vanished from the household inventory and in its place hung “a table of Henry Theight.”111 Like the proliferation of cheaply printed vernacular texts, which flourished with the Reformation, so much of the merchandise of the painted cloth industry was inexpensively produced112 that subject matter could be altered at will and could express viewpoints popular or elitist, traditional or idiosyncratic, announce family identities, or proclaim national loyalties. The painted cloth, particularly among the non-elite, was at once a cherished possession, a valued legacy, and a disposable commodity with a flexible vocabulary of subject matter. Almost more than any other article of household furnishing in the Tudor period, decorated cloths articulated in readily recognizable images the convictions and preoccupations, the aspirations and social prejudices that formed the received cultural legacy of a nascent nation. The stories they told held up a mirror reflecting shared belief systems that were particularly English entwined with mythologies common to Europe as a whole. During the following century, the even more cheaply produced decorated wallpapers began to replace hanging cloths as large-scale wall covers.113 By the middle of the seventeenth century, painted cloths had become recognized only as framed oil paintings, collections of which were fashionable among the elite. The fragility of the fabric from which sixteenth-century hangings were constructed made them ephemeral, 110 NA 11/27 image reference 109, 85v, and Kingsford, “London Houses,” 39. A counterfeit or false arras usually referred to a hanging painted or stained to look like a tapestry. 111 Malcolm Wanklyn, ed., Inventories of Worcestershire Landed Gentry 1537–1786 (Worcester, UK: Worcestershire Historical Society, 1998), 32, 50. 112 Values given in inventories for both painted and stained cloths vary greatly, but the least expensive cost only a few pence. 113 Mander, “Painted Cloths,” 128–29 and note 55. Paper hangings were already appearing in English inventories as early as the 1560s; Southampton Inventories, 2:274.

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Susan E. James and few examples survive. Yet the wills and inventories of the period left by men and women of all socioeconomic classes allow for some understanding of their physical nature and social importance.

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Recent Books of Interest Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe, by Ulinka Rublack (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0199645183. 376 pages, 156 color illustrations. Despite the title, Ulinka Rublack’s focus is on Renaissance Germany. Occasionally there is a look at the wider world, including Asia and the Americas. An examination of German clothing and ornament is welcome, as it is not so well documented as Italy in the English-language scholarship. The author covers not just the Renaissance, with its greater supply of clothing and ornaments, but also the Reformation. The Reformers were hostile to Catholic ceremonial dress, but they were aware of their own sartorial choices. (The author does seem to confuse liturgical vestments with the street dress of the Catholic clergy.) The emphasis in Reformed circles fell on decorum, not poverty of dress, especially among the married laity. Women particularly were expected to be modest in dress and demeanor. Overall, Rublack’s focus is on dress as a sign of belonging, or at least on aspiration to belong, rather than on the classification and division of groups. The moralists criticized luxurious display, as they did elsewhere, but new fashions were adopted by both men and women, even in cities that embraced the Reformation. German humanists like Conrad Celtis defended German exceptionalism, especially with reference to Italian practices. Their judgments could be reinforced by the depiction of Germans and others. Men of burgher background were shown as well dressed and their women as modestly clad, whereas other peoples, especially Italians, could be shown as less concerned with decorum and modesty. Curiosity about more exotic dress ran alongside attacks on the garb of the Catholic clergy. The lansquenets, mercenary soldiers, were looked at with as much envy as condemnation for their extravagant finery. Costume books provided glimpses of the clothing of populations as far away as the Americas. Artists might treat these exotic people with either respect or outright contempt. The exotic could be contemplated in woodcuts, but revelers also could adopt these styles for masquerades.

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Recent Books of Interest Particularly useful are the studies of individuals and their clothing choices. ­ atthäus Schwarz of Augsburg, the focus of the first chapter, recorded his body and M its clothing from youth until late life, a period of more than four decades. His “Book of Clothes” was decorated in color and notes the date of each picture. The stylish bachelor became a mature married man, wearing beard, robe and sword; the last pictures show the effects of old age. Schwarz’s self-presentation differs considerably from the more practical correspondence of the Behaims of Nuremberg. In 1563 Magdalena Römer Behaim was left a widow with seven children, responsible for both the economic and moral welfare of her brood. Correspondence with her sons Friedrich and Paul covers new and used clothes, styles, and costs. Her daughter Magdalena wrote about everything from her young son’s health to the cloth she wanted her husband to buy in northern Italy. All this presents a picture of a family that balanced awareness of fashion with economic prudence. These glimpses of actual persons making choices about dress and expenditure, public image and self-expression, make Rublack’s book a worthwhile read. — Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University The Inventory of King Henry VIII: Textiles and Dress, edited by Maria Hayward and Philip Ward (London: Harvey Miller, 2012). ISBN 978-1905375424. 366 pages, 189 illustrations (148 in color). Many of us had lost hope that this long-anticipated commentary to accompany the transcript of the posthumous 1547 inventory of Henry VIII (published 1998) would ever see print. In fact, in the years since its inception, one contributor has resigned and six others have died. To say that it has been worth the wait may be an overstatement. However, its arrival is welcome. Based on the title, it is no surprise that chapters are devoted to the king’s garments, tapestries, carpets, embroidery, and fur; but the perhaps less-than-expected inclusion of wardrobe and equipment “for horse, hawk and hound,” as well as a discussion of tents, is an indication of the very thorough nature of this book. The roster of authors includes such revered names as Santina Levey, Donald King, and Elspeth Veale. The quality of the content is consistent throughout; each chapter is tightly focused, densely researched, and very readable. The text is cross-referenced to the original transcript, a yeoman’s task overseen by Philip Ward. Happily, it is not necessary to have the transcript at hand to fully appreciate and make use of this commentary. The volume is beautifully illustrated; and it is a mark of the depth of knowledge of each of the contributors that so many of the supporting images are less than familiar. However, with the wide margins and airy line spacing, the text is not so dense as one might expect given the dimensions of the book (8.5 by 11 inches) and the number of pages—which is perhaps a concern given its cost, despite the excellence of the contents. A volume on arms and armor and another on decorative arts and everyday objects are scheduled to follow. One can only hope that the interval between the current volume and the next will be considerably less than fourteen years. — Tawny Sherrill, California State University, Long Beach 162

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Recent Books of Interest Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011). ISBN 978-0472071173. 388 pages, 70 illustrations (54 in color). This useful but uneven collection of thirteen essays discusses subjects ranging from dress accessories to less expected items such as wax seals, scissors, and even human beings. The editor, a professor of Renaissance studies at New York University, explains in her introduction that her aim is to bring accessories “to the center of a discussion about material culture” by emphasizing their multiple meanings and uses. “Ornamentalism” is defined in terms of adorning one’s self with accessories as a way to achieve “beauty, fashionability and access to public value and recognition” in relation to the human desire for self-expression. The essays are divided into five sections. The first, “Dressing Up,” is a trio of excellent articles on dress accessories focusing not simply on expected subjects, such as the use of accessories to enhance and create a fashionable appearance, but also the dual meanings inherent in the use of items that are both useful and decorative. The second section, “Erotic Attachments,” is perhaps the weakest; only one essay, on the use of busks as love tokens and gender significators, completely succeeds, while the others fail to convince in their exploration of the multiple meanings of, respectively, codpieces and phallic substitutes. The third section, “Taking Accessories Seriously,” is similarly uneven, with fine essays on the symbolism and use of pearls in Elizabethan culture and the role of jewelry in middle-class life followed by an overly theoretical exploration of the literary symbolism of wax seals in Shakespeare. The strongest pieces in the book are found in part four, “From Head To Toes,” two excellent essays on the role of the Dutch immigrants who produced the Elizabethan era’s elaborately starched ruffs, and the place of extravagant footwear in Italy as both erotic instrument and means by which women could physically and spatially dominate their environment. That these are followed by two more comparatively weak essays in the last part, “Unlikely Accessories,” is a real shame; scissors as dress accessory and the use of boys as symbols of power, aspiration, and erotic object are fascinating subjects that deserve a fuller exploration than they receive here. Despite the editor’s best efforts, it can be difficult to see how concrete examinations of physical objects belong in the same collection with literary criticism. Ultimately, the book as a whole is best when it concentrates on the accessories themselves and their role in early modern life, and less on the underlying theory. — Lisa Evans, ­Easthampton, Massachusetts Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature, by Nicole D. Smith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). ISBN 978-0268041373. 289 pages, 5 illustrations (2 in color). With Sartorial Strategies, Nicole D. Smith posits a dialog between secular and clerical literature with clothing at its focus. Readers of romance literature will be familiar with that genre’s use of clothing as a rhetorical device to portray the ideals of its aristocratic audience, including the ability to transform the wearer into something 163

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Recent Books of Interest beautiful. Readers of penitential literature and other pastoralia, on the other hand, will be familiar with the common clerical condemnation of beautiful or fashionable clothes as both enticement to and evidence of sin, particularly the sin of Pride. Smith, focusing on clothing as portrayed in four pieces of vernacular literature dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, demonstrates how fine or unusual clothing can be used to signify virtue, rather than vice. Smith’s chapters on Marie de France’s Guigmar, the Gawain-poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer’s “Parson’s Tale” each contains an analysis of contemporary fashions, with reference to art and material culture, as well as an analysis of how the corresponding clerical literature (particularly penitential literature) viewed such fashionable clothing. Her chapter on Heldris de Cornualle’s Roman de Silence discusses clerical condemnation of cross-dressing. In each chapter, Smith demonstrates how the typical clerical views of fine clothing as sinful are recast to demonstrate virtue. In Guigmar, the use of tight lacing and knots, typical of twelfth-century aristocratic dress, symbolize discipline and corporeal restraint. In Roman de Silence, Silence’s crossdressing is a symbol of her obedience to her father’s will and her status as a paragon of chivalry, rather than the abomination portrayed by clerics. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the token of a lavishly-decorated girdle given to Gawain by a lady to protect him becomes a symbol of penance rather than of the sin of pride; Gawain adopts the girdle as a sign of his contrition at having lied about its origins to the Green Knight, husband to the lady who had tried to seduce him. Finally, Chaucer’s “Parson’s Tale” is placed into context of other contemporary literature discussing the threefold path to penance: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. However, Chaucer introduces a twist: After the typical condemnations of fashionable clothing as a symbol of Pride in the sections on contrition and confession, Chaucer’s Parson accepts that the wearing of fine clothing can be a sign of satisfaction, the third stage of penance. Rather than the selfmortification of the hair shirt, such clothing reflects spiritual bliss—an outward sign of the goodness of Christ. The penitent thus becomes symbolically clothed in virtue. Readers interested in how fashionable aristocratic clothing was portrayed and interpreted by contemporary writers, both lay and clerical, will find this work of use. — Susan Carroll-Clark, Ajax, Ontario Things from the Town: Artefacts and Inhabitants in Viking-Age Kaupang, edited by Dagfinn Skre, English translation and revision by John Hines (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2011). ISBN 978-8779343092. 483 pages, 273 illustrations (188 in colour). Things from the Town is an archeological finds report covering artifacts from the Viking-age town of Kaupang, at the mouth of the Oslo fjord in modern-day Norway. The town was occupied throughout the ninth century and the first half of the tenth century. In addition to discussing the differences between the grave finds and the settlement area finds within Kaupang, the report also includes comparisons to Viking-age finds from Birka, Hedeby, and rural areas. Of particular interest to scholars of dress and textiles are the 34 pages on textile production equipment and 139 pages 164

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Recent Books of Interest on jewelry and ornamentation. The survey also includes excellent sections on vessel glass and pottery. Things from the Town has achieved its goal: keeping the printed finds report relevant in this day of easy online access to museum artifact databases. It contains both basic and detailed empirical studies, without publishing the entirety of the data (available to any interested scholar), as well as discussions of the problems in interpreting the data and the conclusions that can be reached. As Dagfinn Skre writes: “The great strength of the printed finds report over any net-search is, in my opinion, that the systematization of the finds is both qualified and contextualized.” While the text is technical, it is linguistically quite fluent, with only rare indications of the translation. All the contributors make extensive use of maps and charts, as well as beautifully clear photographs (in color) and archeological drawings. As the site was not particularly conducive to the preservation of organic or metal objects, the section on textile production equipment concentrates on loom weights and spindle whorls. It also includes smaller sections on weaving battens, needles, smoothing stones, and textile fragments, concluding with a discussion of women and textile production. While other sections do include some formal catalog data of individual finds, this section provides significant quantities of aggregate data and comparisons regarding characteristics such as material, size, weight, and shape. The section on spindle whorls uses the results of experimental archeology to draw conclusions about the types and qualities of threads likely produced. The jewelry section covers both Scandinavian metalwork and continental and Insular metalwork as well as components such as amber, jet, carnelian, and rock crystal. Besides providing beautiful images and clear drawings of both the front and back of finds, the section on metal jewelry compares and charts the various dating schemes used by scholars over time. The discussion of the prevalence of various styles of jewelry by both location and time is enlightening both in its conclusions and in its analysis of previous interpretations. This section also includes an excellent discussion of the trade patterns that can be deduced from the finds. — Anne Marie Decker, Aberdeen, Maryland ALSO PUBLISHED

The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers, Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012). ISBN 978-1409446637. 374 pages, 152 illustrations (12 in color). Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c. 450–1450, edited by Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden, ­Netherlands: Brill, 2012). ISBN 978-9004124356. 692 pages, 137 illustrations (36 in color). The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450, online database of dress and textiles vocabulary of all languages written and spoken in the British Isles ca. 700 to 165

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Recent Books of Interest 1450 (University of Manchester and University of Westminster). Chief investigator, Gale R. Owen-Crocker; co-investigators, Louise Sylvester and Cordelia Warr. Basic search and browse functions for a limited number of words are now accessible at http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk. Advanced search functions and the full list of words to be available after May 2013.

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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

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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 168

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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 169

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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 and Britt Nowak-Böck Chrystel Brandenburgh Maren Clegg Hyer Louise Sylvester Patricia Williams Kathryn Marie Talarico Lisa Evans

The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials from Sixth-Century Bavaria Old Finds Rediscovered: Two Early Medieval ­ Headdresses from the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England Mining for Gold: Investigating a Semantic Classification in the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion Dressing for Success: How the Heroine’s Clothing (Un)Makes the Man in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose Anomaly or Sole Survivor? The Impruneta Cushion and Early Italian “Patchwork”

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Contents ANTONIETTA AMATI CANTA Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari LUCIA SINISI The Marriage of the Year (1028) 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 Topics in this volume range widely throughout the European Middle Ages. Three contributions concern terminology for dress. Two deal with multicultural medieval Apulia: an examination of clothing terms in surviving marriage contracts from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, and a close focus on an illuminated document made for a prestigious wedding. Turning to Scandinavia, there is an analysis of clothing materials from Norway and Sweden according to gender and social distribution. Further papers consider the economic uses of cloth and clothing: wool production and the dress of the Cistercian community at Beaulieu Abbey based on its 1269–1270 account book, and the use of clothing as pledge or payment in medieval Ireland. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of dagged clothing and its negative significance to moralists, and of the painted hangings that were common in homes of all classes in the sixteenth century.

Cover image: Detail from the Baldishol Tapestry, Hedmark, Norway, twelfth century (Oslo, Norway, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, no. OK-02862). Photo: Ørnelund, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, by permission.

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Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9

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MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

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Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker