Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Volume 10 [10] 1843839075, 9781843839071

Citation preview

10 •

•

Contents CHRISTOPHER J. MONK Behind the Curtains, Under the Covers, Inside the Tent: Textile Items and Narrative Strategies in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art LISA MONNAS

Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles

REBECCA WOODWARD WENDELKEN Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 MAUREEN C. MILLER The Liturgical Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia: Their Historical Significance and Current Condition CHRISTINE MEEK Clothing Distrained for Debt in the Court of Merchants of Lucca in the Late Fourteenth Century VALIJA EVALDS

Sacred or Profane? The Horned Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Priory

MICHELLE L. BEER “Translating” a Queen: Material Culture and the Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots ELIZABETH COATSWORTH “A formidable undertaking”: Mrs. A. G. I. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery

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.

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

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

Cover image: Boss with a woman in a reticulated headdress, from the cloister of St. Frideswide’s Priory, now Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford. Photo:Valija Evalds.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

•

10 •

Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker



Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 10

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 10

edited by

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

MONICA L. WRIGHT

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2014 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 2014 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-84383-907-1

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

Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

Contents page vii

Illustrations Tables

ix

Contributors

x

Preface

xii

1

Behind the Curtains, Under the Covers, Inside the Tent: Textile Items and Narrative Strategies in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art Christopher J. Monk

1

2

Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles Lisa Monnas

25

3

Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 Rebecca Woodward Wendelken

59

4

The Liturgical Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia: Their Historical Significance and Current Condition Maureen C. Miller

79

5

Clothing Distrained for Debt in the Court of Merchants of Lucca in the Late Fourteenth Century Christine Meek

97

6 Sacred or Profane? The Horned Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Priory Valija Evalds

129

7

“Translating” a Queen: Material Culture and the Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots Michelle L. Beer

151

8

“A formidable undertaking”: Mrs. A. G. I. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery Elizabeth Coatsworth

165

v

Contents Recent Books of Interest

195

Contents of Previous Volumes

201

vi

Illustrations Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art Fig. 1.1 Sarah offers Hagar to Abraham, from the Illustrated Old page 6 English Hexateuch Fig. 1.2 Hagar flees from Sarah but returns and gives birth to Ishmael, 7 from the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch Fig. 1.3 Lot and the Sodomite men, from the Illustrated Old English 14 Hexateuch Fig. 1.4 Ham sees the nakedness of his father Noah, from the Illustrated 18 Old English Hexateuch Fig. 1.5 Noah curses Ham but blesses Shem and Japheth, from the 20 Illustrated Old English Hexateuch Fig. 1.6 Ham sees the nakedness of his father Noah, from Oxford, Bodleian 22 Library, MS Junius 11 Medieval Colour Terms Fig. 2.1 Charles V kneels before the Archbishop of Reims, from the Coronation Book of Charles V of France, Paris, 1365 Fig. 2.2 Fragment of solid cut-pile velvet with a chequered design, probably from Lucca, 1380s Fig. 2.3 Peacock, with plumage varying in colour from turquoise to royal blue and purple Fig. 2.4 Peacock, showing the both the blue and purple aspects of its plumage Fig. 2.5 Fragment of morello (murrey) voided satin velvet, Italy, second half of the fifteenth century Fig. 2.6 Detail of the back of one wing of a portable diptych showing the original cover of morello (murrey) velvet

33 40 50 50 54 55

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4

Cotton bell chasuble Alb Indigo-dyed blue linen-silk tunicle Yellow-gold samite chasuble with red samite applied bands on front and back vii

86 87 88 91

Illustrations Fig. 4.5 Detail of brown and green textile discovered inside the neckline of the chasuble

92

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6 Fig. 6.7 Fig. 6.8 Fig. 6.9 Fig. 6.10 Fig. 6.11 Fig. 6.12 Fig. 6.13

Vaulting over the southeast walk of the cloister of St. Frideswide’s Priory, Oxford Vaulting over the south cloister walk Boss of St. Frideswide and four nuns Boss with a woman in a reticulated headdress Boss with a woman in a reticulated headdress Boss with a woman in a plain wimple and veil Boss with a widow wearing a pleated wimple and veil Boss with a woman wearing relatively simple veiled horns Boss showing higher, more elegant veiled horns Detail of tomb of Thomas de Camoys and his wife, Elizabeth, at Trotton, West Sussex, ca. 1421 Effigy of Elizabeth Courtenay, at Porlock, Somerset, after 1471 The tomb of St. Frideswide, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford Detail from the base of the tomb of St. Frideswide

viii

130 131 132 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 144 146 147

Tables Medieval Colour Terms Table 2.1 Colours recorded for scarlets purchased in Paris, 1387

page 45

Clothing Distrained for Debt Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4

Clothing distrained for debt in Lucca, 1370 Clothing distrained for debt in Lucca, 1380 Licences to pawn forbidden goods, 1370 Licences to pawn forbidden goods, 1380

ix

115 117 122 124

Contributors ROBIN NETHERTON (Editor) is a costume historian specializing in Western European clothing of the Middle Ages and its interpretation by artists and historians. Since 1982, she has given lectures and workshops on practical aspects of medieval dress and on costume as an approach to social history, art history, and literature. A journalist by training, she also works as a professional editor. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER (Editor) is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester and Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. Her recent publications include “The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450,” a database available at http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk, and the Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450 (with Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward, 2012). MICHELLE L. BEER is to receive her doctorate in history in May 2014 from the ­University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her thesis, titled “Practices and Performances of Queenship: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503–1533,” focuses on the material resources and public enactment of premodern queenship in Europe, as demonstrated through wealth, hospitality, patronage, piety, and material culture, particularly wardrobe. ELIZABETH COATSWORTH is Honorary Research Fellow in the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD) at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is author of the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 8, Western Yorkshire (2008), co-author of The Art of the Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith (with Michael Pinder, 2002) and Medieval Textiles of the British Isles AD 450–1100: An Annotated Bibliography (with Gale R. Owen-Crocker, 2007), and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450 (with Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Maria Hayward, 2012). VALIJA EVALDS is Assistant Professor of Art History at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. Her research interests include monastic architecture and the history of dress from a range of periods. She is currently working on a study of the morphology and symbolic use of women’s aprons. CHRISTINE MEEK retired in 2007 from her post as Associate Professor in the Department of History, Trinity College, Dublin. Her research focuses on the political, social, x

Contributors and economic history of the Tuscan commune of Lucca, on which she has written two books and numerous articles. The article in this volume is part of a study of the Lucchese economy based on the records of the Court of Merchants. MAUREEN C. MILLER is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of two award-winning monographs on medieval Italy: The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950–1150 (1993) and The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (2000). Her newest book is Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (2014). CHRISTOPHER J. MONK lectures on medieval art and literature at the University of Manchester. His research specialties include narrative art of the Middle Ages and sex and sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England. Current projects include an interdisciplinary book titled Sex and the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England and a study of the Bible Historiée, a thirteenth-century French picture book of the Old Testament located in the John Rylands Library. LISA MONNAS has researched and written extensively on topics related to Italian silks in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. She is currently preparing articles on cloth of gold and opus anglicanum embroidery, as well as a chapter on European silk consumption during the Renaissance for a forthcoming book on silk in the premodern world edited by Luca Molà and Dagmar Schäfer. REBECCA WOODWARD WENDELKEN is the Thomas McLean Professor of History at Methodist University, Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her research centers on the transfer of textile and ceramic technologies in Eurasia. Current topics include the Greek production of fabric from wild silk moth cocoons in the late Roman Republic and early Empire, and the cultural transfer of motifs from ceramics to textiles in the Middle East and Inner Asia.

xi

Preface This volume celebrates the tenth year of Medieval Clothing and Textiles with the interdisciplinary range of approaches that this series has always emphasized. The articles in this volume examine not only the obvious roles of garments and fabrics—to provide warmth, decency, and comfort—but also their social and artistic significance in the medieval and early modern periods. Three of these papers focus on practical matters of clothing and textiles. Maureen C. Miller describes a remarkable collection of medieval vestments surviving at Castel Sant’Elia in Italy; unlike most such survivals, those at Sant’Elia include utilitarian examples alongside luxury ones. Rebecca Woodward Wendelken provides an overview of the cultivation of silk—the luxury fabric of the Middle Ages—and its spread to Western Europe before 1300, and summarizes the published scholarship on the subject. Lisa Monnas examines some of the medieval colour terms for desirable cloth, refined in the light of some extant examples, and provides definitions that should prove extremely useful to future scholars. Two articles delve into the social and monetary value of clothing. Michelle L. Beer examines the transformation of the wardrobe of Margaret Tudor, daughter of the English King Henry VII, as she undertook a great dynastic marriage to James IV, King of Scots, exhibiting the power and prestige of her father’s Tudor monarchy through her clothes and her domestic furnishings. Christine Meek’s ongoing research into the documents of fourteenth-century Lucca reveals details of working-class wardrobes through accounts of garments seized from debtors. Two essays address artistic representations. Valija Evalds’s study of the female heads on roof bosses of St. Frideswide’s Priory in Oxford focuses on the significance of portraying headdresses that were old-fashioned at the time they were carved. Christopher J. Monk demonstrates how Anglo-Saxon artists depicted household textile furnishings to indicate emotional tensions and complex human relationships in the narratives they illustrated. Finally, in an exercise in historiography, Elizabeth Coatsworth examines the life and achievements of a previously obscure figure, Mrs. A. G. I. Christie, whose pioneering English Medieval Embroidery remains a classic text. Christie’s approach to medieval embroidery was influenced by her own skill as both artist and embroiderer and by her association with the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With this volume, we welcome Monica Wright to the editorial team, where she continues to apply the expertise she has supplied since the inception of this series as xii

Preface a member of our editorial board. As always, we also express gratitude to the many scholars in related disciplines who have so generously lent their knowledge and guidance as peer reviewers for article submissions to this series. We are saddened to report the death of John Munro on Dec. 23, 2013. A distinguished economic historian who focused on textile studies, John was a member of the editorial board of Medieval Clothing and Textiles from its founding and contributed much wisdom to it, as well as a major article (in volume 3). He will be greatly missed. 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) 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 who are interested in submitting a book proposal for our subsidia series “Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles” should apply using the publication proposal form available 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.

xiii

Behind the Curtains, Under the Covers, Inside the Tent: Textile Items and Narrative Strategies in ­Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art Christopher J. Monk It is easy to dismiss representations of textile items in Anglo-Saxon manuscript art as incidental: A pair of curtains, bedclothes, or a tent might be read as nothing more than decorative embellishments. When examined more closely, however, such items may take on an important role in the structuring of a visual narrative, or their deployment may even become, in effect, commentary or discourse. Moreover, it can be demonstrated that some textile items are used strategically to compel the viewer toward interacting intellectually and/or emotionally with what is on the page. The research of Catherine Karkov has done much to dispel the notion that the drawings that form part of Old Testament narratives in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are merely illustrations of the text. In her study of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, for example, she explains and demonstrates the idea of “a metonymic compilation of text and illustration” which creates a “dialogue that echoes back and forth throughout the manuscript.”1 This is a useful way of understanding how image-text relationships produce discourse: As images trigger associations with words, and vice versa, the mind of the active reader-viewer absorbs the echoing dialogue, and as a consequence the reader-viewer is propelled into an exercise of hermeneutic endeavour. Stephen Nichols perhaps hints at something more. He remarks on the “two kinds of literacy” within “the dynamic of the medieval manuscript matrix,” observing how “reading text and interpreting visual signs […] offer a dual route of penetration to the underside

This essay represents a reworking of sections of the final chapter of my 2012 doctoral thesis at the University of Manchester, “Framing Sex: Sexual Discourse in Text and Image in Anglo-Saxon England.” I would like to acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council for its funding of my doctoral research. A version of the section on Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar was presented in May 2012 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the paper received the David R. Tashjian Travel Award.  

  1 Catherine E. Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England: Narrative Strategies in the Junius 11 Manuscript (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.

Christopher J. Monk of consciousness.”2 In essence, this essay attempts to penetrate both the consciousness of the artist and that of the reader-viewer. Its particular angle is the analysis of representations of everyday textile items as part of narrative strategies. Appreciating these strategies opens up our understanding of artistic intent and audience reception in the Anglo-Saxon period. Several scenes from two late-Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, scenes that are in actuality sexual narratives, will provide the focus for this study. The manuscripts are the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch3 and MS Junius 11.4 CURTAINS THAT REVEAL

Anyone who has been to a theatre production can relate to the metaphor of the revealing curtain: The drawing back of theatrical curtains may reveal the identity of an individual, perhaps a villain or a hero; or it may open up to the audience an imagined world, perhaps a private, inner space; or it may stimulate anticipation in some other way.5 What is clear is that revealing curtains trigger audience response and engagement. This is the case, too, with the use of curtains in medieval manuscript iconography. Famously, for example, the miniature of Matthew the Evangelist in the Lindisfarne   2

Stephen G. Nichols, “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65, no. 1 (January 1990): 8.   3 The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv (? Canterbury, 1020–40), hereafter the Hexateuch. The drawings in the manuscript accompany a vernacular translation of the first six books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. For a full-colour digital facsimile of the Hexateuch, the sharpest images are available via the British Library Manuscript Viewer, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Claudius_B_IV (accessed March 21, 2013). A CD-ROM with fullcolour facsimile images accompanies Benjamin C. Withers’ study of the manuscript, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). A black-and-white facsimile is also available: C. R. Dodwell and Peter Clemoes, eds., The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B. IV, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 18 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1974). The dating of the manuscript here is that of Withers, Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, chap. 2. In view of the probable location of production, the artist will be referred to as male.   4 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 (? Canterbury, Christ Church (Cathedral)). Leslie Lockett puts the manuscript in the period ca. 960–ca. 980; L. Lockett, “An Integrated Re-Examination of the Dating of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11,” Anglo-Saxon England 31 (2002): 141–73. For a full-colour, digital facsimile on CD-ROM, see B. J. Muir, ed., A Digital Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Junius 11 (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2004). Colour images can also be accessed via the Bodleian Library’s Luna catalogue: http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/allCollections (accessed March 28, 2013). For a black-and-white facsimile, see Israel Gollancz, ed., The Cædmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry: Junius XI in the Bodleian Library (London: Oxford University Press, 1927); see also Thomas H. Ohlgren, Anglo-Saxon Textual Illustration: Photographs of Sixteen Manuscripts with Descriptions and Index (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), plates 16.1–16.51. In view of the probable location of production, the artist will be referred to as male.   5 For an art-historical perspective on the theatricality of curtains, see Açalya Allmer, “In-Between Stage Life and Everyday Life: Curtains and Their Pictorial Representations,” Textile 6, no. 1 (2008): 18–31.

2

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art Gospels depicts a mysterious figure peeping out from behind a curtain, looking at the evangelist as he writes the gospel; as well as wondering who the man may be, the viewer is encouraged to share with him in his gaze.6 In the Hexateuch, curtains are used in various ways: They reveal spaces both as imagined realities and as figurative, or symbolic, spaces. In the story of Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham, parted curtains reveal the most private of spaces, the inner sanctum of sexual intimacy, but they also reveal the absence associated with barrenness. In both instances, as is argued below, curtains are central to the artistic strategy of the visual narrative; both scenes deploy curtains to elicit an emotional response from the reader-viewer. Also in the Hexateuch, in the story of Lot in Sodom, curtains form part of a narrative structure aimed at drawing a contrast between the inner, blessed space of Lot’s dwelling and the outer, sordid world of the Sodomite men. In this particular story, as we shall see, curtains are deployed as part of a strategy to reveal that which is actually obscured by the text. CURTAINS, SARAH, AND POLYGYNY

Polygyny, in the form of concubinage, was a custom that persisted throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. It was, unsurprisingly, a practice that prompted a significant measure of ecclesiastical anxiety.7 For example, the Anglo-Saxon penitentials, which served as handbooks for confessors, leave us in no doubt that the Church considered a man having both a wife and a concubine to be guilty of a serious sin;8 and by the late Anglo-Saxon period, the Church’s position on this matter had influenced law, so

  6 Janet Backhouse has suggested the mysterious figure “may possibly represent Christ.” Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels (Oxford: Phaidon, 1981), 47, plate 23.  7 For a comprehensive analysis of the evidence of the practice of concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England, see Margaret Clunies Ross, “Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England,” Past and Present 108 (1985): 3–34; see also Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London: Leicester University Press, 1998).   8 The Old English Penitential states: “Se man þe riht æwe hæfð ⁊ eac cyfese: ne sylle him nan preost husl, ne nane gerihto þe man cristenum mannum deð, buton he to bote gecyrre; ⁊ gif he cyfesan hæbbe ⁊ nane riht æwe, he ah þæs to donne swa him geþincð; wite he þeah þæt he beo on anre gehealdan, beo hit cyfese, beo hit æwe.” (“The man who has a lawful wife and also a concubine: No priest shall give him the Eucharist, nor perform any rites which one does for Christian men, unless he should turn to repentance; and if he has a concubine but no lawful wife, he should take charge of that to do as he thinks; nevertheless, he should know that he should have keeping of one, be it concubine, be it wife.”) Similarly, the Old English Handbook states: “Se þe hafað æwe ⁊ eac cifese: ne do him nan preost nane gerihta mid cristenum mannum, butan he to bote gecyrre; beo hym on anre gehealdan, beo hit æwe beo hit cyfes.” (“He who has a wife and also a concubine: Let no priest perform for him any rites associated with Christian men, unless he turns to repentance; he should have keeping of one, be it the wife, be it the concubine.”) Old English text is based on the editions of the penitentials by Allen J. Frantzen in his online database, The Anglo-Saxon Penitentials: A Cultural Database: http://www. anglo-saxon.net/penance/; see S42.09.01 and D54.17.01 (accessed March 21, 2013). Translation of Old English throughout this study is my own.

3

Christopher J. Monk that the practice of having both a lawful wife (rihtwif) and a concubine (cifes) was explicitly outlawed.9 Some of this moral perturbation was expressed in relation to the Old Testament story of Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham.10 In Genesis 16, Sarah, who is barren, offers to her husband her handmaid Hagar, whom she sees as a potential surrogate for sexual reproduction. Ælfric of Eynsham (ca. 955–ca. 1010), abbot and homilist, shows his concern over how this story might be interpreted by unwary individuals.11 In his Old English adaptation of the Latin commentary on Genesis by his predecessor Alcuin, he attempts to obviate any accusations of adultery or uncleanness on Abraham’s part by carefully pointing out that Sarah was barren and well into her old age, and that it was she who entreated Abraham to have a child with her servant. Furthermore, he insists that Abraham obliged his wife “swiðor for bearnteame þonne galnysse” (“chiefly for the production of children rather than lust”). The Christian undesirability of polygyny is underscored with his statement that “seo ealde æ þe þa stod næs swa stið on þam þingum swa swa cristes godspel is þe nu stent. ⁊ tæcð to anum wife” (“the old law which then stood was not as rigid on these things as the Gospel of Christ is which now stands and teaches one wife”).12 This evident anxiety over concubinage is further made manifest in Ælfric’s manipulation of the source text in his translation of the Sarah-Hagar-Abraham story. Whereas the Vulgate Bible has Sarah declaring, “the

  9 The laws of Cnut (1020–23) represent the only set of Anglo-Saxon royal legislation containing an explicit reference to concubinage. II Cnut 54.1 states: “⁊ se ðe hæbbe rihtwif ⁊ eac cifese, ne do him nan preost nan þæra gerihta, þe man Cristenum men don sceal, ærþam he geswice ⁊ swa deope gebete, swa bisceop him tæce, ⁊ æfre swylces geswice.” (“And he who has a lawful wife and also a concubine: No priest should perform for him the rites which shall be done for Christian persons, unless he desists and atones as deeply as the bishop directs him, and desists from such forever.”) Old English text: F. Liebermann, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1903), 348; see also Dorothy Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1979), 463. 10 See Daniel Anlezark, “An Ideal Marriage: Abraham and Sarah in Old English Literature,” Medium Ævum 69 (2000): 187–210. 11 For a discussion of Ælfric’s anxiety over unwary readers, see Melinda J. Menzer, “The Preface as Admonition: Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis,” in The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches, ed. Rebecca Barnhouse and Benjamin C. Withers (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 15–39; see also Rebecca Barnhouse, “Shaping the Hexateuch Text for an Anglo-Saxon Audience,” in the same volume, 91–108. 12 The full argument reads: “Hu mihte Abraham beon clæne þæt he nære forligr geteald þa þa he hæfde cyfese under his riht wife? Abrahames wif wæs untymende oð hire ylde ⁊ bæde heo hire were þæt he wið hire wylne tyman sceolde. ⁊ he swa dyde swiðor for bearnteame þonne galnysse. ⁊ eac seo ealde æ þe þa stod næs swa stið on þam þingum swa swa cristes godspel is þe nu stent. ⁊ tæcð to anum wife.” (“How can Abraham be clean so that he is not reckoned a fornicator [or, adulterer] when he had a concubine as well as his lawful wife? Abraham’s wife was barren into her old age and she entreated her husband that he should procreate with her foreign woman [or, slave/servant]. And he did so, chiefly for the production of children rather than lust. And also the old law which then stood was not as rigid on these things as the Gospel of Christ is which now stands and teaches one wife.”) The Old English text is from George E. Maclean, ed., “Ælfric’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Alcuini Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin,” Anglia 7 (1884): 46; the punctuation has been modernized. Maclean provides a translation though the translation here is my own.

4

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art Lord hath restrained me from bearing,”13 in the Old English prose Genesis, Ælfric’s translation elides God, and the emphasis is shifted to the mutual understanding of Sarah’s condition that Abraham shares with her. Sarah states simply to her husband “Đu wast þæt ic eom untymende” (“You know that I am barren”). This subtle adjustment by Ælfric changes the perspective for the vernacular reader; it places Sarah’s barrenness on a purely human level and, consequently, this has the effect of stalling any mental leap of associating God with what Sarah subsequently directs Abraham to do. The text and drawings recounting the Sarah-Hagar-Abraham story are found on fols. 27v and 28r of the Hexateuch (figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The visual narrative therein complements the textual one; however, there are subtle differences between the two, and this dissimilitude can be read as a visual amplification of the textual. The visual narrative takes on a discursive quality, projecting a subtle and sensitive understanding of perceived emotional trauma associated with polygynous relationships. Textile items feature as significant narrative elements across the story. For example, Hagar’s long sleeves (fig. 1.1, lower register) and Sarah’s spinning of yarn (fig. 1.2, upper register) are details that not only add a touch of realism but also, as is argued below, hint at the characters’ emotions—or, more precisely, at how these were perceived by the artist. Most poignant, however, is the strategic deployment of curtains to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. IN BED WITH SARAH, ABRAHAM, AND HAGAR

The upper register of fol. 27v illustrates the conversation between Sarah and Abraham: Sarah kneels before Abraham, her lord, gesturing toward Hagar. Abraham, seated authoritatively on a cushioned chair which has a rather ornate animal-headed finial, is separated off visually from the two women: He is enclosed within one architectural frame; Sarah and Hagar are within another; and yet the two frames are connected by a central column, thus indicating the inextricability of all three in the ensuing tryst. The import of Sarah’s presentation of her handmaiden is at first subtly revealed in Sarah’s interplay with the architectural frame. She is cramped underneath the sloping part of the roof, so much so that her veiled head breaks the roof-line. Thus the viewer can appreciate that there is no room for Sarah in the sexual act that is to take place; though she shares something of womanhood with Hagar, she must move aside to allow her husband to use Hagar sexually. As a contrast, Hagar dominates the space with her wide-sleeved, outstretched arms, which as well as indicating alarm, also give

13 Genesis 16:2: conclusit me Dominus, ne parerem; Douay-Rheims Bible with Latin Vulgate (Clementine): http://www.drbo.org/ (accessed March 8, 2013). All citations from the Bible are from this online edition. Note: A more literal translation of conclusit me Dominus is “God has closed me.”

5

Christopher J. Monk

Fig. 1.1: Sarah offers Hagar to Abraham, as depicted in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, 27v). Photo: Copyright © British Library Board, by permission.

6

Fig. 1.2: Hagar flees from Sarah but returns and gives birth to Ishmael, as depicted in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, 28r). Photo: Copyright © British Library Board, by permission.

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art

7

Christopher J. Monk her greater visual significance, thus mirroring the sexual importance she now has in terms of reproductive function.14 The artist evidently felt obliged to confirm more overtly the sexual significance of this presentation of Hagar, and so he developed the visual storyline in the middle register. At this point, the relationship with the written text appears to be significant. Above the upper register the words of Sarah are given: “Nim nu mine þinene to þinum bedde” (“Take now my servant to your bed”).15 The phrase “þinum bedde,” an amplification of the Latin text,16 conveys locale, or space, for the ensuing sexual act; and it introduces an aspect of domesticity that the artist seizes upon in his visual narrative, incorporating in the middle register two simultaneous representations of bedchambers, complete with a discursive deployment of items of soft furnishings. Benjamin Withers comments on the significance of the architecture in this scene, noting “the perception of simultaneity” across the two chambers. He also observes how “the architecture underscores a human dimension to the affair, visually separating and contrasting Hagar and Abraham from Sarah while connecting them at the same time.”17 In creating a visual formation of locale, it might also be said that the artist invites the reader-viewer into private or interior spaces, where not only the representation of polygynous sex is witnessed by the viewer, but the emotional turmoil associated with this is also signified. However, it is not solely the architecture that creates a “human dimension.” We must look to the curtains to fully appreciate how the artist manipulates an emotional response in the reader-viewer. Karkov associates the parting of these curtains with voyeurism, the impropriety of which “parallels and makes clear the impropriety of the [sexual] act” here depicted.18 Any impropriety is, however, moderated by the knowledge that this is a depiction of the faithful patriarch Abraham, whom as we have seen, is defended by Ælfric against accusations of sexual uncleanness. There seems to be something more than voyeurism at play here, though indeed the viewer is a voyeur of sorts, being invited or drawn into the inner sanctum of domestic life through the

14 Hagar has an identical gesture and pose overleaf in the scene where she is suddenly met by an angel (fig. 1.2, upper register). C. R. Dodwell interprets this gesture as one of anxiety or fear. I have suggested, too, that the element of beholding something (perhaps unexpectedly) is also integral to the gesture, as the Hagar-and-angel scene would appear to suggest. See C. R. Dodwell, AngloSaxon Gestures and the Roman Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 132–42; and Christopher Monk, “Framing Sex: Sexual Discourse in Text and Image in Anglo-Saxon England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 2012), 179 n. 567. 15 Quotations from the Hexateuch are taken from the following edition of the Old English Heptateuch (which additionally includes a version of the seventh Old Testament book, Judges): Richard Marsden, ed., The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo, vol. 1, Early English Text Society, o.s., 330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); the citation here, p. 36. 16 Cf. Genesis 16:2: “Ingredere ad ancillam meam” (“go in unto my handmaid”). The Old English translation may be read as either more or less sexually explicit than the Vulgate, depending on whether one understands Ingredere ad to be an imperative for Abraham to enter the sleeping quarters of Hagar or, in fact, a petition for him to enter Hagar’s body. 17 Withers, Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, 43. 18 Karkov, Text and Picture, 166.

8

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art theatricality of the parted curtains. The curtains are fully stretched out and tied to the supporting columns of the roof to reveal a full-length, side-by-side Abraham and Hagar. To increase the impression of the sense of revealing, the head of Abraham is propped up on his lozenge-shaped pillow, bringing it forward of the right curtain. The lord and his concubine are awake; their eyes are open, as we see from the drawing of their black pupils.19 Strikingly, the long strands of Hagar’s hair are visible; the lack of a veil immediately reminds the viewer that this is the most private of spaces.20 A single papoose-shaped bedcovering tightly wraps the couple together, countering their static pose with a reminder of sexual intimacy, and echoing the nakedness of Noah from an earlier scene, in which he is depicted lying naked atop an almost identical bedcovering (fig. 1.4).21 That the viewer is directed toward an interrogation of the couple’s intimacy is indicated not solely by the parted drapery but also by the pose of the recumbent Sarah in the adjoining chamber, shown to the left. Here, the single curtain hangs closed, or rather it hangs in a way that suggests that it was initially fully drawn to. Now, however, the head of Sarah pokes around its edge, and as a consequence, the viewer/voyeur of the adjoining scene is reminded that Abraham’s wife is looking too. Like a theatrical figure popping her head around a stage curtain in order to capture a glimpse of the audience, Sarah too seems desperate to see, to perceive, to understand. Her pose is awkward: Her neck is arched forward; the pillow moves with her sympathetically. Her large pupils indicate that she is fully awake, alert to the event in the adjoining chamber, though the direction of her gaze suggests she cannot quite bear to look. Without the use of curtains in this scene, the viewer would not be positioned as voyeur, and, more significantly, the viewer would not realize the sharing of Sarah’s gaze, and all that is implied by her looking. The voyeur subsequently becomes empathizer, touched by Sarah’s predicament: Sarah is aged and barren in a world where childbearing is paramount; her only solution is to offer Hagar as a sexual surrogate; but to do this disrupts the domestic and marital intimacy she has shared exclusively up to this point with her husband; and now, from her perspective, she is redundant in terms of her reproductive function. The artist’s depiction of Sarah’s alertness, evidenced by her engagement with the simultaneous and adjacent event of conjugality, serves as a visual clue to that which she anticipates from Hagar; for, as the text informs us, just above these simultaneous scenes, the consequence of Hagar’s conceiving is that she “forseah hire hlæfdian” (“despises her mistress”).22 In this one scene it is possible to understand that the artist wished to convey something of the internal turmoil he associated with Sarah’s position

19 Withers (Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, 43) states that their eyes “are closed as if asleep.” This does not seem likely, as the artist employs his typical dark, round dots to signify the irises or pupils. This can be seen most clearly when using the zoom feature on the British Library Manuscript Viewer. 20 On fol. 33v, Lot’s daughters are also depicted with their hair uncovered when they are having intercourse with their father. The other typical representation in the manuscript of unveiled hair is that of midwives in cenningtid, or post-birthing, scenes. 21 Fol. 17v. This scene is examined below. 22 Marsden, Heptateuch, 36; cf. Genesis 16:4.

9

Christopher J. Monk in this polygynous triangle, and, what is more, he desired to elicit a similar response from the reader-viewer. The domestic upheaval that ensues is underscored in the lower register. Outside the architectural frames, Sarah remonstrates with Abraham over Hagar. The text shows clearly that there is tension between the couple, Sarah accusing Abraham of dealing “unrihtlice” (“unrighteously”) with her.23 However, the most striking feature in this scene involves another pair of curtains, which are used to reveal absence, which in turn generates an emotional response. Dominating the centre, visually and metaphorically, the curtains are parted, and their ends are wrapped around the columns that divide the space between Sarah and Abraham on the left and Hagar on the right. Whereas the parted curtains in the register above reveal the moment of Hagar’s conceiving, here the curtains reveal the cruel mockery of Sarah’s reproductive lack; her barrenness is like an empty space; the pregnancy of Hagar will only reveal that absence further. The contrast is stark, and the viewer is invited to contemplate its full import. Already alerted to the significance of curtains as a means of revealing Sarah’s private emotional trauma, here the viewer can see another set of parted drapes as the ultimate reminder of the root of Sarah’s misery. A final flourish of artistic touches in this scene anticipates the switch of focus to Hagar’s impending plight, which is fully developed in the facing folio. Positioned in the architecturally framed space to the right of the revealed void, Hagar leans toward Sarah and Abraham as if listening in. She is wearing the long sleeves of an outdoor garment,24 and in the far right space a door is open.25 Thus the artist provides visual clues that anticipate Hagar’s departure due to her mistress’ subsequent abuse. Indeed, the amplifying details around Hagar in this scene suggest to the reader-viewer that she has indeed heard the words of her master and mistress, and especially that Abraham has urged Sarah to punish her as she sees fit.26 Her long sleeves are a subtle indication that the artist is sensitive to her role in this polygynous tryst. It is as if he wishes to keep Hagar warm as she flees to the cold of the wilderness. The vexing of Hagar by Sarah is represented on the following folio of 28r, in the upper register (fig. 1.2).27 Here, under the archway of the architecturally framed space, Sarah is seated, indicating her authority over Hagar. She holds a spindle with which she spins thread, even whilst she spins her invective. This artistic interpretation of Sarah’s 23 Marsden, Heptateuch, 36; cf. Genesis 16:5. 24 Gale R. Owen-Crocker suggests these extra-long sleeves were “a device for keeping the hands warm.” Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 214–15. 25 That the hinged door signifies an open door is apparent when we contrast it with the blank, closed door that bars Adam and Eve from re-entering Paradise, as depicted in the upper register of fol. 8r. I owe this observation to a personal communication from Gale Owen-Crocker. 26 “Abram hire andwirde: ‘Efne heo ys þin wyln under þinre hand: þrea hig locahu þu wylle’” (“Abraham answered her: ‘Truly she is your slave under your hand: Punish her however you wish’”); cf. Genesis 16:6. The Vulgate uses utere (“use”) for Abraham’s imperative to Sarah; Ælfric appears to translate this less euphemistically, using the imperative of the verb þreagan, meaning “punish” or “chastise.” 27 The text states that “Sarai hig þa geswencte” (“Sarah then vexed her”); Marsden, Heptateuch, 36; cf. Genesis 16:6.

10

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art haranguing of Hagar serves as a visual reminder that the domestic space, symbolized so well by the spindle, is Sarah’s domain. The mistress is not about to allow the servant to usurp her position, even though she is pregnant with her husband’s child. Hagar’s response to Sarah’s rebuking is shown by the artist to be one of grief or distress, indicated by the typical gesture of holding a hand to the face.28 To the right of this scene, separated by an internal vertical frame, we see that Hagar has fled into the wilderness, where an angel reveals himself and communicates to her God’s instruction. She is told to return and humble herself under Sarah’s hand, and as a blessing God will greatly increase her sæd (“seed” or “offspring”).29 The birth of Ishmael, Hagar’s son by Abraham, is depicted in the lower register.30 Hagar is recumbent as two midwives bathe the boy. Drawn with a smile, she lies in the typical cenningtid (“birth-time”) pose, wrapped in bedclothes as she rests her head on her arm. A visual echo is created with the conception scene: The similarity of the bedclothes in both scenes reminds the viewer of cause-and-effect. The whole story comes to a rather poignant conclusion. In the roofed space on the right, Sarah is shown taking up her position alongside a seated Abraham.31 Yet the couple do not look at each other, as they did when Sarah presented Hagar to her husband, but rather they stare out of the frame, Abraham placing his closed hand to his chin in a gesture that signifies his reflective mood.32 Indeed, the siring of Ishmael through polygyny has brought about discord.33 This final detail is another example of commentary rather than direct illustration, for the text is straightforward in its statement that “Agar þa acende sunu Abrame and he het hys naman Ysmahel” (“Hagar then brought forth a son to Abram and he called his name Ishmael”).34 It is clear then that the emotional anxiety of Abraham and Sarah is imagined by the artist. The attendant

28 For a discussion of the gesture of grief in Anglo-Saxon art, see Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Gestures, 111– 22, esp. 113, where Dodwell applies this gesture to Hagar’s “state of dejection.” 29 Marsden, Heptateuch, 36–37; cf. Genesis 16:6–11. 30 Marsden, Heptateuch, 37; cf. Genesis 16:15–16. 31 Dodwell (Anglo-Saxon Gestures, 145) considers it to be Hagar beside Abraham. Though I do not deny this possible reading, I suggest that the scene makes more sense if we interpret it as Sarah, as Hagar is already depicted lying down having given birth, and by this stage of the narrative Hagar has evidently humbled herself under Sarah’s hand. If it were Hagar beside Abraham, then this would suggest a usurpation of Sarah’s role. Though it is tempting to seize this as a visual coding of Sarah’s displacement, further underscoring the discord in the household, I think this would be suggesting an interpretation that goes significantly beyond the text. That said, the female figure is wearing long sleeves (I must thank Gale Owen-Crocker for recently bringing this to my attention), which may visually echo back to the earlier depiction of Hagar, and may possibly be interpreted as an anticipation of her final removal from Abraham’s household at Sarah’s instigation (Genesis 21:9–21), which is depicted later from fols. 35v (lower register) to 36v (upper register). Equally, if we read the figure as Sarah, the long sleeves may be read as anticipating Sarah’s own journey with Abraham to the south country where she is taken from Abraham by Abimelech (Genesis 20), depicted at fols. 34r (lower register) to 35r (upper register). 32 For a discussion of the hand-to-chin gesture signifying anxious reflection, see Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Gestures, 142–45. 33 Contrast the family scenes on fol. 9r, where the characters are far more lively and interactive. 34 Marsden, Heptateuch, 37; cf. Genesis 16:15.

11

Christopher J. Monk emotions appropriately conveyed, this episode of biblical polygyny is thus fittingly brought to a conclusion that speaks powerfully of unresolved tensions. It is worth underlining the point that these drawings are not merely illustrations of the text. The tone of the text is generally matter-of-fact; though marital tension is hinted at, there is no attempt to expand the narrative in order to amplify the emotional trauma. In contrast, what the artist achieves is something rather reflective, even moving, and, in providing a didactic outcome, the consequences of concubinage are revealed, laid bare to the reader-viewer. The impact of the visual narrative is so much more than the effect from Ælfric’s anxious manipulation of the text. It is a moment of keen artistic sensitivity. Moreover, it is the integration of everyday textiles—curtains, covers, and clothing—that gives form and sense to the narrative strategies employed. CURTAINS THAT DRAW A CONTRAST: LOT AND THE SODOMITES

The story of Lot and the men of Sodom recorded in Genesis 19:4–11 is fraught with sexual violence and transgression. The biblical narrative explains how the males of Sodom surround the home of Lot and demand to have sex with his two male guests, who are actually angels. Lot refuses to deliver them up to the mob but offers up his two virgin daughters as a compromise. The men of Sodom are angered by this and attack Lot, threatening to do even worse to him than they had planned for his guests. The angels intervene: They rescue Lot and blind the men so that they are unable to carry out their crime. This story was too problematic for Ælfric to translate explicitly into the Old English Genesis. He elides all the details above and instead interpolates the narrative with a more generalized condemnation of the Sodomite nation, noting that “hig woldon fullice ongean gecynd heora galnysse gefyllan, na mid wimmannum ac swa fullice þæt us sceamað hyt openlice to secgenne” (“they would satisfy their lust foully against nature, not with women but so foully that it shames us to speak it openly”).35 Rebecca Barnhouse implies that Ælfric’s homiletic intervention diverts attention from that which really troubles him: Lot’s dubious offering of his daughters for gang rape; and it is certainly worth underscoring the fact that Ælfric omits any reference to that detail of the story but instead deploys what Barnhouse calls a “decoy” by inserting his rather vague condemnation of the Sodomite nation.36 However, the focus in this essay is not the reasons behind Ælfric’s censorship; rather, it is the response to this censorship by the artist of the Hexateuch that is fascinating in terms of the utilization of curtains as part of a narrative strategy. The artist evidently chose to open up to the reader-viewer

35 Marsden, Heptateuch, 42. Ælfric refers to “Se leodscipe” (“This nation”), rather than the men of Sodom specifically. For an analysis of Ælfric’s text, see Malcolm R. Godden, “The Trouble with Sodom: Literary Responses to Biblical Sexuality,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 77 (1995): 97–119. 36 Barnhouse, “Shaping the Hexateuch Text,” 98.

12

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art the nature of the sin of Sodom, and to contrast this with Lot’s righteousness. A pair of curtains plays a significant part in these acts of revealing and contrasting. Though the artist does not include the scene of the attempted gang rape by the Sodomite males, he nevertheless visually introduces the men of Sodom, on fol. 23v, when the people of Sodom are first mentioned in the Old English text (fig. 1.3). This is at the point in the story that Lot, at his uncle Abraham’s urging, separates from Abraham in order to live in the land about the Jordan and to dwell in Sodom. The text anticipates Sodom’s eventual destruction, informing the reader that Lot viewed the well-watered country about the Jordan “ær þan þe God towende þa burga Sodoma and Gomorran” (“before God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah”).37 Then, after stating that Lot takes up dwelling in the city of Sodom, the text makes an indistinct allusion to the nature of the sin of the Sodomite men, through the proclamation that “Đa Sodomitiscan menn wæron forcuþostan and swiðe sinfulle ætforan Gode” (“The Sodomite people were most infamous and very sinful before God”).38 It is immediately after these words that the artist depicts a scene of Lot and the people of Sodom, or rather, specifically, the men of Sodom. A pair of elegant, full curtains is draped around the architectural columns of the roofed home that Lot inhabits. They are similar to those depicted in the scenes of the Sarah-Hagar-Abraham narrative, though, unlike the latter, they are attached to ornately scrolled canopy finials. This ornamentation can be read as a deliberate attempt to demonstrate Lot’s domestic prosperity; but the curtains do much more than that. They are being used in a similar way to the parted curtains in the Sarah-Hagar-Abraham story; they are being used to indicate a revelation of some kind. It is, however, not merely the home of Lot that is being revealed but, rather, the reader-viewer is encouraged to see the revelation of the inner space as that of the inner man. Lot’s literal inner, personal space serves as a visual metaphor for his spiritual state before God. That this is so is indicated by other details in the scene. Lot’s blessedness is directly indicated by the hand of God appearing out of the roof; the hand shows the gesture of blessing as it hovers over Lot’s head, which actually occupies a space amidst the scrolled finials. Lot is also framed by two internal columns, and he is depicted sitting on a rather grand seat, complete with animal-head finials—one a lion’s head, the other a bird’s, perhaps an eagle’s. Thus Lot is revealed not only as blessed but also as a figure of authority.39 This latter detail links rather well with what the scene as a whole is revealing. As the viewer moves out of the space that is revealed by the 37 Marsden, Heptateuch, 33; Genesis 13:10. 38 Marsden, Heptateuch, 33; cf. Genesis 13:13: “And the men of Sodom were very wicked [Lat. pessimi], and sinners before the face of the Lord, beyond measure.” 39 Compare the figure of Pharaoh sitting as a king on fol. 22v. The motif of the seated authority figure is taken up later in the Bayeux Tapestry, which, as has been rehearsed many times, draws heavily on the Hexateuch for its iconography. See, for example, scene 1 of the Tapestry, where King Edward is shown sitting on a cushioned seat which has a lion-head finial, and scene 25, where Edward is shown beneath a rather ornate roof canopy, reminiscent of Lot’s, sitting on a cushioned bench with animalhead finials. The scene numbers are based on those in Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Dan Terkla, eds., The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches (Oxford: Oxbow, 2011), and Lucien Musset (trans. Richard Rex), The Bayeux Tapestry, new edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2005).

13

Fig. 1.3: Lot and the Sodomite men, as depicted in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, 23v). Photo: Copyright © British Library Board, by permission.

Christopher J. Monk

14

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art curtains, Lot’s inner, spiritual state is contrasted with the disreputable, lewd behaviour of the Sodomite men, who are represented as outside of Lot’s revealed space. In effect, Lot sits in judgment on these men, an allusion perhaps to the detail in the biblical text, elided by Ælfric, that indicates that the men of Sodom saw Lot as a “judge,” that is, they interpreted his behaviour toward them as judgmental.40 Anticipating Ælfric’s condemnation of the Sodomites, who “openlice heora fylþe gefremedon” (“openly performed their filth”), the artist shows the Sodomite men in the open—outside the door of Lot’s home. Two of the Sodomites are kissing, indicated by the touching of cheeks,41 whilst, concurrently, one of the kissers speaks to the other men. This is indicated by his gesture of adlocutio, or address (the curved upward palm).42 The tone of his speech is signified by his simultaneously pointing downward to his groin; this creates a visual code for the Sodomites’ “lewd conversation,” referred to in 2 Peter 2:6–7.43 To underscore the opposition of Lot’s revealed inner spirituality, or righteousness, and the Sodomites’ reprehensible, infamous behaviour, the artist depicts a winged devil with an ugly snout jutting out of the upper corner of the picture’s frame.44 The devil is holding a scroll that encompasses the group of Sodomites; and his right index finger is pointing upward to the text, which informs the reader that the Sodomite men are indeed “forcuþostan,” meaning “most infamous” or “most wicked.” To summarize the narrative strategy of the artist, we can see how he uses the motif of parted curtains to trigger a series of hermeneutic details. The curtains reveal the blessedness of Lot, his inner righteousness, which is in turn drawn as a stark contrast to the defiled state of the Sodomites, who metaphorically stand outside of Lot’s blessed state, and who are visualized as openly performing their lewdness for all to witness—a somewhat ironic perspective, in view of Ælfric’s intent to silence the speaking of their sin openly. TENTS, BEDS, AND BEDCOVERS: DIRECTING THE GAZE

Both the Hexateuch and Junius 11 treat visually the story of Ham seeing the nakedness of his drunken father Noah, as recorded in Genesis 9:20–25 (figs. 1.4 and 1.6). 40 Genesis 19:9. 41 Jane E. Rosenthal establishes that the touching of cheeks would have been understood by contemporaries as a kiss; see Rosenthal, “An Unprecedented Image of Love and Devotion: The Crucifixion in Judith of Flanders’s Gospel Book,” in Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler: Studies in Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Kathryn A. Smith and Carol H. Krinsky (London: Harvey Miller, 2007), 30. For a discussion of the Sodomite kiss and other uses of the cheek-to-cheek motif in the Hexateuch, see Monk, “Framing Sex,” 159–60. 42 On the adlocutio gesture, see Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Gestures, 35. 43 “[6] And reducing the cities of the Sodomites, and of the Gomorrhites, into ashes, condemned them to be overthrown, making them an example to those that should after act wickedly. [7] And delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation [Lat. luxuriosa conversatione] of the wicked.” For more information on this, see Monk, “Framing Sex,” 58–59. 44 One of the fallen angels depicted on fol. 2r also has a snout.

15

Christopher J. Monk Both amplify their respective textual narratives by deploying textile items as part of a narrative strategy designed to prod the reader-viewer into an interactive experience. The artists employ techniques that provoke an awareness of the significance of the revealing and concealing of genital nakedness, and the sexual undercurrents commonly associated with this biblical story are channelled through the depiction of Ham’s transgressive gaze.45 Before addressing the textile items themselves, it is useful to theorize the ­reader-viewer response to these two visual narratives. Helpful in this regard is Suzannah Biernoff ’s analysis of the multidirectional quality of vision as espoused in medieval vision theory.46 Her findings here could be applied equally to the other visual narratives already discussed, but her study is especially significant in view of the theme of seeing in the two Ham-Noah narratives. Biernoff ’s research primarily focuses on vision theory in the later Middle Ages, but its conclusions may shed light on the way we also construct early medieval viewers and their experiences, especially if we take into account the fact that Augustine of Hippo was a key source of medieval ideas about vision, thus making these concepts of vision potentially available to Anglo-Saxons.47 Biernoff explains how the medieval experience of seeing was conceived as a dynamic encounter between subject and object, a simultaneous “extension of the sensitive soul towards” what is viewed and “the passage of [its] sensible forms through the eye and into the brain.”48 What Biernoff offers, therefore, is a reading of medieval vision as reciprocal. Indeed, she argues that a “medieval definition of vision […] is clearly incompatible with a methodology that would treat either viewing subjects or visible objects as autonomous entities, or their

45

Biblical scholars have long associated Ham’s seeing of Noah with sexual transgression. For example, H. C. Leupold reads Ham’s seeing as something deliberate and harmful, a feeding of the “unclean imagination” by gazing, and suggests the inherent meaning of Ham’s seeing is that “he gazed with satisfaction”; H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Columbus, OH: Wartburg, 1942), 346. Richard M. Davidson reiterates Leupold’s view, arguing that there are “intertextual echoes” in the Pentateuch that link Ham’s seeing of Noah’s nakedness with the uncovering of nakedness associated with illegitimate sexual intercourse in Leviticus 20. Although Davidson argues against reading Ham’s sin as an act of homosexuality, he observes that “[i]t seems that the narrator wishes the reader to understand that Ham’s action did in fact have illicit sexual overtones”; Richard M. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh: Sexuality in the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 142–45. Davidson cites several recent contributions to the argument that Ham is guilty of sodomizing his father: Donald J. Wold, Out of Order: Homosexuality in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), 65–76; Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective, trans. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 52–53; and Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2001), 64–71. 46 Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 47 On Augustinian roots, see Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, passim; see also Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim, “The Exposed Body and the Gendered Blemmye: Reading the Wonders of the East,” in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 194–96. 48 Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 3.

16

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art relationship as unidirectional.”49 In discussing Martin Jay’s work on medieval vision theories, Biernoff captures the sense that these theories “seem to emphasize intimacy and reciprocity rather than separation and, in so doing, cast doubt on the notion of a detached observer,”50 something we may associate more with modern notions of seeing. Utilizing the model of reciprocal vision in a context of manuscript viewing, it might be argued that the medieval viewer of the scenes in the Hexateuch and Junius 11 felt she/he shared the visual space of Noah’s son Ham, and thus she/he was intimately connected to Ham’s viewing of Noah’s nakedness. Ultimately, the viewer may have felt compelled to contemplate her/his relationship to the visual narrative that she/he had become part of. Furthermore, and what is significant in the context of this essay, it is the deployment of familiar, domestic textile items that may be understood as further inducement to visual reciprocity. TEXTILES AND THE SIN OF SEEING

The theme of seeing as sin is conveyed effectively by the Hexateuch artist. This is most obvious in the lower register of fol. 17v (fig. 1.4) where Noah’s two faithful sons are depicted diverting their gaze, one even taking his cloak to his eyes as a visual shield, an effective artistic embellishment of the text. Striking, in the upper register, is the way the tent functions as a framing device to define Noah’s nakedness. Tents are depicted frequently throughout the Hexateuch, but it is only in the case of Noah’s tent that the viewer is privileged to see the inside. Significantly, then, the inside of the tent operates as an inner, private space, functioning in a similar way to that of the curtained architectural features on fols. 23v (fig. 1.3) and 27v (fig. 1.1), discussed above. As a consequence, the tent’s brightly coloured stripes, which typically in other scenes simply denote the fabric design of the tent, here take on a narrative function.51 As they expand outward, they create the effect of illuminating the prone body of Noah, which fills the bottom of the tent. Noah lies completely naked atop his bedcovers, his languorous posture supported by a large, blue-checked pillow. His right arm lies across his rotund belly, revealing his large navel, which acts as a visual synecdoche of Noah’s unguarded 49 Ibid., 3–4. For a recent analysis of medieval visual treatments of the Ham-Noah narrative, see Madeline H. Caviness, “A Son’s Gaze on Noah: Case or Cause of Viriliphobia?” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. Sherry C. M. Lindquist (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 103–48; for her discussion of the Hexateuch scenes, see pp. 107–11. It should be noted Caviness implies that Ælfric’s Old English translation of the Ham-Noah story is an “abbreviated version of the Vulgate” (109) and also that “the ‘biblical’ text […] is reduced to captions that depart from the Vulgate” (108). However, the text should not be understood as captions, and though it is true that Ælfric, in his section of Genesis, does occasionally depart from the Vulgate, as discussed above in the example of Lot and the Sodomites, his translation of the Ham-Noah narrative is not abbreviated, and furthermore it is largely faithful to the Vulgate. The only significant departure is seen in Noah cursing Ham directly rather than cursing Ham’s son Canaan; see Marsden, Heptateuch, 24–25; Genesis 9:20–27. 50 Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 87; Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 51 Compare the greater realism of the tent on fol. 25r, where even tent pegs are represented.

17

Christopher J. Monk

Fig. 1.4: Ham sees the nakedness of his father Noah, as depicted in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, 17v). Photo: Copyright © British Library Board, by permission.

18

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art sensuality.52 As a counterpoint, Noah’s left leg raises just sufficiently so that the thigh obscures from the viewer that which his son Ham sees: his father’s exposed genitals. That the gazing upon nakedness is priapic is revealed in both the Vulgate and Old English texts. The former uses the term patris virilia (“their father’s virility”) to indicate that which Noah’s good sons, Shem and Japheth, do not see;53 and the latter employs gesceap, a euphemism for the genitals, literally meaning “shape,” to denote what it is that Ham sees.54 The Hexateuch drawing on fol. 18r (fig. 1.5), where Noah blesses Shem and Japheth but curses Ham (Canaan in the Vulgate), confirms the specific form of nakedness that is so troubling. Noah’s upper body is still naked, yet this creates no discomfort for Shem and Japheth who look directly at their father, whose genitals are no longer visible but are hidden under the bedcovers. The sense that Ham is sinning through his gaze is indicated by his corporeal interaction with the vertical side of the internal frame that divides him from Noah’s private space inside the tent. Ham’s right hand holds the upright frame tightly whilst, strikingly, his left leg wraps around its base. Ham leans into the tent, directing his gaze to his father’s nakedness. This very cleverly conveys the idea that Ham is lingering; he is not just accidentally seeing his father naked, but rather he is deliberately transgressing a barrier—visually, a physical one, the frame; hermeneutically, a moral and cultural one. This provides the viewer with the perspective that Ham is seeing with eyes of contemplation, and even of desire. Withers argues that “Ham’s embrace of the frame, especially the way that it rises between his legs, hints at the sexual nature of his transgressive voyeurism.”55 It may seem strange to modern eyes that a medieval biblical manuscript should reveal the deployment of artistic techniques that illuminate the sexual aspects of a narrative, especially in view of the theoretical concept of reciprocal vision, where the medieval viewer may be understood as integrated into what is seen. In the Ham and Noah narrative, it may seem that the viewer is in danger of sinning along with Ham. Indeed, as Madeline H. Caviness observes, “Representing what must not be seen is the principal challenge of the episode of Noah’s drunkenness to writers and artists.”56 It is when we take the visual narrative as a whole, however, that we realise that the artist, whilst amplifying the text, is also containing the sin of seeing. For as well as giving the viewer an insight into the nature of Ham’s transgressive gaze in the upper

52 Compare the large navel of the sexualized, genitally naked Donestre monster in the Anglo-Saxon Wonders of the East: London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.v, 83v. For the sexualization of the Donestre and other monsters in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, see Christopher Monk, “A Context for the Sexualization of Monsters in The Wonders of the East,” Anglo-Saxon England 41 (2012): 79–99. 53 Genesis 9:23. 54 Marsden, Heptateuch, 24. For a more detailed discussion of these Latin and Old English terms and other sexual vocabulary used in the narrative, see Monk, “Framing Sex,” 173–74; see also Caviness, “Son’s Gaze,” 110–11. For a discussion of the use of gesceap in Genesis A, see David Clark, Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 125–29. 55 Withers, Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, 40. 56 Caviness, “Son’s Gaze,” 107.

19

Fig. 1.5: Noah curses Ham but blesses Shem and Japheth, as depicted in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, 18r). Photo: Copyright © British Library Board, by permission.

Christopher J. Monk

20

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art register of fol. 17v (fig. 1.4), in the lower register, he invites the viewer to contemplate the correct mode of behaviour as manifested by Shem and Japheth. Here, we see the two good sons manoeuvring “underbæc” (“backward”), and covering Noah with a “hwitel” (“blanket”), as mentioned in the text above the scene.57 The avoidance of seeing with sin is, however, highlighted even more visually than textually. It is clear that the two good brothers block Ham’s view of their father, and the shamefulness of Ham’s behaviour is underscored by the visual amplification of one of them holding his cloak to his eyes. The final informative flourish is the detailing of this son offering the blessing gesture even whilst he tightly holds the corner of the hwitel in covering his father. Though, as Sherry C. M. Lindquist explains,“[i]mages often expose what cannot be said or written down,”58 in this case the taboo of seeing with transgressive desire is nevertheless checked, since the visual narrative as a whole enables the viewer to avoid sharing in this sin. A BED, A PILLOW, AND A BLANKET: CONTEMPLATING NOAH’S ERECTION

The poetic version of the Ham-Noah story in Genesis A, recorded in the Junius 11 manuscript, appears to dilute the sexual connotations that the artist in the Hexateuch picks up on.59 Though the poem reveals that Noah “him selfa sceaf / reaf of lice”60 (“himself shoved his garment from his body”) and, as was unseemly, lay “lim‑ nacod,”61 a term literally meaning “limb-naked” but euphemistically suggesting genital nakedness, the core emphasis within the textual narrative is Ham’s disrespect for his father, rather than any sexual misdemeanour. We are told that Ham failed to cover the “sceonde”62 (“shame”) of his father but instead, “hlihende”63 (“laughing”), he told his brothers of their father’s predicament. It is gross disrespect, therefore, rather than sexual transgressiveness that forms the basis of Ham’s sin in the poem. Despite this, the Junius 11 artist makes some provocative choices in the visualizing of the story. In a remarkable deployment of a bed, a pillow, and a blanket, he encourages the reader-viewer to perceive the inherent sexual transgressiveness of the narrative. On page 78 of Junius 11, the artist deftly creates a clockwise “storyboard” full of vitality (fig. 1.6). At the starting point, in the upper left of the scene, Ham is shown standing atop a piece of raised, jagged ground; his arms are held aloft from their elbows and his palms open in a gesture that announces to the viewer that he beholds something. In line with C. R. Dodwell’s discussion of the meaning of this gesture, the

57 Marsden, Heptateuch, 24. 58 Lindquist, Meanings of Nudity, 27. 59 The story of Noah’s drunken nakedness is found in lines 1555–1601. Text is based on the edition of Genesis A in Muir’s CD-ROM (see note 4 above). Translation is my own. 60 Lines 1564b–1565a. 61 Line 1566a. 62 Line 1581b. 63 Line 1582b.

21

Fig. 1.6: Ham sees the nakedness of his father Noah, from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, p. 78. Photo: Copyright © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, by permission.

Christopher J. Monk

22

Textiles in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art viewer is meant to perceive Ham’s anxiety at what is beheld.64 His left hand directs the viewer’s gaze toward what Ham is beholding: his father’s naked body. Remarkably, the artist enables Ham’s gaze by raising up, on two rather grand vertical columns, the bed upon which Noah sleeps. Cleverly, these columns serve to frame the ensuing scene of the middle register, in which Ham broadcasts his father’s nakedness to his brothers. On Noah’s bed, propping forward the patriarch, is a boldly patterned, erect, lingam-like pillow, a visual motif of sexual virility.65 Just in case the viewer has doubts about the meaning of Ham’s gaze, the artist has Noah, who according to the text is “symbelwerig” (“feast-weary”), pulling back his blanket and consequently revealing his genitals. Noah holds the bedcover aloft at the corner in a manner that Caviness links to the masturbatory gesture of Noah in the fourteenth-century London Haggadah manuscript.66 Certainly, the viewer is meant to see what is under the covers, so to speak; the genitals are drawn distinctly, and are more pronounced than those that appear earlier in the manuscript on three fallen angels;67 and Ham’s left hand—his sinister hand, we might add—points directly to his father’s exposed penis. Thus, for a powerful moment, the transgressive desire associated with seeing—or, to borrow from W. J. T. Mitchell, “the lure of visibility”—is recognized by the artist.68 The emphasis of seeing as a sin is captured well in the lower register, where the two faithful sons, Shem and Japheth, not only conceal their father’s nakedness, pulling his blanket fully across his body, but, following the text, each is shown covering his face with his loða (“cloak”). Additionally, via the drawing of the lower register, the viewer is taken through a 180-degree “cinematic turn” that sees Noah, recumbent on his bed, now facing left, as opposed to his facing right in the upper register.69 This further emphasizes the visuality of the whole scene, as the viewer’s gaze is directed around the events as they unfurl. The ingenious use of the raised bed, the phallic pillow that echoes Noah’s exposed genitals, and the pulling back of the blanket to reveal Noah’s naked state all underscore the significance of Ham’s gaze as transgressively sexual. Recalling the Vulgate’s use of patris virilia (“the virility of their father”), it might be suggested that what is being signified, if not actually depicted, is Noah’s erection. Karkov, however, downplays the sexualization of Ham’s gaze, preferring to emphasize what she refers to as the “misguided look.”70 Nevertheless, the artist’s techniques lead us to the conclusion that, though

64 See Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Gestures, 132–42. 65 My thanks to Linda Sever, senior lecturer in film production at the University of Central Lancashire and documentary film maker, for bringing the phallic nature of the pillow to my attention. 66 Caviness, “Son’s Gaze,” 110 and n. 32. 67 See pages 16 and 17 of Junius 11. 68 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 114. Mitchell is here discussing “visible language” in relation to William Blake’s work. He argues that “alongside [the] tradition of accommodating language to vision is a countertradition, equally powerful, that expresses a deep ambivalence about the lure of visibility.” 69 I owe this observation of the cinematic turn to a personal communication by Linda Sever. 70 Karkov, Text and Picture, 166–67. For a more detailed critique of Karkov’s interpretation of this scene, see Monk, “Framing Sex,” 179–80.

23

Christopher J. Monk indeed misguided, Ham’s look equates to sexual contemplation. Through the deliberate placement of textile items, this is the interpretation that the artist is encouraging the reader-viewer to pursue. It is pertinent, however, to observe that the artist, though revealing the nature of Ham’s sin, also manifests an anxiety to contain the desire associated with the sin of seeing. Indeed, it should be emphasized that this visual material is not intended as pornography, though of course it is impossible to reconstruct individual medieval experiences of seeing this drawing.71 As with the Hexateuch version of the scene, the viewer is encouraged to share the correct behaviour of Shem and Japheth in avoiding the transgressive gaze. Moreover, the gesture given to Ham at the start of this narrative may be read not only as a signification of his apparent anxiety at what he beholds but also as a signifier to the viewer that what is being revealed is indeed transgressive, and thus not to be imitated. The artist thus both reveals and contains the danger of seeing as desire. The viewer is permitted to look under the covers, so to speak, but these are consequently pulled back literally and metaphorically in an action of disapprobation. CONCLUSIONS

The study of representations of textile items and clothing in medieval manuscript art promises much fruitful scholarship. It is hoped that this essay has increased our appreciation for how textiles often play a powerful role in structuring visual stories, narratives that in turn compel the viewer into acts of interpretation. It is, however, important to make clear that this study is not advocating that every instance of a textile object is profoundly significant in terms of narrative, or that it is always deliberately employed exegetically by the artist. Many items are simply decorative embellishments that add a touch of realism: People sit on cushions;72 their tables are covered with cloth;73 they live in tents; and, of course, they are (usually) depicted wearing clothing. Images of textiles are useful resources for reconstructing such aspects of material culture or domestic life, particularly as access to surviving artifacts is inevitably limited, creating frustration for those studying the early medieval period. As we have seen, however, the representation of material culture has stories to tell too; and if these are not always about the actual practices of peoples from the past, they may well be about the contemplations, sympathetic responses, and imaginings of at least some of those persons.

71 It may be argued that intended use of the imagery is not the same as actual use. In other words, we should acknowledge the potential for a viewer to have “misused” the drawing for sexual stimulation of some sort, or, at least, to have used it as a mental trigger to a sexual response. 72 See, for example, the rather ornate seat cushions on fols. 11v and 12r of the Hexateuch. 73 See, for example, the table skirt on Lot’s table as he entertains his visiting angels; Hexateuch, 31v.

24

Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles

Lisa Monnas

During the Middle Ages, the broad spectrum of textile colours was described by a correspondingly wide range of names intended to beguile the customer. Some captured the nuances of delicate shades such as “dove grey” and “old rose,” while others, like “crimson,” croceus, or alessandrino, signalled the commercial value or exotic origin of the dyestuffs involved. Some terms were mainly used for wool, with others reserved for silk, reflecting the different dyestuffs used on the two fibres. The subject of textile colours is too enormous to be treated comprehensively here, and this paper will discuss a limited selection of colour terms from the late medieval period, looking at their meaning, how and when they arose, and how they can be related to surviving textiles.1 Focusing on England, France, and Italy, it will examine material starting from the thirteenth century and ending (beyond the Middle Ages) with three published inventories from the reign of Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) made in 1600.2 YELLOW

Croceus Many colour adjectives were inherited from classical terminology. Some of them passed seamlessly into the contemporary vocabulary, like sanguineus for blood-red, The author thanks Jo Kirby Atkinson, Jane Bridgeman, Rosemary Crill, Hero Granger-Taylor, Christine Meek, and Federica Signoriello for their kind help with the preparation of this article. This article is based on a paper presented at the Early Textiles Study Group conference in November 2010 in London.   1 Russet and rosato have been deliberately omitted from this study. Although I previously equated russet with rosato, a deep purplish red cloth (see Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550 [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008], 302), I have concluded that the relationship of the English colour “russet” with the cloth “russet” mentioned in English sources and with the desirable rosato wool cloth worn in Italy merits a fuller investigation and I am hoping to treat this subject elsewhere.   2 Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds, UK: W. S. Maney & Sons, 1988).

Lisa Monnas which became sangwyn in English, sanguine in France, etc. Croceus, for yellow, is another classical term that passed untrammelled into medieval usage. It held the twin connotations of the golden yellow colour of the crocus flower itself and of the prohibitively expensive yellow spice and dyestuff, saffron (Crocus sattivus), obtained from its stamens, belying the fact that most surviving medieval yellow silks were coloured with cheaper colourants, such as weld (Reseda luteola). This implied connection with an expensive dyestuff is a recurrent theme in the names chosen for medieval textile colours. The inventory of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London of 1295 has only croceus and no other colour for yellow.3 Both croceus and iallus can be found in the contemporaneous inventory of the Holy See (1295), which includes a length of tartar velvet described as iallo.4 There are further examples of giallo (Italian) in the fourteenth-century inventories of the Basilica di San Francesco at Assisi: Among the “dossals for altars,” described in 1338, there was “unus magnus pannus zallus, cum griffonibus et aliis bestis et avibus de auro,” which was subsequently recorded in 1341 as “un gran drappo giallo, con grifoni ed altre bestie ed uccelli d’oro” [a great yellow (silk) cloth with griffins and other beasts and birds in gold].5 This item actually survives in the treasury of San Francesco, and can be identified from its design of griffins and birds embroidered in gold, its large size (563 x 163 centimetres), and not least by its yellow silk ground. It is one of two magnificent embroidered Palermitan hangings thought to have been presented to the Basilica possibly by Emperor Baldwin II (r. 1228–61), who died in Southern Italy in 1274.6 Glaucus One classical colour term, glaucus, followed divergent paths. Dictionaries of classical Latin interpret glaucus to mean greyish or bluish-grey,7 and “glaucous” is now given    3 Sir William Dugdale, The History of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London, from its Foundation (London: Lackington et al., 1818), inventory transcribed at 310–36; see, for example, 322, “Tunica de croceo sameto quam dedit Wyntoniensis Episcopus Petrus.”   4 For croceus see Emile Molinier, “Inventaire du Trésor du Saint-Siège sous Boniface VIII (1295),” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 45 (1884): 31–57; for Paramenta crocea, 97, nos. 996–97; for iallus, 115, no. 1276: “j frustrum de panno tartarico velluto iallo, longum de tribus brachiis, et amplum de uno pede.”   5 Giuseppe Fratini, Storia della Basilica e del Convento di San Francesco in Assisi (Prato: Ranieri Guasti, 1882), 171. All translations are my own unless noted otherwise.    6 The yellow silk is woven in weft-faced compound twill; it is one of three textiles thought to have been given by the emperor, of which another, a red embroidered hanging, also survives; Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation and Research: A documentation of the textile department on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Abegg Foundation (Bern, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 1988), cat. nos. 52 and 53, 112–13; for the yellow example, see also 484 and figs. 50–51, 190–92. Rosalia Bonito Fanelli has suggested that the embroidered hangings may instead have been given by John of Brienne (1148–ca. 1237), king of Jerusalem, a devoted follower of St. Francis, who became regent-emperor in 1228; see Fanelli, Il Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi: Saggi e catalogo (Assisi, Italy: Casa Editrice Francescana, 1980), 79–80, cat. no. 17.    7 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, founded on Andrews’ edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary (1879; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), s.v. “glaucus,” (a) (adj.) bright,

26

Medieval Colour Terms in the Oxford English Dictionary as “of a dull or pale green colour passing into greyish blue.”8 A poem by Winric of Trèves, “Conflictus ovis et lini” [Conflict between Sheep and Flax], ca. 1068–70, states, in the lines concerning Flemish cloth, “Hunc tamen egregius facit hec provincia pannum / Qui viret aut glaucus aut quasi ceruleus” [This province makes excellent cloth / In green or blue-green or deep-blue colours]. Here, glaucus has, with justification, been translated as blue-green.9 During the later Middle Ages, however, glaucus could also mean yellow. John Gage has linked this linguistic development to the art of dyeing with woad, the leaves of which, when shielded from light, were yellow, and only turned blue on exposure to it.10 Glaucus signifying yellow already occurs in Liber de Sensu et Sensatu, attributed to the philosopher Roger Bacon (ca. 1214–94).11 It also appears as yellow in two fourteenth-century texts concerning the art of painting: the Neapolitan De Arte Illuminandi (“On the art of illuminating manuscripts”),12 and the Liber diversarum arcium in Montpellier, a compendium of recipes for painting on diverse materials, with some reference to dyeing.13 During the fourteenth century, glaucus was consistently used in the English royal wardrobe accounts for yellow textiles (silk as well as wool).14 Confusion can arise if glaucus in these documents is interpreted in the classical sense. To give just one example: There is a description of materials needed for the canopy over the throne of Edward III in Westminster Hall, given in an account of expenses for his coronation, Feb. 1, 1327: sparkling, gleaming, grayish; (b) (n.) a bluish-coloured fish; A. Souter et al., eds., Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), s.v. “glaucus,” blue-grey.   8 Oxford English Dictionary, online ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000–), s.v. “glaucous.” For this article, all references to the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED) were accessed online on Sept. 16, 2013, and all refer to the text updated by September 2013, except for this entry, which was first published in 1900 and has not been updated.    9 Raymond Van Uytven, “Cloth in Medieval Literature of Western Europe,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed. Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting (London: Heinemann Educational Books and the Pasold Research Fund, 1983), 151–83, at 154.  10 John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (1993; repr., London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), 90.  11 Glaucus is one of several colours for yellow listed in Liber de Sensu et Sensatu; see Gage, Colour and Culture, 165–66.  12 Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS XII.E.27; for this manuscript, see Franco Brunello, ed., De Arte Illuminandi e Altri Trattati sulla Tecnica della Miniatura Medievale (Vicenza, Italy: N. Pozza, 1975). The eight naturales colores given in the Naples manuscript are niger, albus, rubeus, glaucus, azurinus, violaceus, rosaceus, and viridus; see Gage, Colour and Culture, 35.  13 The Liber diversum arcium is contained in Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, MS H 277; the core of the text probably dates from ca. 1300, but with additional material from the early fifteenth century. Mark Clarke, The Medieval Painter’s Materials and Techniques: The Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium (London: Archetype, 2011); for the dating, 1; for glaucus as yellow, 116, 187, 260.  14 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980), 134, 135; Kay Staniland, “Court Style, Painters, and the Great Wardrobe,” in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. Mark Ormrod (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1986), 236–46, at 237 n. 6.

27

Lisa Monnas … pro Celura ultra Regem sedentem in eadem sede faciendum de panno adauro in canabo … xij pann. Ad j volettu pro eadem celura dicte sedis in eadem Aula faciendum cum labellis pendentibus ante mensam Regis in sessione sua de cindon rubeo et glauco afforciato … iiij pec’. [ … for making the ceeler above the enthroned King of canvas cloth of gold … 12 cloths. For making a valance for the ceeler of the said throne in (Westminster) Hall, with labels hanging over the enthroned King’s table in red and yellow strong cindon.]15

In a discussion of this text, published in 1836, celura was interpreted as a veil, and volettu as velvet strengthened with red and grey lawn.16 In 2011, this was amended to a royal dais festooned with violet, red, and grey coverings.17 Instead, celura can be interpreted as a canopy (at that time, called in English a “ceeler”) and volettu as a valance. The labellis pendentibus were pendent labels made of red and yellow cindon. The choice of red and yellow, the colours of the English royal coat of arms, gold lions passant guardant (leopards) on a red ground, seems more appropriate for the royal coronation furnishings than either a combination of grey and red, or of grey, red, and violet.18 Many other English sources listing textiles include glaucus,19 and the use of glaucus for yellow persisted in royal wardrobe accounts and inventories written in Latin well into the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47).20 BLUE

The importance of blue in the medieval textile industry and the skill of the blue dyers is reflected in the many shades of this colour recorded in contemporary documents. Dominique Cardon has produced a table of blue colours for wool based on woad (Isatis tinctoria), from Valenciennes, Florence, Venice, and Paris, between 1303 and  15 Here, I have interpreted the labels as attached to the ceeler suspended over the King’s throne, hanging over the King’s table; alternatively, ante mensam may mean that the labels were hanging down in front of the table’s edge. Cindon was a linen fabric and the qualification afforciato may mean either that it was a heavy weight or literally strengthened.  16 Edward Wedlake Brayley and John Britton, History of the ancient palace and late Houses of Parliament at Westminster: embracing accounts and illustrations of St. Stephens Chapel, and its cloisters, — Westminster Hall, —The Court of Requests, —The Painted Chamber (London: John Weale, 1836), 146.  17 W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 57.  18 At the beginning of Edward III’s reign, the English royal coat of arms was “gules three leopards of gold”; in heraldry, gules denoted red, and a lion passant gardant (walking, looking out full-faced) is called a “leopard”; see William Henry St. John Hope, A Grammar of English Heraldry, 2nd ed., revised by Anthony R. Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 86; I first proposed this interpretation of the colours of the throne hangings in 2001, in Lisa Monnas, “Textiles for the Coronation of Edward III,” Textile History 32, no. 1 (2001): 2–35, at 13.  19 For example, in the 1388 inventory of Westminster Abbey, the yellow copes were listed under the heading “De capis principalibus glaucei coloris” (with only one example, “Capa principalis glaucei coloris aura brudata est cum griffonibus et avibus aureis”). J. Wickham Legg, “On an Inventory of the Vestry in Westminster Abbey, taken in 1388,” Archaeologia 52 (1890): 195–286, at 260.  20 See, for example, an account from the reign of Henry VIII, 1541/2, in London, The National Archives (henceforth TNA), E 101/423/3, “Pann’ adaur glauc’ venic’ plan’ [prec’] 33s 4d virg’.”

28

Medieval Colour Terms 1669, displaying an impressive range of tints. This illustrates, for example, the subtle variations available in Florence in 1419–28, including cilestrino per Roma and cilestrino al modo nostro.21 Cilestrino, literally “celestial” blue, might conjure up a picture of a bright sky blue, but a letter of 1402/3 written by Simone Bellandi, director of the Datini company in Barcelona, to the Datini company in Florence concerning the dispatch of some wool cloths contains a sample of cilestrino cloth, dyed in the wool with woad, that is a dark blue.22 From the end of the period under review, Eric Kerridge has identified an assortment of colours for blue Suffolk cloths dyed in the wool, initially just with woad, but from about 1580, with woad mixed with indigo. They ranged from the darkest, “sad” blue, to blue (here referring to a specific shade), azure, watchet, plunket, and the palest, huling.23 Perse One of the most highly esteemed blue cloths was perse. The Oxford English Dictionary defines perse colour as “A dark blue, bluish grey or (esp. in later use) purplish-black colour,” tracing the origin of the English term to Old French, ca. 1100.24 In the fourteenth century, Dante described perse as “a mixed colour of purple and black, but the black predominates … .”25 A ninth-century reference in the inventory of the monastery of St. Riquier, in northern France, seems to refer to perse silks, but by the later Middle Ages, perse was mainly used for wool.26 In his study of medieval cloth in Flanders and Artois, Guy de Poerck identified perse as referring to cloths dyed with woad.27 Indigo was preferred to woad for dyeing silk in Europe, but dyeing wool blue with indigo was actually forbidden in some European cities (for example, in the Venetian dyers’ statutes of 1305), which would explain why “perse,” referring to woad-dyed cloth,

 21 Dominique Cardon, “Sensibilité aux couleurs des teinturiers d’autrefois: Manifestations, implications, techniques et scientifiques,” in La Couleur: Regards croisés sur la couleur du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Actes du colloque organisé par Philippe Junod et Michel Pastoureau à l’Université de Lausanne, les 25–27 juin 1992, ed. Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1994), 17–26, at 23.  22 Dominique Cardon, “Échantillons de draps de laine des archives Datini (fin XIVe- début XVe siècle): Analyses techniques, importance historique,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Moyen-Âge, 103, no. 1 (1991): 359–72, at 363–64 and 367–68; the discussion in my text concerns document 1173 from the Datini archive, Prato.  23 Eric Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 17.  24 OED, s.v. “perse.”  25 “Lo perso e uno colore misto di purpureo e di nero, ma vince lo nero,” Dante, Il Convivio, IV, XX, 2, cited by Harri Meier, “Ein dunkles Farbwort,” in Wort und Text: Festschrift für Fritz Schalk, ed. Harri Meier and Hans Schkommodau (Frankfurt-am-Main: V. Klostermann, 1963), 101–10, at 105.  26 J. Wickham Legg, “Notes on the History of Liturgical Colours,” Transactions of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society 1, no. 3 (1882): 99, cited in John Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), 282 n. 7.  27 Guy de Poerck, La draperie médiévale en Flandre et en Artois: Technique et terminologie (Bruges: De Tempel, 1951), 2:149. See also English dyeing registers of the mid-thirteenth century reporting the use of woad to produce perse cloth; Gage, Colour and Meaning, 94, esp. n. 25.

29

Lisa Monnas came principally to be associated with wool.28 Perse was the most expensive of the blues in the Florentine dyers’ tariffs of 1333–34.29 The dyers’ regulations of Béthune, composed between 1334 and 1402, state that “all pers [cloths] of whatever colour, light or dark, shall be dyed in woad without anything else, with a fine of 60 sous parisis for each [misdyed] cloth.”30 Perse cloths not only ranged from blue-black to light blue but could also be other colours.31 This was because cloth made from wool dyed in woad provided a base for an assortment of colours dyed in the piece, including green and red, which explains the puzzling range covered by this term.32 Woad was especially important as a base for achieving a good black, such as the “panno nero di perso” [black cloth of perse] that the Florentine painter Neri di Bicci (1419–91) purchased from a Florentine wool merchant, Tomaso Risaliti and company in San Martino, in 1461, to make a cioppa (sleeved gown) and a cappuccio (hood).33 The context in which a perse cloth is mentioned can be important in interpreting its colour. In 1325, Edward II (r. 1307–27) and Hugh Despenser wore coordinating robes for the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin (February 2), made out of 16½ and 16 ells respectively of “panno pers in grano” [perse cloth coloured with grana].34 Grana, called “grain” in English, was a costly red dye made from the insect Kermes vermilio, which derived its name from the myriad insect bodies required to produce this dyestuff, resembling grains.35 Taken out of context one might suppose that this was a red perse cloth. However, during the fourteenth century, English monarchs frequently wore the Virgin’s own colour, blue, for the Feast of the Purification, so these panni pers in grano may have been blue, but with a desirable purplish tinge.36

 28 Dominique Cardon, Natural Dyes: Sources, Traditions, Technology, Science (London: Archetype, 2007), 364.  29 Alfred Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. 1, Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie vom vierzehnten bis zum sechszehnten Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, Germany: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachf., 1901), 506–7.  30 “Item tous pers, queulx qu’il (sic) soient, clers ou bruns, soient tous tains en waide sans autre chose, sur 60 s. par. d’amende pour chacun drap ou pièche’,” Georges Espinas and Henri Pirenne, eds., Recueil de documents rélatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie drapière en Flandre (Brussels, Belgium: P. Imbreghts, 1906–66), part 1, 1:321.  31 Gage, Colour and Meaning, 68.  32 John H. Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Harte and Ponting, Cloth and Clothing, 55.  33 Neri di Bicci, Le Ricordanze (10 marzo 1453–24 aprile 1475), ed. Bruno Santi (Pisa: Marlin, 1976), 156, no. 307. The importance of both indigo and woad in providing a base for black is discussed by Cardon, Natural Dyes, 361–62 and 374; although 374 has a discussion of brunette, she does not specifically discuss nero di perso.  34 TNA E 101/381/1, Thomas de Useflete, clerk of the Great Wardrobe, Livery Roll.  35 For the identification of grana, see Cardon, Natural Dyes, 609–19, esp. 612–19.  36 For blue clothing worn for the Feast of the Purification, see the clothing of blueto azuro given to Edward I’s children in 1305, TNA E 101/367/2, roll of liveries for Edward I’s sons; or the robe of four garments made of indigo velvet for Edward III for the same feast, TNA E 101/391/15, William de Retford, clerk of the Great Wardrobe, Livery Roll, September 1347–September 1349. For the application of grana to blue perse cloth, see Hidetoshi Hoshino, Industria Tessile e commercio

30

Medieval Colour Terms Hyacinthinus: From imperial purple to royal blue The earliest known reference to perse, from the glosses to the bible of St. Jerome compiled at the Benedictine monastery of Reichenau (an island on Lake Constance, southern Germany) in the eighth century, actually equated it with the purplish-blue hyacinthus.37 In classical antiquity hyacinthus referred to the violet-blue extracted from the shells of the sea-snail Hexaplex trunculus, which yielded one of the precious purples reserved for imperial use.38 The adoption of brilliant blue by the royal house of France, by the time of Louis IX (b. 1214, d. 1270; the future St. Louis), has been characterized as the search for a colour that would rival the intensity and brilliance of imperial purple.39 The consciously “purple” aspect of the French royal blue is enshrined in the text of the coronation book of Charles V of France (r. 1364–80) in the British Library.40 Charles was crowned in Reims Cathedral on May 19, 1364, and the colophon of this manuscript orders it to be completed and illustrated in 1365. At the beginning of the book, there is a French translation of a directory for the French coronation compiled probably at Reims about 1230, at the beginning of the reign of Louis IX. Following this French text, there is a Latin text offering detailed instructions for the coronation service based on the earlier text, and accompanied by thirty-eight miniatures illustrating, it is thought, the coronation of Charles V.41 The coronation vestments are depicted in the French royal colours: a deep, vibrant blue strewn with gold fleurs-de-lis (fig. 2.1). In the scene showing the king being vested with his stockings, the connection between the French royal blue and purple is underlined by the earlier French text included in the book, which describes “les chauces de soye de couleur de violete. broudees ou tissues de flours de lys dor” [the stockings of silk the colour of violet, embroidered or woven with gold fleurs-de-lis].42 Tellingly, the fourteenth-century Latin text refers to

internazionale nella Firenze del Tardo Medioevo, ed. Franco Franceschi and Sergio Tognetti (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001), 28.  37 The relationship between “perse” and “hyacinthus” is discussed in Meier, “Ein dunkles Farbwort,” 104–6. For the Reichenau reference, ibid., 106; Gage, Colour and Culture, 80; OED, s.v. “perse.”  38 The imperial purples of Rome and Byzantium comprised both violet-red hues dibapha, blatta, and oxyblatta and violet-blue hyacinthina, amethystina, and ianthina, see Cardon, Natural Dyes, 574; see also her discussion of purple-producing molluscs, 565–82. For the edicts governing the use of purples, see Anna Muthesius, “Essential Processes, Looms and Technical Aspects of the Production of Silk Textiles,” in The Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002), 1:147–68, esp. 158–59.  39 Michel Pastoureau, “Du Bleu au Noir: Éthiques et pratiques de la couleur à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Médiévales 14 (1988): 9–21, at 10; Pastoureau, Figures et Couleurs: Études sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médiévales (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1986), 18.  40 Carra Ferguson O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent: The Coronation Book of Charles V of France, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B.VIII (London: Harvey Miller, 2001).  41 O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent, 12.  42 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.viii, 37v; O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent, 294. O’Meara translates the chauces (literally “socks”) as “shoes,” but the miniature showing the vesting depicts over-the-knee-length socks or stockings, similar to pontifical stockings surviving from the Middle Ages, such as the near-contemporary example associated with Cardinal Arnaud de Via (d.

31

Lisa Monnas the colour of these socks, together with the other coronation vestments, as iacinctinis (“hyacinth”), evoking the imperial hyacinthus cloths of antiquity.43 Alessandrino and blodius In Italy, there developed another term for deep blue with purplish undertones: alessandrino. Its date of introduction is uncertain: It is mentioned in the 1376 statutes of the merchants’ court at Lucca regulating silk manufacture, which advised that “Any dyer who is given [silk] to dye alessandrino, must dye it pure and unadulterated [puro et necto], without the use of any malice or artifice [malitia o artificio] to the detriment of the colour, either with or without the knowledge of the merchant, but should dye it with pure indigo [indico].”44 As noted above, indigo was preferred to woad for silk; consequently, alessandrino became a colour term reserved for silk. Although the area around the town of Alessandria in Piedmont was famous for the cultivation of woad, the name alessandrino may have arisen because quantities of indigo were imported to Italy from Alexandria, with the place of origin lending its name to the colour, and serving as a marker of quality since it implied the use of this expensive, imported dyestuff.45 In a list of prices paid to dyers in the Florentine statutes of the silk guild of 1429, the colour is referred to as alessandrino azzurro, but, during the course of the fifteenth century, the colour became so well established that just alessandrino sufficed. This can lead to confusion in the translation of Italian texts of the period referring to

1333), Musée National du Moyen Âge, Thermes de Cluny: cl. 8604; see Sophie Desrosiers, Soieries et autres textiles de l’Antiquité au XVIe siècle: Musée National du Moyen Âge, Thermes de Cluny (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2004), 342 and 344, cat. no. 186, ill. 343.  43 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.viii, 47r and 55r; O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent, 294 and 298.  44 The penalty for infringement was 1 florin for each fraudulently dyed pound of silk; three-quarters of the fine was to go to the merchants’ court, and one-quarter to the denouncer or accuser; Augusto Mancini, Umberto Dorini, and Eugenio Lazzareschi, eds., Lo Statuto della Corte dei Mercanti in Lucca del MCCCLXXVI (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1927), 135, chap. 11. The practice of adulteration, possibly combining expensive indigo with cheaper woad to create alessandrino, is discussed in Chiara Buss, ed., Silk Gold Crimson: Secrets and Technology at the Visconti and Sforza Courts, exhibition catalogue (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009), 106.  45 Dominique Cardon writes of “the famous area of guado Lombardo (Lombard woad) covering about 1500 square kilometres around Alessandria, Tortona and Voghera,” Cardon, Natural Dyes, 376. For the importation of indigo from Alexandria, see Peter Spufford, “Lapis, Indigo, Woad: Artists’ Materials in the Context of International Trade before 1700,” in Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon (London: Archetype, 2010), 11.

32

Fig. 2.1: Master of the Coronation Book of Charles V, “Charles V kneels before the Archbishop of Reims, who anoints his hands,” Coronation Book of Charles V of France, Paris, 1365 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.viii, fol. 55v). Photo: Copyright © The British Library Board, by permission.

Medieval Colour Terms

33

Lisa Monnas blue fabrics woven in Italy, which are sometimes mistakenly interpreted as of (Egyptian) Alexandrian manufacture46 or even as classical drapery.47 Judging by the prices paid to dyers in Florence during the fifteenth century, alessandrino was one of the most complex colours to achieve. In 1429, the statutes of the Florentine silk guild decreed that alessandrino should cost 35 soldi di piccioli per pound weight of silk, comparable only to verde bruno and pagonazo di cremisi (two other complex colours to be discussed below), while the fifteenth-century Florentine treatise known as the Trattato dell’ arte della seta (“Treatise on the Art of Silk”) quotes a slightly higher price of 40 soldi di piccioli for alessandrino, the same as for verde bruno and chermisi (crimson) dyed twice.48 The same Florentine statutes distinguish between the price of 35 soldi di piccioli charged by dyers for silk threads dyed alessandrino azzurro, and the considerably cheaper 20 soldi di piccioli for celeste azzurro con orchidea, a blue coloured with the lichen dye orchil.49 One might infer from this that the first blue was dyed with pure indigo and only the second contained orchil, but notwithstanding the early Lucchese injunction stipulating the unadulterated use of indigo, it is clear from Florentine and Venetian dyers’ recipes of the fifteenth century that not all alessandrino silk was dyed with indigo alone. A recipe given in the Trattato dell’ arte della seta describes a lengthy process involving the use of indigo, orchil, and madder to create alessandrino.50 A beautiful late-fifteenth-century silk damask was exhibited in Milan in 2009 as a possible example of alessandrino.51 Its dyestuffs,

 46 The gown (turca) listed in the 1487 inventory of Alessandro Ottoni, Lord of Matelica (in the Italian Marches), translated by Ronald Lightbown as made of “Alexandrian velvet,” was surely made of Italian blue velvet, dyed the colour alessandrino; see Ronald Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 29.  47 A taffeta banner for the Medici giostra of 1469, in Florence, was painted with “a lady standing in a meadow wearing a robe in the antique style [drappo alessandrino] embroidered with gold and silver flowers”; see Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 90. Here, Nicholl, dealing with material from the anonymous Ricordo of the Medici joust (which he attributes to Luigi Pulci) has translated drappo alessandrino as “in the antique style.” Pulci’s poem, which drew upon material from the Ricordo, describes the same woman as “dressed in blue” [vestita d’azzurro], confirming that the original drappo alessandrino can be interpreted as blue (silk) fabric. For the Ricordo, see Pietro Fanfani, ed., Ricordo d’una giostra fatta in Firenze a dì 7 di Febbraio del 1468 sulla piazza di Santa Croce (Florence: Stamperia sulle Logge del Grano, 1864), 17; compare with stanza LXV of “La Giostra,” from Luigi Pulci, Opere minori, ed. Paolo Orvieto (Milan: Mursia, 1986), 86.  48 Umberto Dorini, Statuti dell’Arte di Por’ Santa Maria del tempo della Repubblica (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1934), 490; Girolamo Gargiolli, ed., L’arte della seta in Firenze: Trattato del secolo XV (Florence: Giunti-Barbera, 1868), 78.  49 Florence Edler de Roover, L’arte della seta a Firenze nei secoli XIV e XV, ed. Sergio Tognetti (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999), 46.  50 Gargiolli, L’arte della seta, 37–40; remedies for failure, 40–41. Orchil was probably not the only component in this recipe; see Buss, Silk Gold Crimson, 106.  51 Silk damask, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. no. T 16382; discussion and technical details in Buss, Silk Gold Crimson, 106–7, cat. no. 24.

34

Medieval Colour Terms analysed by Maarten van Bommel, proved to contain both red and blue colourants: Armenian cochineal (Porphyrophora hamelii) and a blue dye.52 Alessandrino was understood outside Italy: In France (including the duchy of Burgundy), the royal and ducal accounts record purchases of alessandrino silks from the resident colony of Italian merchants.53 In England, where similar silks were imported from Italy, the term did not catch on. This is evident from varying descriptions of Garter mantles, which, although none survive from the fifteenth century, can be seen from illustrations to the statutes of the order of the Garter written in 1440–50 to have been then, as now, a deep blue.54 Whereas in Italy, the Garter mantle of Duke Ercole d’Este I (1431–1505), seen at his funeral on Jan. 27, 1505, was described as made of velluto alessandrino,55 in England, these mantles were described as made of blodius-coloured velvet.56 Surprisingly, blodius did not mean blood-red, but denoted the colour of veins as they show through the skin (as in the proverbial “blue blood”). In the 1388 inventory of Westminster Abbey, listed after the red (rubei) gold-embroidered copes, were the blue ones, grouped under the heading “De Capis principalibus blodij coloris auro brudatis” [Concerning the principal blue gold-embroidered copes].57 During the first half of the sixteenth century, blodius was still used in the wardrobe accounts of Henry VIII, as a neutral term, not indicating a precise shade of blue.58 Similarly, in the Dissolution inventory of Westminster Abbey of 1540, vestments which would have been called blodius in the Latin inventory of 1388 were listed in English as simply “blewe.”59

 52 The blue could be indigo or woad, which are not possible to distinguish chemically; Buss, Silk Gold Crimson, 107 n. 5.  53 For two examples from Bruges and Paris respectively: “[À Marc Guidecon, marchant de Lucques demourant à Bruges] pour trois pièces de velueau alexandrin, brochié d’or fin à ouvrage de chaintures de cordellier dont MdS fist faire une houppelande longue pour lui au pris de vijxx escuz d’or la pièce, valent iiijCxx escuz d’or”; Léon, Marquis de Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne: Études sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XVe siècle, et plus particulièrement dans les Pays-Bas et le Duché de Bourgogne, 3 vols. (Paris: Plon Frères, 1849–52), 1:145, no. 461. “À Benart Bousdrach dit Pagain, mercier, demourant à Paris, pour demj quartier de fort satin azur alexandrin, acheté de lui, le xxvij jour de novembre, et baillé à Jehan de Savoye, tailleur, pour lui faire des jartières . . . viij s.p.”; ibid., 3:153, no. 5812.  54 See, for example, the depictions of Sir Neel Lorying and Sir James Daudele from the Garter Book of William Bruges, First Garter King at Arms (London, British Library, Stowe MS 594), ca. 1440–50, in Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547, ed. Richard Marks and Paul Williamson, exhibition catalogue (London: V&A Publications, 2003), 214, cat. no. 80, ill. 215.  55 Giovanni Maria Zerbinati, Croniche di Ferrara: Quali comenzano del anno 1500 sino al 1527 (Ferrara, Italy: Deputazione Provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria, 1989), 51–52, with thanks to Jane Bridgeman for this reference.  56 See, for example, the Garter mantle made of blodius velvet in 1444/5 for Henry VI, in TNA E 101/409/12, account of Robert Rolleston, keeper of the Great Wardrobe.  57 Legg, “Liturgical Colours,” 259.  58 For example, TNA E 101/421/16, account book of Andrew Windsor, 1533–34, fols. 4–5.  59 Legg, “Liturgical Colours,” 259 n. c.

35

Lisa Monnas Vair The last example of blue to be discussed here is not a textile colour, but concerns the fur known as vair. The prized medieval vair was the winter fur of the northern red squirrel imported from the Baltic states or Russia. In the winter, its fur was not only thicker but it also turned from red, or grey streaked with red, to pale grey with a bluish tinge, with a white belly. The name “vair,” denoting the whole skins, derived from varium opus, and reflected the contrasting or “varied” effect of the grey backs and white bellies.60 Backs and bellies could be sold separately, and the bellies—considered more desirable—were more expensive than the backs. When the bellies were trimmed, leaving mainly the white with a surrounding edge of grey fur, they were called menuvair (literally “small vair”) or, in English, “miniver.” These could also be designated menuvair gross, since when the grey was trimmed off entirely, leaving only the white belly, they were called menuvair puratus, or “pured miniver.”61 The seasonal change of colour lent vair something of the cachet of ermine, the white winter fur of the stoat. The desirability of the bluish tone of this grey fur (as well as the pleasing effect of its contrasting back and belly) is acknowledged in medieval heraldry, in which “vair” is represented as a two-tone wavy pattern coloured blue and white.62 The twelfth-century enamelled tomb image of Geoffrey Plantagenet (ca. 1151/60), in the Musée Tessé at Le Mans, represents the vair fur lining of his mantle, already stylized into the wavy pattern that would become its heraldic configuration, coloured in blue and white.63 In paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries vair fur was normally depicted as grey and white, but the convention of depicting it as blue and white did not entirely die out, and there are isolated examples dating from the fifteenth century.64 TAWNY AND ORANGE

“Tawny,” a colour term that was applied to both wool and silk, arose from the French tanné. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a composite colour consisting  60 For names applied to Baltic squirrel skins, including the derivation of vair from varium opus, see Elspeth M. Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 24, 223–25, 228. For a further discussion of medieval squirrel fur, and the desirable bluish tint of vair, see Daniel Phoenix, “‘Garments so Chequered’: The Bible of Citeaux, the Bayeux Tapestry and the Vair Pattern,” The Antiquaries Journal 90 (2010): 195–210, at 196.  61 Veale, English Fur Trade, 19–21, 24, 228–29.  62 Stephen Friar and John Ferguson, Basic Heraldry (London: Herbert Press, 1993), 150–51. St. John Hope (A Grammar of English Heraldry, 8) notes that in heraldry the vair pattern can be found in other colours, e.g., black and white or gold and blue, and is then called “vairy.”  63 Illustrated in Gage, Colour and Culture, fig. 53. For other early representations of vair in blue and white, see Phoenix, “‘Garments so Chequered,’” 197–202 and figs. 1–7.  64 See the miniature of the Emperor Sigismund with the King of Bohemia, in Eberhard Windecke, Das Leben König Sigismunds, 1443 (Vienna, Österreischische Nationalbibliothek, MS 13.975), 404r, illustrated in Jirí Fajit et al., Karl IV. Kaiser von Gottes Gnaden: Kunst und Repräsentation der Hauses Luxembourg 1310–1437, exhibition catalogue (Munich, Germany: Deutsches Kunstverlag, 2006), 607, pl. VIII.25.

36

Medieval Colour Terms of brown with a preponderance of yellow or orange; but formerly applied to other shades of brown.”65 “Tawny,” tanné, or the Italian tanè, and the modern terms “tan” and “tannin” ultimately had the same origin, derived from tanbark, the bark of oak and other trees, a source of tannins. In the fifteenth-century Florentine Trattato dell’ arte della seta, the chapter on dyeing silk tanè begins breezily, “To dye tawny, which is a mad and strange colour … ” and continues to explain that, after taking white silk, washed and then steeped in alum, one could achieve the colour using the inexpensive ingredients young fustic (Cotinus coggygria) and weld.66 The “madness” of the colour lay, perhaps, in its volatility. The treatise cautions that if the steps for dyeing are not followed correctly from the beginning, the result will be either blotchy (macchiato) or striped—and that once it begins to go wrong it is virtually impossible to remedy. Despite the skill required to produce tanè, according to the same text, dyers charged only 12 soldi di piccioli to dye one pound of silk in tanè, less than black, priced at 15, and considerably less than four other colours (to be discussed below): paghonazzo, 35; alessandrino, verde bruno, or chermisi dyed twice, 40.67 The earliest mention of “tawny” in English heraldry occurs only in the mid-fifteenth century68 but it is found well before that as a textile colour.69 Discussing signs of social hierarchy in late medieval clothing, based upon French sources, Christian de Mérindol placed the tannés among the “couleurs sombres” worn more frequently by the bourgeois and below, and in princely households mainly worn by domestics and confessors, but sometimes by princes.70 Tanné (or tenné) features as a colour for both silk and wool in the account of Geoffroi de Fleuri, argentier to king Philip V (“le Long”) of France (r. 1316–22), in 1316: “Pour 9 onces et demie de soie et de cendal [silk] tané, délivré du coumandement madame la Royne, à Marguerite de Lambriz, le IXme jour de decembre, pour faire les besonges de la Royne, 31s. 6d.” [for nine and a half ounces of silk and tané cendal, delivered by command of Madame the Queen to Marguerite de Lambriz, the 9th day of December, to do the Queen’s work, 31s. 6d.].71 Also in that year, 13 aunes of tenné (wool) were delivered to “messire Jehan” for the laundress (lavendière) and milkmaid (vachière) of the queen, for their “robes de

 65 OED, s.v. “tawny.”  66 Gargiolli, L’arte della seta, chap. 30, 54–55. For young fustic, see Cardon, Natural Dyes, 191–95, and for its use in producing tanè as described in the Florentine treatise, 192.  67 Gargiolli, L’arte della seta, 78.  68 Gage, Colour and Culture, 281 n. 64.  69 See, for example, TNA E 101/384/6, membrane 1, 1329, “[Waltero Kalendar] pro tinctur vj pec’ sindon alb’ in color tannet ad j robam de tirtann’ dat’ d[omi]ne Regine m[at]ri R[egis] p’ Regem liniand p[ro] qualibet pec’ xxd . . . xs.”  70 Christian de Mérindol, “Signes de hiérarchie sociale à la fin du Moyen Age d’après les vêtements: Méthodes et recherches,” in Le Vêtement: Histoire, archéologie et symbolique vestimentaires au Moyen Age, ed. Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1989), 181–222, at 196–97.  71 Louis Douët-d’Arcq, Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France au XIVe siècle (Paris: Jules Renouard et Cie, 1851), 35.

37

Lisa Monnas Toussains,” at 14s. per aune, totalling ₤9 2s.72 In 1376, Charles V bought several tanné cloths “pour robes de vendredis.”73 My own findings from the English royal accounts of the fourteenth century generally agree with the conclusions reached by Christian de Mérindol, as the English royal family did wear tann’ cloth, but relatively infrequently, and for Pentecost, in contrast to Christmas, when more festive red clothing, often made of scarlet wool, was preferred. King Edward II (r. 1307–27) had a set of two garments made for himself of woollen pann’ tann’ in 1325.74 In 1360–61, the liveries for Pentecost at the court of Edward III (r. 1327–77) were similarly made of tann’ cloth, and included sets of clothing made for Edward himself as well as for the captive King John I (“le Bon”) of France (r. 1350–64).75 These were woollen cloths, but the 1388 inventory of Westminster Abbey records, besides nine tawny (wool) tapeta given by Abbot Nicholas Lytlington, two tunicles made of tawny silk samite.76 In Italy, a colour known as pelo di leone (“lion skin”), also used for silk and wool, is sometimes equated with tanè. Pelo di leone is mentioned in relation to wool in successive Florentine dyers’ tariffs from 1344/5 onward.77 Three of the lists give prices for dyeing in both pelo di leone and tanè, so they were not always considered synonymous.78 In the Florentine Trattato dell’ arte della seta, however, a connection between tanè and pelo di leone is explicitly made, as the dyer is told how depending upon the amount of young fustic used his tanè silk will tend toward “old lion” (unqualified) or “young lion” (defined as reddish).79 From this and other descriptions it is clear that, like the eponymous lion skin, “tawny” did not denote just one shade, but ranged from tan to orange. For example, when Cardinal Wolsey went to France in 1518, he was accompanied by “his yeomen all in their oraunge tawny coates, with the Cardinall[’s] hat and a T and a C for Thomas Cardinall embroidered vpon their Coates.”80 As with the blue tinge of vair, the orange aspect of this colour is enshrined in heraldry, where it is actually represented as a shade of orange,81 and in which an “orange” can denote a tawny-coloured roundel.82  72 Ibid., 37.  73 Gage, Colour and Culture, 281 n. 72.  74 “una tunica & unu[m] courtep’ fac’ p[ro] Rege de pann[o] tann’ eodem die [29 February] . . . vij uln’ dj,” TNA E 101/381/1, membrane 1, Thomas de Useflete, clerk of the Great Wardrobe, Livery Roll, 1325.  75 Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, 57–58, 61, 67.  76 Legg, “Inventory of the Vestry,” 265 (tunicles) and 267 (tapeta).  77 Doren, Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie, tariffs 1344/5–1387, 509–11.  78 Ibid., 510–12.  79 Gargiolli, L’arte della seta, 54, which only says that the colour will incline al vecchio or al giovane; for the reference to lione vecchio o giovane, 55.  80 Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 146.  81 Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory, or, a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon (Chester, UK: printed for the author, 1688), 12, “Tawny or orange colour”; Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, The Art of Heraldry: An Encyclopaedia of Armory (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1904), 487, “Practical Notes on Emblazoning and Illuminating . . . Tenne, Tawny or Brusk . . . for this orangy hue, orange chrome may be used.”  82 Orange as a tawny-coloured roundel: OED, s.v. “orange.”

38

Medieval Colour Terms There are a number of existing medieval textiles that look as though they could be tawny, but many are faded and may have changed colour. This can be seen in a fragment of what is probably Lucchese velvet (fig. 2.2) from the 1380s in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which now appears to be chequered in a pale tawny (similar to the modern colour “tan”) and white, but was originally red and white.83 It is a typical example of silk dyed with redwood of the Caesalpinia species (commonly known as brazilwood), which produces a red that is brilliant but fugitive in light.84 Similarly, there are two fragments of fifteenth-century voided satin velvet in the Victoria and Albert Museum which now look convincingly tawny, but are evidently faded, and may once have been red.85 Although “tawny” did cover some shades of orange, in early texts, some colours that we might today term orange may have been called croceus, as the colour obtained from saffron could be a golden orange or even reddish.86 Judging by the dyers’ tariffs laid down by the Tintori di arte maggiori of Florence, wool dyed “orange” (ranci) was already available there by 1333–34.87 The colour orange appears as rancius and also as a qualifier for yellow, giallus rancius, on clothing listed in the Florentine notarial register of a luxury tax known as the Prammatica del vestire of 1343.88 Paul Hills dates the wider popularization of the term “orange” in Italy from the end of the fifteenth century, when naranceo was extensively used in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream), Francesco Colonna’s allegorical romance published by Aldius Manutius in Venice in 1499.89 Although the Oxford English Dictionary cites an Anglo-Norman reference to an orange fruit, a pume orenge (for “pomme orange”), of about 1200, “orange” seems to have been adopted relatively late as a colour-adjective for textiles in England, and the

 83 Victoria and Albert Museum, London, no. 884-1899. There is another fragment of this velvet in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, inv. no. 13748, purchased from Canon Franz Bock; with thanks to Frances Pritchard for this reference. For the identification of this velvet as Lucchese, see Lisa Monnas, “Developments in Figured Velvet Weaving in Italy During the Fourteenth Century,” in Bulletin de Liaison du Centre International d’Études des Textiles Anciens (CIETA), nos. 63–64 (1986): 63–100, esp. 67–68.  84 The dyestuff of the red silk pile warps was identified as soluble redwood (Caesalpinia sappan) by David Peggie and Rachel Morrison of the National Gallery; see Lisa Monnas, Renaissance Velvets (London: V&A Publications, 2012), ill. 18, pl. 11, colour discussed at 25 and 158.  85 No. 1126-1888 has a brilliant red ground weft, which suggests that the pile warp may have faded (unpublished). No. 8337-1863 is illustrated in Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, fig. 189.  86 In texts from the late Republic and Augustan Rome, croceus has been interpreted as “a red-orange or yellow with orange overtones”; see Judith Lynn Sebesta, “Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Colors and Textiles of Roman Costume,” in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 65–76, 68. For further discussion of the term croceus, see pages 25–26 of this article.  87 Doren, Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie, 509 (1333–34); see also 510 (1344–45) and 512 (1428).  88 Laurence Gérard-Marchant, “Compter et nommer l’étoffe à Florence au trecento (1343),” Médiévales 29 (1995): 87–104, at 97–98.  89 Paul Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1230–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 146.

39

Lisa Monnas

Fig. 2.2: Fragment of solid cut-pile velvet with a chequered design, probably from Lucca, 1380s (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, no. 884-1899, 20.5 by 9.5 cm). Photo: Copyright © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, by permission.

40

Medieval Colour Terms Dictionary itself offers no example earlier than the sixteenth century.90 During the reign of Henry VIII, the wardrobe clerks felt obliged to add a qualifier, so, in 1543/4, Ralph Saddler, keeper of the Great Wardrobe, described both satin and velvet fabrics as “orange colour.”91 However, when “orange colour” was still used over half a century later, in the Elizabethan wardrobe inventories of 1600, it must have been simply a conventional phrase, rather than an indication of novelty.92 GREEN: DARK AND LIGHT, SAD AND GAY

Green was produced in a range of shades, including light vert claret, bright vert gay, intense vert herbu (grass green), vert medium, and darker vert encr’ (ink green) and vert brun.93 In her discussion of cameline listed in Dijon cloth merchants’ inventories of between 1389 and 1438, Françoise Pipponnier remarked that the colour word brun was synonymous with “dark.”94 This also applied to the regulations of Béthune (quoted earlier) stipulating that all perse cloths, whether “clers ou bruns,” should be dyed with woad. There the use of cler and brun exactly matches the modern French equivalent to mean a light or dark shade. During the Middle Ages, and still today, the French brun was not just a colour equivalent to English “brown”; it could also indicate a darker shade of a particular colour, such as the deep blue perse brun, or dark green vert brun. These dark, saturated colours were relatively expensive. In 1386, for example, five ells of dark green cloth (vert brun) made in Brussels, priced at 40 sous parisis per ell, were purchased from Aubelet Buignet to make two short houppellandes with matching hoods, for riding, for King Charles VI and the Duke of Touraine.95 As we saw earlier, in the Florentine Trattato dell’ arte della seta, verde bruno was among the most labour-intensive colours to achieve: Dyers charged the silk merchants the same price (40 soldi di piccioli per pound of silk) for their work in producing verde bruni as for alessandrini or chermisi dyed twice, although the finished crimson fabrics, dyed with costlier ingredients, would have retailed more expensively.96 During the Middle Ages, “sad,” a word that we now use almost exclusively to express emotion, was frequently used as a colour qualifier. In 1506, when William Makefyrr described the retinue of Philip the Fair, King of Castile (b. 1478, d. 1506), who had arrived in England after being shipwrecked off the coast, wearing cloaks of  90 OED, s.v. “orange.”  91 TNA E 101/423/10, Ralph Saddler, particular account, fol. 10r, “satten orendge color”; fol. 95r, “velvet orendge color.”  92 Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, 266, no. 54; 267, no. 64; 273, no. 26; etc.  93 Vert medium may look odd, but a list of cloths supplied to the Great Wardrobe of Edward III in 1329 by the draper John Pulteney included vert gay, vert med’, and vert encr’; see TNA E 101/384/6, roll of purchases and expenses.  94 Françoise Piponnier, “Cloth Merchants’ Inventories in Dijon in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Harte and Ponting, Cloth and Clothing, 230–47, at 243.  95 Louis Douët-d’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil de Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France (Paris: Renouard, 1874), 121.  96 Gargiolli, L’arte della seta, 78; discussed in Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 24.

41

Lisa Monnas “sad tawny black,” he was probably describing a black textile that was in the brownish spectrum of black rather than a blue-black.97 In England, “sad” was an adjective which could be applied to any colour to indicate a dark or sombre tone. The zadblauwen cloths produced in Ghent in the mid-fourteenth century are characterized by John Munro as a “good, deep blue,” and two centuries later, “sad” blue was still the darkest shade of blue for Suffolk cloth.98 When King James V of Scotland (r. 1513–42) made a formal entry into Paris on New Year’s Eve, 1536, he was wearing “ane cott of sad cramasy velvott.” This coat of dark crimson velvet cannot have presented a very subdued appearance, as it was lavishly decorated with cutwork of cloth of gold.99 “Gay” was the corollary of “sad,” as it signified not only a light, carefree mood, but also a vivid, bright colour, and in this sense was most often applied to green wool. In 1325, between the end of March and early May, Edward II had various items of clothing made of pannus viridus gaud’.100 In the Oxford English Dictionary, various meanings for “gaudy” are connected with the Old French verb gaudir: to rejoice or make merry, from the Latin gaudere. However, the phrase “gaudy-green,” associated with cloth, has been singled out to mean “dyed with weld, yellowish green,” from Old French gaude, denoting weld.101 This makes perfect sense, as weld was a key ingredient in creating green cloth. Cloth of vert gaude, priced at almost 3s. per yard, does crop up in an English tailor’s account, written in French, of 1294, preserved among the great wardrobe accounts of Edward I.102 It is, however, also likely that the cloths of vert gaude or viridus gaud’ in the English royal wardrobe accounts corresponded to the cloth usually described in French sources as vert gay.103 Green was particularly associated with spring and with the pastime of Maying, when young men rode out and gathered branches and flowers from the woods, and when, as Susan Crane has described, “courtiers dressed up in plants, celebrated women for being daisies and allied themselves with the parties of Leaf and Flower.”104 In Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory (1405–71) described how Queen Guinevere called upon her knights of the Table Round; and gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a-maying into woods and fields beside Westminster. And I warn you that that there be none of you but that he be well horsed, and that ye all be clothed in green, outher in silk, outher in cloth … 105  97 James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters (1904; repr., Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1986), 6:174, no. 1078.  98 Munro, The Medieval Scarlet, 37. For the Suffolk cloth, see Kerridge, Textile Manufactures, 17.  99 Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (Leeds: Maney, 2007), 19. 100 TNA E 101/381/1 (various examples). 101 OED, s.v. “gaudy”: adj. 1, “Only in Comb. gaudy-grene, green dyed with weld, yellowish green.” 102 TNA E 101/353/8, schedules of expenses for clothing, probably from the Clare Household, 20–35 Edward I and 4 Edward II, unnumbered document dated “l’an le Rey (sic) Edward xxij.” 103 Although in modern French this would be “gai,” it is often spelt “gay” in medieval French texts. 104 Susan Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 48. 105 Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, full modern English spelling version of the text printed by William Caxton in 1485, book 19, chapter 1, e-text online at www.gutenberg.org/files/1252/1252h/1252/-h.htm.

42

Medieval Colour Terms At the French court, the livrée de Mai (livery of May) was issued in various shades of green, including darker vert brun or vert encre as well as the lighter vert claret and bright vert gay. In 1386/7, Charles VI of France (r. 1380–1422) distributed livery for Maying consisting of gowns (houppellandes) embroidered with his device of a large branch bearing broom cods made of dark green cloth lined with lighter green. His tailor, Guillaume Climence, was paid for twenty-six houppellandes for Maying for the king and his chosen companions, made out of “drap vert encre de Broixelles” [ink-green cloth of Brussels] lined with “une autre vert plus claret” [another lighter green cloth]. For these garments, Brussels and Rouen cloths coloured vert brun were purchased from the merchants Aubelet Buignet and Nicolas Alixandre, with Brussels and Rouen cloths in vert claret for the linings. Interestingly, in these two separate accounts for the same items, vert brun is equated with vert encre. 106 In 1400, Charles had a staggering 352 houppellandes made of drap vert gay lined with black cloth, embroidered on the left sleeve with intertwined branches of may (hawthorn) and broom, to be worn on May 1.107 In the calendar in the Très Riches Heures of John, Duke of Berry, the miniature for the month of May (ca. 1416) is thought to represent the Duke and members of his court Maying, although only three ladies (and none of the men) in this scene are dressed in bright green.108 It has been suggested that the dresses of the three ladies, as well as the extravagantly cut, vivid green wool dress worn by the woman in Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, dated 1434, might be examples of vert gay.109 RED

Scarlet, crimson, vermilion In the coronation accounts of Edward VI (r. 1547–53), among the liveries of wool, there is a clear demarcation of rank between those issued with red wool and those with scarlet. Whereas most of the lower echelons of the royal household (principally pages, grooms, and yeomen) were alotted red cloth, the ranks above them (including marshals, gentlemen, sergeants, justices, barons, clerks, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the king’s painter) received scarlet. This division reflected a distinction of price and

106 Douët-d’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil, payments to Aubelet Buignet and Nicolas Alixandre, cloth merchants, 129–31; payment to Robert de Varennes, embroiderer, 196–97; payment to Guillaume Climence, tailor, 294; discussed by Joan Evans, Dress in Medieval France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 39–40. 107 Douët-d’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil, p. xlvj, cited by Susan Crane, Performance of Self, 195 n. 9. 108 See Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, eds., Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), text 43, ill. 42. For literary references to wearing green for Maying, see Crane, Performance of Self, 45–46. 109 Margaret Scott, Late Gothic Europe 1400–1500, History of Dress Series (London: Mills and Boon, 1980), 120.

43

Lisa Monnas quality between the red and scarlet cloths and consequently of the prestige imparted to the recipients.110 The word “scarlet” does not have a classical root, and the various possibilities for its etymology have been discussed by several authors, notably John Munro.111 He has traced “scarlet” as a cloth term in Western Europe to the eleventh century, with its earliest known appearance in Old High German.112 Munro has demonstrated that the noun “scarlet” originally denoted a high-quality woollen broadcloth, made from the best English wool and dyed with the costly red insect dye kermes (known at the time in England as “grain” and in Italy as grana), showing that “scarlet” only later became an adjective of colour.113 There are numerous references to scarlet cloth dyed in grain from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, vindicating the Munro thesis. In Florence, for example, the Arte di Calimala, the guild of merchants who dealt in imported cloth, passed a statute in 1301 establishing that scarlatti cloths should only be dyed in grain, prohibiting the mixture with other colours.114 In Italy, cheaper red cloths dyed with a combination of dyes were known as scarlattini. In Florence, from 1339, scarlatti dyed in pure grain, called scarlatti di colpo, were to be distinguished from cheaper versions, dyed with a mixture of grain and madder, which were henceforth to be known as scarlattini, infiammati, or panni di mezzagrana.115 To give a later example from the reign of Henry VII, in a royal wardrobe account of 1507, under purchases of silk cloth and fur, the woollens are compiled under the heading “De panno lano in grano videlicet scarlet & panno sine grano diuersorum colorum” [Of woollen cloth dyed in grain, that is to say “scarlet” and cloth without grain of diverse colours].116 Dominique Cardon has analysed a documented fragment of scarlet cloth attached to a letter of 1402/3 sent from Barcelona to the Datini firm in Florence. Her examination of the weave and finishing of this sample (tabby woven, fulled and sheared on both sides) confirmed that its distinguishing feature was the presence of an expensive insect dyestuff.117 Not all scarlet cloths were a scarlet colour.118 A list of scarlets supplied to the wardrobe of King Charles VI of France in the account of his treasurer and argentier Guillaume Brunel, compiled between January 1386 and June 1387, gives an idea of the range of colours available for scarlets made in Brussels and Rouen (Table 2.1), encompassing the characteristic scarlet colour as well as darker red (sanguine), ­together 110 See Table 12, extracted from TNA LC 2/3/1, the coronation account of Edward VI, in Lisa Monnas, “Plentie and Abundaunce: Henry VII’s Valuable Stores of Textiles,” in The Inventory of King Henry VIII, vol. 2, Textiles and Dress, ed. Maria Hayward and Philip Ward (London: Harvey Miller, 2012), 235–94, esp. 264–72. 111 Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet,” 13–70, at 21. 112 Ibid., 19; John Munro, “Scarlet,” in Encyclopaedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 477–81, at 477. 113 Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet,” 13; Munro, “Scarlet,” 478. 114 Hoshino, Industria Tessile, 24. 115 Ibid., 24; for the use of verzino (soluble redwood) in scarlattini in 1355–70 Florence, 29. 116 TNA E 101/416/5. 117 Cardon, “Échantillons,” 368–70. 118 Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet,” 53–62; Munro, “Scarlet,” 479.

44

Medieval Colour Terms Table 2.1: Colours recorded for scarlets from Brussels and Rouen purchased in Paris, from the account of Guillaume Brunel, treasurer and argentier to King Charles VI of France, 1387 Supplier

Description

Aubelet Buignier, drappier demourant à Paris (cloth merchant living in Paris)

Escarlate vermeille de Bruxelles, de grant moison Escarlate vermeille, toute preste Escarlate morée de Bruxelles Escarlate morée de Rouen, toute preste Escarlate morée sur le brun de Rouen, toute preste Escarlate entière paonasse de Bruxelles

Price per aunea in livres and sous parisisb 4 livres 16 sous

125

5 livres 12 sous 4 livres 8 sous 4 livres 16 sous 4 livres

125–26 132 135 138

112 livres (whole piece of 24 aunes) Escarlate rosée de Bruxelles, de grant moison 4 livres 16 sous Escarlate rosée de Bruxelles 4 livres 10 sous Escarlate violette sur le brun toute preste 5 livres 12 sous

Page

136 125 137 134

Nicolas Alixandre, Escarlate vermeille de Bruxelles drappier Escarlate rosée entière de Bruxelles demourant à Paris Escarlate rosée clère Escarlate rosée sur le brun Escarlate violette Escarlate violette de Bruxelles, de grant moison

4 livres 16 sous 112 livres (whole piece of 24 aunes) 4 livres 16 sous 4 livres 16 sous 4 livres 16 sous 4 livres 16 sous

123–24 123 136 137

Escarlate sanguine de Bruxelles, de grant Guiot de moison Besançon, demourant à Paris

4 livres 16 sous

133

120 120

Source: Louis Douët d’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil de Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France (Paris: Renouard, 1874). a An aune was an ell, a measurement that varied according to location. These cloths, purchased in Paris, may have been measured on the Paris ell of ca. 118.8 centimetres (just over 46 inches), which was slightly larger than the English ell of ca. 114.3 centimetres (45 inches), and considerably wider than the Brabant or “Flemish” ell (also used in Brussels) of ca. 68.5 centimetres (27 inches). See Ronald Edward Zupko, French Weights and Measures Before the Revolution: A Dictionary of Provincial and Local Units (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), s.v. “aune.” b

There were 20 sous per livre.

45

Lisa Monnas with shades of purple (morée, paonasse, and violette). The examples which are said to be “rosée sur le brun” tie in with a description of a robe owned by John I of France some years earlier, described in his will of 1364 as “d’une escarlate plus brune un peu que du rosée.”119 By the thirteenth century, according to Munro, “scarlet” used as an adjective had come to be equated with the grain-dyed colour.120 When used as a colour-adjective, “scarlet” applied only to wool. In order to avoid an ugly repetition, scarlet-coloured scarlet cloth was often described as vermiglio in Italy and vermeil in France (see Table 2.1). Vermeil and vermiglio were also preferred for scarlet-coloured silk, distinguishing it from the more bluish tones of crimson. The artists’ pigment vermilion denotes the synthetic form of cinnabar, the manufacture of which was known in Europe from the eighth century.121 However, vermeil (or vermiglio) used in a textile context was another colour term based upon an association with red insect dyes. It is thought to derive, ultimately from vermiculus, the Latin for “little worm,” because, in the same way as the appearance of the dye-bearing insects gave rise to the term “grain,” they were also perceived as tiny worms.122 “Crimson” (cremisi, but previously also chremisi, cremexi, and chermisi in Italian; cramoisi, previously also cramoisy, in French) was a colour term reserved for silk, which reflected the dyestuff used for this fibre. It is more obvious from the Italian chermisi that “crimson” and other foreign-language equivalents derive from the Arabic qirmiz, meaning “kermes,” and ultimately from more ancient Indo-European roots denoting “larva” or “worm” (also meaning an insect), reflecting the fact that true crimson was achieved with an insect dye.123 Paradoxically, Dominique Cardon has concluded that “grain” used for woollen scarlet was extracted from the insect Kermes vermilio, and she has persuasively argued that the chermisi used for silk was created with a different group of insects of the porphyrophora species, typically Polish cochineal (Porphyrophora polonica), and Armenian cochineal (Porphyrophora hamelii).124 Florentine guild legislation of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflected the growing sophistication of the silk industry and changes in dyeing practices. A regulation of 1335 prohibited the dyeing of zendadi (there used as a generic term for silks) in colore vermiglio with 119 Evans, Dress in Medieval France, 147. 120 Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet,” 63. 121 For the pigment “vermilion,” see the glossary entry in Kirby, Nash, and Cannon, Trade in Artists’ Materials, 460. 122 Vermiculus is actually equated with “kermes,” with a dating reference of ca. 1212, in R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 508; see also Algirdas Julien Greimas and Teresa Mary Keane, Dictionnaire du moyen français: la Renaissance (Paris: Larousse, 1992), s.v. “vermeil.” For a fuller discussion, see Cardon, Natural Dyes, 609. 123 The link between cramoisi and kermes and its Arabic derivation is well established; see, for example, Victor Gay, Glossaire Archéologique du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance (1887; repr. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1967), s.v. “cramoisi.” For a discussion of its Indo-European roots, see Cardon, Natural Dyes, 608–9; for crimson associated with silk, see Hills, Venetian Colour, 176–77. 124 See the discussions in Cardon, Natural Dyes, of “Dyer’s kermes,” 609–16, and “The crimson-dyeing scale insects of the old world,” 635–52.

46

Medieval Colour Terms anything other than grana.125 By 1429, the tariffs for dyers set by the silk guild included chremisi silk, presumably dyed with Old World cochineal insects, at 25 soldi di piccioli per pound weight, and less expensive vermiglio silk dyed not with grana but with verzino (soluble redwood) at 20 soldi di piccioli.126 Rubeus cardinalescus Among the many tints of red available in the Middle Ages, one of them, rubeus cardinalescus in Latin or rosso cardinalesco in Italian, referred to the colour worn by cardinals. In a detailed study of popes’ and cardinals’ robes, Bernard Berthod has noted that in the thirteenth century, “in contrast to civil society in which blue was increasingly deployed, and ultimately became the royal colour, ecclesiastical society preferred red, which soon became the marker of the papal court.”127 He has traced the conferral of the cardinal’s red hat to a privilege granted by Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243–54) at the first Council of Lyon in 1245, and the introduction of the red biretta for cardinals after ca. 1480, with red robes only formally instituted from the end of the fifteenth century.128 The distinctive shape of the cardinal’s broad-brimmed hat was based on a popular form of a traveller’s hat, designed for protection against the elements.129 By the fourteenth century, red was evidently thought sufficiently characteristic of a cardinal’s dress that St. Jerome, when depicted as a cardinal, was often, though not exclusively, represented wearing a red travelling mantle to match his hat.130 Although red robes may not have been mandatory for cardinals before the late fifteenth century, the colour had already become sufficiently associated with their office (presumably through the hat) before the middle of the fourteenth century for rubeus cardinalescus to enter the vocabulary of colour, featuring among the reds listed in the 1333/4 tariffs for dyeing wool in Florence.131 In Venice, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cardinal red was achieved with a combination of grain, madder, and soluble redwood.132 125 Dorini, Statuti dell’Arte, 128. 126 Ibid., 489–90; de Roover, L’Arte della Seta a Firenze, 46. 127 Bernard Berthod, “From Papal Red to Cardinal Purple: Evolution and Change of Robes at the Papal Court from Innocent III to Leo X 1216–1521,” in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Stewart Gordon (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 315–31, at 315. 128 Ibid., 324. 129 Ibid., for the shape of the cardinal’s hat. For an example of St. Jerome in matching red mantle and hat, see Giusto de’ Menabuoi (1320/30–1391), Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels, dated 1345, Budapest, Szépmüvzeti Museum, inv. no. 6006, in Giovanni da Milano: Capolavori del Gotico fra Lombardia e Toscana, ed. Daniela Parenti, exhibition catalogue (Florence: Giunti, 2008), cat. no. 7. 130 See, for example, the small diptych attributed to Benedetto di Bindo, with the Virgin and Child and St. Jerome translating the Gospel of St. John, ca. 1400, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, illustrated in Gage, Colour and Culture, fig. 89. 131 For rubeus cardinaleschus in wool dyers’ tariffs in Florence from 1333 onwards, see Doren, Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie, 508–12. 132 Sydney M. Edelstein and Hector C. Borghetty, eds. and trans., The Plictho of Gioanventura Rosetti: Instructions in the art of dyers: which teaches the dyeing of woolen cloths, linens, cottons and silk by the great art as well as by the common (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 25 and 115.

47

Lisa Monnas PURPLE

In Western Europe, during the Middle Ages, the fabled mollusc dyes of antiquity were no longer used to create purple,133 which instead involved successive dyebaths of blue, from woad or indigo, or the lichen dye orchil (Rocella tinctoria), and of red, either from expensive red insect dyes, or from the cheaper substitutes of madder or soluble redwood.134 Although, as we have seen, textiles dyed in vibrant shades of blue, crimson, and scarlet came to rival the prestige of imperial purple, purple itself remained a prestigious colour, retaining its association with royalty. This was certainly the case in England, where the exclusivity of purple was enshrined in the law: Sumptuary legislation first passed under Edward IV, in 1483, reinforced in the reign of Henry VIII (r. 1509–47), restricted the wearing of purple silk to the monarch and immediate members of the royal family, with exemptions for privileged groups, such as ecclesiastics (when performing divine service) or ambassadors.135 Henry VIII habitually wore either purple or red velvet for his attendance at chapel on four solemn church feasts: Easter, Christmas, All Saints, and Whitsunday.136 In the Middle Ages, purpura was a noun denoting a textile, in a range of colours, usually a silk fabric, although there is at least one known example of wool from the thirteenth century.137 Purpureus was a colour-adjective that coexisted with the noun.138 Perhaps to avoid confusion with the textiles known as “purples,” a range of other adjectives emerged to describe the colour, including “murrey,” paonazzo, and “violet.” “Violet” was popularly used, and both the compilers of the 1295 inventory of the Holy

133 For the cessation of purple dyeing in Muslim-controlled territories from the seventh century, see Jane Bridgeman, “Purple Dyes in Late Antiquity and Byzantium,” in The Royal Purple and the Biblical Blue: Argaman and Tekhelet: The study of Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Herzog on the dye industries of ancient Israel and recent scientific contributions, ed. Ehud Spanier (Jerusalem: Keter, 1987), 159–66, at 161 and 163. Cardon, like Bridgeman, considers that the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 signalled the demise of “the last great bastion of dyeing in true purple”; Cardon, Natural Dyes, 576. 134 For dyeing wool, Hoshino, Industria Tessile, 30–34; recipes for silk and wool given in Como, Civica Biblioteca, MS no. 4.4.1, in Giovanni Rebora, ed., Un Manuale di Tintoria del Quattrocento (Milan: A. Guiffrè, 1970), 72, 75, 114, 132. 135 Frances E. Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1926), law of 1483, 115; of 1510, 141; of 1532–33, 157; see also Hayward, Rich Apparel, Table 1.1, “An overview of Henry VIII’s four acts of Apparel,” esp. 29 for restrictions on wearing purple and 38–39 for exemptions. 136 Fiona Kisby, “The Royal Household in Early Tudor England 1485–1547” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, Royal Holloway College, 1996), 164, 167. 137 “Purple” silk fabrics, produced in Spain (especially Almeria) and in Italy (Florence, Genoa, Lucca, and Venice) are discussed in Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 298, including just one example of purpura as a woollen cloth. 138 Taking examples from the St. Paul’s inventory of 1295, purpura as a silk textile can be seen in the chasuble made of black purpura, in Dugdale, History of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 323, “Casula quae fuit Magistro Henrici de Norhampton, de nigro purpuro . . .”; for vestments made of various different silks, including bawdekyn and samite, that are qualified as purple (colour), see 318, 321.

48

Medieval Colour Terms See139 and of the 1341 inventory of the Basilica di San Francesco at Assisi described their purple vestments as violaceus.140 Paonazzo Paonazzo or pavonazzo in Italian or paonace in French is another term for purple, which literally means “peacock,” and garbled versions ranging from “paunace” to “pounaz” occur in English documents. It is a term used equally for wool and silk. When mentioned alone, it denoted wool, but when qualified, such as velluto paonazzo, it referred to silk. In England, “peacock” is normally associated with the colour of a peacock’s head and neck, so it is a natural assumption that paonazzo should be a shade of blue (fig. 2.3).141 However (from personal observations) depending on the way in which the bird holds its neck, because of the iridescent quality of the feathers, according to the different angle of light striking them, the colour can fleetingly change from a brilliant blue to a deep bluish-purple, becoming, in places, almost black (fig. 2.4), and even some of the tail feathers can reflect purple of a paler, more reddish tint. It is this elusive, purple aspect of the plumage that is reflected in the meaning of paonazzo.142 In Venice, by 1457, paonazzo silks were available dyed with a variety of blue and red combinations, either derived from the insect dyes cremisi (combined with indigo) or grana (combined with orchil), or a third version, the red component of which was soluble redwood. Of these three, the paonazzo silks dyed with redwood were the least desirable, and presumably also the cheapest, as redwood fades badly in the light.143 In the sixteenth century, Ludovico Dolce (ca. 1506/10–1568) described a colour called feniceo representing a warm violet, often called purpura violata, but which (in his day) was called pavonazzo.144 There is a visible example of Dolce’s pavonazzo, as, in

139 “Paramenta violacea,” in Molinier, “Trésor du Saint-Siège,” 96–97, nos. 979–95. 140 “Dei paramenti neri e violacei,” in Fratini, Storia della Basilica, 1341 inventory, 180–81; see also 172 and 174. 141 Pastoureau, Figures et Couleurs, 90; Frédérique Lachaud, “An Aristocratic Wardrobe of the Late Thirteenth Century: The Confiscation of the Goods of Osbert de Spaldington in 1298,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 61, no. 162 (February 1994): 91–100, at 95. In a recent article, Benjamin Wild follows Lachaud in interpreting paonazzo as blue-green; Benjamin L. Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011): 1–31, at 9. 142 Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 405: “paonazzo: livid purple; shade of red obtained from a first bath in a red dye and a second in the vagello (Venice).” Michele A. Cortelazzo, Adriana Da Rin, and Paola Frattaroli, “Glossario,” in Tessuti nel Veneto: Venezia e la Terraferma, ed. Guiliana Ericani and Paola Frattaroli (Verona: Banca Popolare de Verona, 1993) 23: Pavonazzo: as fabric, cloth, or dress of the colour “viola scura di una tonalita più o meno tendente al porpora o al bluastro” [“dark violet whose tonality tends more or less towards purple or blue”]. 143 Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 319, Table 1, discussed at 314. 144 Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Venetians: 1495–1525, Pasold Studies in Textile History 7 (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1988), 18–20. Newton interprets feniceo as “phoenix,” but Dolce was probably referring to the classical colour puniceus or feniceus referring to the Phoenicians; see Gage, Colour and Meaning, 93, 96.

49

Figs. 2.3 and 2.4: Two views of peacock plumage colours. Fig. 2.3 (left): Plumage varying in colour from turquoise to royal blue and purple. Fig. 2.4 (right): Both the blue and purple aspects of the plumage. Photos: Lisa Monnas.

Lisa Monnas

50

Medieval Colour Terms a letter written in 1554/5 to Alessandro Contarini, he described the colour of the fabric on which Venus is seated in Titian’s Venus and Adonis (1553–54) as pavonazzo.145 In this painting (of which several versions exist, but I am referring to the one considered the primary version, now in the Prado, Madrid), Venus is perched on Adonis’s deep purple jacket, which actually has a more crimson than violet aspect.146 Wool dyed paonazzo was surely known in Italy well before it appeared in the Florentine Prammatica del vestire of 1343.147 It already featured in England among cloths acquired by Henry III (r. 1207–72) listed in a roll dating from Oct. 28, 1234, until Oct. 27, 1235, the year in which Henry’s sister, Isabella, married Emperor F ­ rederick II (1194–1250), at Worms on July 15, 1235.148 Among the woollen cloths sent by Henry as gifts to the emperor was “una pounacia de proviniac’ (in grana) integra” [One whole pounacia of Provins dyed in grain].149 Isabella took as part of her trousseau a whole pounacia of Lincoln dyed in grain, containing 36 ells, and a robe made of 16 ells of pounacia (also dyed in grain).150 In an inventory, taken in 1298, of the goods of Osbert de Spaldington, an English knight and royal officer, “paunace” cloth was included among his bed furnishings.151 In 1300–1 several cloths of this colour were purchased for the wardrobe of King Edward I (r. 1272–1307).152 In England, however, the term “paunace” seems to have been relatively short-lived, as it is not found in English sources much after the fourteenth century. Paonazzo enjoyed greater longevity in Italy, where it still denotes a shade of purple. A sample of paonazzo wool has been found by Dominique Cardon attached to the same document of 1402/3 in the Datini archive mentioned above in relation to cilestrino. This was dyed in the wool in blue with woad, then mordanted with alum and finally steeped in red, possibly either kermes or madder. The result is a textile that is, according to Cardon, “violet-marron un peu plus rouge à l’envers, tranché de bleu-violacé” [violet-brown, a little redder on the reverse, laced with violet-blue].153 Paonazzo wool appeared consistently in the published Florentine dyers’ tarrifs from 1333/4 to 1428.154 The wool version may have been less expensive than silk, but in the hierarchy of woollen cloths, the paonazzi were among the most expensive: Table 145 Mark W. Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2000), 212–17. 146 See Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, Appendix 1, 314–15, ill. fig. A.3. 147 A wool garment owned by Dianora, the daughter of Giovanni Portinari, was described on Oct. 31, 1343, as “unam tunicam panni pagonazi cum quodam quarterio scharlatino”; E. Rodocanachi, La Femme Italienne à l’époque de la Renaissance: Sa vie privée et mondaine, son influence sociale (Paris: Hachette, 1907), 127–29 and Appendix, 345–49, at 349. See also Gérard-Marchant, “Compter et nommer l’étoffe,” 97. 148 TNA C 47/3/3, published in Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes,” with transcription and translation, 20–31. 149 Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes,” 20, no. 2, translated 21, no. 2. 150 Ibid., 20, no. 18, translated 21, no. 18. 151 Lachaud, “Aristocratic Wardrobe,” 95. 152 TNA E 101/359/18, roll of purchases by Ralph de Stokes, keeper of the Great Wardrobe. 153 Cardon, “Échantillons,” 364–65. 154 Doren, Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie, 509–12.

51

Lisa Monnas 2.1 includes scarlets dyed in paonazzo. The wife of the Florentine artist Neri di Bicci (1419–92) owned a paonazzo wool dress. Judging by the other clothing recorded in Neri’s accounts of the 1450s and 1460s, it must have been one of the most costly items in her wardrobe. Neri was able to sell this dress for 17 florins and 37 soldi di piccioli, roughly the equivalent of a year’s salary for one of his better paid assistants.155 The desirability of paonazzo wool clothing is underlined by its prominence in the fifteenth-century Medici inventories, although the choice may have been partly dictated by the fact that this colour featured in their liveries. Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici (“the Gouty”) (r. 1464–69) had livery colours of green, paonazzo, and white, and his son, Lorenzo “the Magnificent” (r. 1469–92), paonazzo and green.156 In Benozzo Gozzoli’s famous fresco the Journey of the Magi (1459), Piero is depicted riding a white horse, with an attendant walking beside him wearing his livery, with his device of the diamond ring. The paonazzo of this livery is in a rather soft, muted tone, more akin to puce, in contrast to the deeper, richer shade in Titian’s Venus and Adonis.157 Rosa secca The 1492 inventory of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s possessions contains garments of paonazzo wool, including items of panno di Londra and panno di Bruggia.158 These came in different shades, including two versions of “dark” pagonazzo: pagonazzo schuro and pagonazzo buio,159 as well as the paler shades of pagonazzo allazato160 and pagonazzo rosasecha.161 Rosa secca, literally “dry rose,” but usually translated as “old rose,” is a colour known from at least the fifteenth century, and one that came to prominence in Venice during the sixteenth century. Noting that in Sicily Herald’s fifteenth-century treatise on the colours of blazon and livery, rosa secca was a synonym of porpora (purple), Paul Hills has identified it as “a rose with a blue or violet tinge … close to faded purple.”162

155 Neri di Bicci, Ricordanze, 7, no. 11, June 6, 1453; discussed in Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 37. 156 Francis Ames-Lewis, “Early Medicean Devices,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 122–43; for Piero di Cosimo, “white, purple and green,” 136; for Lorenzo di Piero, “bianco e pagonazzo,” 141. 157 Compare with Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 163, fig. 178, and 315, fig. A3. 158 Marco Spallanzani and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, eds., Libro d’Inventario dei beni di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Florence: Associazione Amici del Bargello: 1992), pagonazzo allazzato, 28, 29, 84. 159 Spallanzani and Bertelà, Libro d’Inventario, pagonazzo buio, 30; pagonazzo schuro, 28–29, 30, 31. 160 For pagonazzo allazato in the Laurentian inventory, see Spallanzani and Bertelà, Libro d’Inventario, 28. For allazzato (without pagonazzo) as pale blue in the Florentine wool dyers’ tariffs, see Cardon, “Sensibilité aux couleurs,” 23. 161 For pagonazzo rosasecha in the Laurentian inventory, see Spallanzani and Bertelà, Libro d’Inventario, 29. 162 Hills, Venetian Colour, 178. See also Sicillo, Herald of King Alfonso of Aragon, Trattato de i colori nelle arme, nelle livree, et nelle divise, trans. Giuseppe Horologgi (Venice: Giorgio de’ Caualli, 1565), unpaginated, under “Del significato della porpora . . .”: “la porpora, la quale non è altro che quel colore, che noi chiamiamo rosasecca . . .”

52

Medieval Colour Terms Lorenzo de’ Medici’s rosa secca clothing was made from wool, but the colour could also be applied to silk. In 1515, the Venetian silk guild debated the question of allowing silks to be dyed in rosasecca di cremisi by overlaying silk coloured with the costly insect-dye cremisi with a bath of the lichen-dye orchil, to produce the desired purplish tinge. They concluded that since the rival silk weaving centres of Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Genoa, and Milan were already doing this, and, moreover, rosa secca silks were finding favour in the international markets of Germany, Hungary, and Spain, the colour could profitably be extended to the full range of Venetian silks, including velvets, damasks, satins, tabbies, and cendals.163 According to the Venetian diarist Marino Sanuto (1466–1536), rosa secca received a particular accolade in the 1520s, when it found favour with Doge Andrea Gritti (r. 1523–38) and his family. The doge chose an outfit of rosa secca velvet for Christmas 1524, and paired a mantle of paonazzo velvet with a ducal cap of rosa secca for the vigil of the Feast of the Annunciation (February 24) 1525.164 Rosa secca was a paler hue than paonazzo and evidently did not carry the same connotations of mourning, since the niece of Andrea Gritti wore a garment of rosa secca at her wedding in January 1525.165 Murrey “Murrey” (or “murray”), morello in Italian and morée or morille in French, all derive from morum, the Latin noun for mulberry, and so it is easy to envisage this as a colour resembling the mulberry fruit. Like paonazzo, “murrey” was applied to both silk and wool.166 In 1335, an order for two pieces of woollen scarlet for the Duchess of Burgundy explicitly linked paonazzo, “murrey,” and “violet,” saying that the scarlets were to be coloured “paonace qui se traie aussi comme sur morey c’est à dire qu’elle ait colour [sic] de droite violete” [paonace which is treated like murrey, that is to say that it is a pure violet colour].167 Artists regarded morello and paonazzo as closely related: In their treatises on painting, Cennino Cennini (d. by 1427) and Gian Paolo Lomazzo (1538–92) wrote about “paghonazzo over morello” and “il color morello o pavonazzo.”168 It is clear, however, that distinctions were routinely drawn between textiles dyed in shades of murrey, paonazzo, and violet. “Murrey” appears alongside (but distinct from) pounacia (paonazzo) in the roll of cloths of Henry III mentioned above (Oct. 28, 1234, to Oct. 27, 1235), as a robe for the king to wear at Easter, and in

163 Molà, Silk Industry, 118. 164 Newton, Dress of the Venetians, 30 and 91. 165 Newton, Dress of the Venetians; for paonazzo as a colour of half-mourning, 19; for Gritti’s niece’s wedding, 30, 111. 166 OED, s.v. “murrey”: “A colour resembling that of a mulberry; a reddish purple or blood red.” See the discussion in Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 314–15. 167 Chrétien C. A. Dehaisnes, Documents et extraits divers concernant l’histoire de l’art dans la Flandre, l’Artois et le Hainaut, avant le xve siècle (Lille, France: L. Danel, 1886), 1:300–1. 168 Cennino Cennini, Il Libro dell’arte, ed. Fabio Frezzato (Vicenza, Italy: N. Pozza, 2003), 75–76, chap. 18; 123, chap. 76; Roberto Paolo Ciardi, ed., Gian Paolo Lomazzo: scritte sulle arti (Florence: Marchi & Bertolli, 1973–74), 2:182.

53

Lisa Monnas

Fig. 2.5: Fragment of morello (murrey) voided satin velvet, Italy, second half of the fifteenth century (Musée des Tissus, Lyon, no. MT 22862, 52 x 24.5 cm). Photo: Sylvain Pretto, © Musée des Tissus, Lyon, by permission.

54

Medieval Colour Terms

Fig. 2.6: Detail of the back of one wing of a portable diptych by Ercole de’ Roberti (active 1479; d. 1496) showing the original cover of morello (murrey) velvet (National Gallery, London, no. NG 1411.2, 13.8 x 13.5 cm). Photo: Copyright © The National Gallery, London, by permission.

55

Lisa Monnas his sister Isabella’s trousseau, as a whole cloth to take with her, as well as sixteen ells for a robe for her.169 A livery roll from the reign of Edward III, of 1342–43, records that the dowager Queen Isabella had a robe of wool coloured murrey in grano made for Christmas, and (in the next entry on the list) one of violet in grano for Pentecost.170 The two colours, paonazzo and morello, were firmly distinguished in a fifteenth-century book of dyer’s recipes preserved in the Civica Biblioteca in Como.171 Like paonazzo, the red component of morello could be made from an expensive insect dye or from cheaper soluble redwood.172 The 2009 exhibition Seta, Oro e Cremisi in Milan included a fragment of voided satin velvet (fig. 2.5) dyed with a combination of Armenian cochineal and weld, with the addition of tannins, which was offered as an example of morello, a colour defined in the accompanying catalogue as a shade of “brownish-red, slightly less violet than pavonazzo (purple).”173 A rather different-looking morello velvet has been identified in the fragmentary original cover of a small diptych painted on panel by Ercole de’ Roberti (ca. 1451–96), court painter to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara, in the National Gallery, London (fig. 2.6). This diptych, representing The Adoration of the Shepherds and (opposite) The Dead Christ, has been connected with a reference in the 1493 inventory of Eleonora of Aragon, Duchess of Ferrara, to “A little altarpiece which closes like a book covered in morello velvet, with bosses and clasps of silver-gilt; on one side the Nativity, and on the other, Christ in his tomb.”174 According to Jo Kirby’s analysis, the silk pile warp threads were first steeped in a vat of blue (made either from woad, Isatis tinctoria, or from imported indigo) and then mordant-dyed with a red insect dye, Polish cochineal (Porphyrophora polonica).175 This documented example of morello, which has faded unevenly, presenting a striped appearance, inclines more toward a (faded) true purple than a brownish-red and is not particularly similar to the more obviously mulberry-coloured velvet exhibited in Milan. In England, the term “murrey” had a longer life than “paunace,” and still features in the Elizabethan inventories of 1600.176 By the early seventeenth century, “murrey,” like “paunace,” was also associated with “old rose.”177 “Murrey” has, however, remained

169 Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes,” 20, nos. 11, 21; 22, no. 26; 21 nos. 11, 21; 23, no. 26; in this text (10), Wild equates moretus or “murray” with dark brown. 170 TNA E 101/390/2, membrane 3. 171 Rebora, Manuale di Tintoria: paonazzo: on wool, 103–4, 106, 114–16, 123, 162, 164; on silk, 4–6, 15–16, 18, 26–29, 32–36, 41–44, 48–49, 58, 60, 64, 66–67; morello: 82, 120, 129. 172 Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 319, Table 1. 173 Fragment, Lyon, Musée des Tissus, inv. no. 22862; see Buss, Silk Gold Crimson, 112–13, cat. no. 28. 174 Lorne Campbell et al., “Two Panels by Ercole de’ Roberti and the Identification of velluto morello,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 22 (2001): 29–41; translation from Campbell et al. 175 Jo Kirby, “The Dyeing of the Velvet,” in Campbell et al., “Two Panels,” 32–34. 176 Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, murrey items: 257, no. 19; 266, no. 52; 292, no. 50; purple items: 252, no. 1; 253, no. 14; 256, no. 8a, etc. 177 See Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, 368.

56

Medieval Colour Terms distinct from “purple” in heraldry.178 In his “Practical notes on emblazoning and illuminating” of 1904, Fox-Davies advised that “Sanguine or Murray is a dark brown.”179 CONCLUSION

It is evident from this discussion that one man’s “murrey” could be another man’s “paunace,” violet, brownish-red, or even brown, and it is perhaps not unreasonable to end this brief exploration of medieval textile colours on a note of uncertainty. We all see things slightly differently, often choosing different words for the same thing, and the interpretation of colour terminology, medieval or otherwise, is notoriously slippery. The designation of a colour could vary according to the base material (wool or silk), the dyestuffs used (“scarlet” if dyed with the insect dye grain, or “red” without), its locality (alessandrino and blodius), and even its habitual purpose (rubeus cardinalescus). As we saw from the example of perse cloths, the context in which a colour is mentioned can also affect its interpretation. For historians seeking to match surviving fragments with written descriptions, or to interpret the colour of dress or furnishings chosen for particular occasions, an understanding of the nuances of medieval colour terminology, coupled with an appreciation of the way in which the colours of surviving textiles have altered over time, can make all the difference between simple misidentification and an exciting discovery.

178 Friar and Ferguson, Basic Heraldry, 150–51. 179 Fox-Davies, Art of Heraldry, 487.

57

Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 Rebecca Woodward Wendelken

Silk has historically been associated with wealth, power, authority, social status, diplomacy, religion, exoticism, and comfort. Silk itself seems mysterious and almost magical—a textile produced by an insect larva, capable of being dyed brilliant colors, strong enough to be used in warfare, smooth and light enough for the most diaphanous garment. In antiquity the peoples of Western Europe believed silk came from the distant land of Seres, somewhere in the East, where it grew on trees.1 It was traded from east to west along the long, difficult trans-Eurasian overland trade routes, later romantically named the Silk Road.2 Eventually some peoples in the Levant and the Mediterranean began to produce their own silk textiles, using raw silk or thread imported from the East.3 However, the expense of the silk thread and frequent disruptions of trade led them to search for a way to produce the raw material locally. Sericulture—raising silkworms and harvesting the filaments from their cocoons to produce thread—would provide them with that raw material. The white mulberry tree, needed to produce the best silk, could not grow everywhere, so evidence of silk weaving in a particular area does not mean that silk fiber was produced locally. Although sericulture is a critical link in the story of silk textile manufacture, the sources are rare, making its history a challenge for researchers. Sericulture and silk weaving west of China before 1300 can be roughly divided into five distinct phases of

Portions of this paper were presented in May 2009 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. This project is a continuation of my work on the transmission of sericulture and silk weaving technology and motifs in Inner Asia. I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Academy in Rome for their support in this research.   1 Seres is the Greek word for China, and it is the root of the Latin word serica for silk.   2 The name Silk Road is deceptive, since silk, in both finished and unfinished forms, was only one of the many items traded along this collection of routes. Medicinal plants, spices, precious stones, dyestuffs, cotton, horses, jade, and even glass passed over these routes. While we tend to focus on the east-to-west trade, it is important to remember that trade went from west to east as well.   3 References to raw silk in this paper are to cocoons, unspun silk filaments, and silk waste. The term here should not be confused with modern “raw silk” textiles.

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken expansion.4 The first begins with the development of sericulture in China during the fourth millennium BCE and ends as China’s monopoly begins to unravel, some time around the mid-third century CE. During this period sericulture and silk weaving were confined to China and its close possessions. The next phase starts with the beginning of the overland Silk Road trade between China and the West during China’s early Han Dynasty (220 BCE to 202 CE).5 It ends with the beginning of the Islamic conquests of the mid- to late seventh century. This phase marks the spread of silk weaving and sericulture outside China to Central Asia, including Sogdian Transoxiana6 and the Persian Empire of the Sassanids.7 The third phase, which overlaps the second and the fourth, includes the introduction of silk weaving, and later sericulture, to the Greco-Roman world, including the Byzantine Empire.8 It ends with the Islamic conquests. The fourth is that of the Islamic conquests, which ate away at Byzantium’s possessions and forced the move of sericulture and silk production to the west. Arab and Muslim merchants and conquerors spread sericulture and silk weaving throughout the northern Mediterranean region to include Cyprus, Sicily and southern Italy, and southern Spain, and also to the area around Tripoli in Africa.9 A fifth phase, which overlaps the fourth, is the entry of the Italians into the Mediterranean silk market. Trade was the major engine for the early spread of sericulture, especially trade along the trans-Eurasian routes known collectively as the Silk Road. The more unencumbered the trade, the quicker the technology spread. In bringing together a variety of available sources, this paper examines the transmission of sericulture and silk weaving along established trade networks from China to Europe. With the clearer picture of the transmission of sericulture that emerges, we will see that policies governing participation in sericulture in different political climates dramatically influenced the amount of silk production possible. This study reveals that these policies were a major   4 A sixth era, beyond the scope of this paper, covers the development of sericulture in India, which began during the Gupta dynasty (approx. 300–600 CE) and was well established by the end of the dynasty. Sericulture also spread east from China to Korea around 200 BCE, and the Japanese were raising silkworms in the fourth century CE. Neither seems to have played a role in transmitting sericulture to the West, and they did not influence European styles or techniques until the modern period.   5 This coincides roughly with the later Roman Republic and the first two centuries of the Empire.   6 Transoxiana was historically the region between the modern Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, north and south of the Aral Sea (modern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). The Sogdians served as merchants and as middlemen in the silk trade. They eventually developed their own textile weaving and possibly sericulture as well.   7 The Sassanid Empire (224–651 CE), located in what is today Iran, served as a middleman for the Silk Road trade. It is fairly certain that the Sassanids had developed moriculture (the cultivation of the white mulberry tree for its leaves to use in sericulture) and sericulture to some extent by the Islamic invasions beginning in 651.   8 In 298 the Roman Emperor Diocletian divided the empire into two parts to facilitate governance. This political move created a Western Roman Empire with its capital in Rome and an Eastern Roman Empire with the new capital city of Constantinople.  9 E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 30; David Jacoby, Trade, Commodities and Shipping in the Medieval Mediterranean (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1997), 226.

60

Sericulture and Silk Weaving factor in a region’s success at producing enough silk to supply its silk-weaving industry. Attempts by states to monopolize sericulture resulted in insufficient supply, which in turn necessitated importing raw silk, whereas in regions with more lenient policies, supply exceeded demand and allowed for lucrative export of raw silk to other regions. THE TECHNOLOGY OF SERICULTURE

To understand the spread of sericulture it is useful to have a working knowledge of its technical processes. Successful sericulture depends on three factors: an adequate supply of food for the silkworms, a source of domesticated silkworm eggs, and a large labor force. Before sericulture can begin, a food source has to be established. The best silkworm food comes from the leaves of the white mulberry tree (Morus alba), indigenous to China; cultivating the tree for its leaves is called moriculture. The white mulberry grows in a fairly limited range and requires soil that is “level, deep, light, rich in humus, moist, and well drained” and a moderate climate.10 Across Eurasia, it flourishes best slightly below 40 degrees north latitude and prefers to grow in mountainous areas or near the sea. This latitude, and thus the range of the white mulberry, passes through the Caspian Plain in Iran and continues on, crossing Europe just to the north of Istanbul and Naples, and running through southern Spain. In some instances the tree may have self-propagated, its seeds carried by birds or by travelers using the dried mulberries as food.11 Areas where the white mulberry was already established had an obvious advantage. Chinese sources report that it took fifteen years for trees to mature to the point that they could support sericulture.12 Where plantations had to be established, there was a lengthy wait before sericulture could begin. Although many moths produce silk, the best silk comes from the domesticated Chinese silkworm, Bombyx mori, which spins a strong, single strand that allows the entire cocoon to be unwound in one long piece. Hatching the eggs of the Bombyx mori has to be timed to coincide with the appearance of the first mulberry leaves, generally sometime between February and April. The eggs must be kept warm for fourteen to twenty-eight days until they hatch. Various methods were used to warm the eggs, including placing the eggs beneath a pile of dung or having women carry small bags of the eggs between their breasts.13 Once the eggs hatch, the tiny silkworms are

10 Jacoby, Trade, Commodities and Shipping, 453. 11 Dried white mulberries were carried by travelers along the Silk Road as emergency provisions and are still consumed in Central Asia today, although they are inferior in flavor to the more common black mulberry. 12 Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Penisula, 900–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 173. 13 A twelfth-century collection on agriculture by Ibn al Awam states that during the month of February women in Moorish Spain placed small bags of silkworm eggs “in the warmth of their bosoms to incubate them.” Margaret Hall, “Historical Development and Trade,” in Textiles, 5,000 Years: An International History and Illustrated Survey, ed. Jennifer Harris (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993), 102.

61

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken placed in shallow woven trays and fed a diet of finely chopped mulberry leaves until they are large enough to chew pieces from whole leaves. The worms must be carefully and continually fed, cleaned, and monitored during their four-week growing period. When the silkworms have grown and molted four times and have ceased to eat, they are ready to spin their cocoons. They are given bundles of twigs or lattice frameworks to provide a matrix for forming their cocoons and to help keep the cocoons separate.14 Temperature, humidity, and noise must be carefully regulated, as even small changes could stop the silkworms from spinning and spoil the cocoons. When the cocoons are completed, they are removed from the matrix and graded. The best are reserved to allow the moths to emerge and produce eggs for the next crop. The rest are treated with heat, steam, or salt to kill the pupae inside before they can excrete an enzyme that dissolves the silk, spoiling it for making the best thread.15 Reeling is the process of unwinding the cocoon. The reeler begins by placing the cocoons in hot water to soften the sericin, a gum that glues the filaments together. After removing the broken pieces of filament that attached the cocoon to its spinning matrix, the reeler locates the ends of the continuous filaments of several cocoons by swirling her fingers or a stick in the hot water.16 Once the ends are located, several filaments are reeled off together, the number depending on the thickness of thread being made. After reeling, the thread can be “thrown,” or twisted, for more strength. David Jacoby provides a model that helps explain the scale of sericulture needed to sustain a thriving silk-weaving industry. A group of 300 to 500 moths can produce 25 grams of eggs, which hatch into 30,000 to 35,000 silkworms. During their short lives, these silkworms will collectively eat 720 kilograms of leaves. A mature mulberry tree, under the best conditions, can provide around 300 kilograms of leaves per year, so the silkworms from our hypothetical crop would need a minimum of three mature trees to feed them. This crop of silkworms could be expected to produce around 60 kilograms of moist cocoons, which can be reeled into 5.5 kilograms of silk thread.17 The yardage of textiles produced from this amount of thread would, of course, depend on the type of fabric.18 14 Double cocoons have intertwined filaments and cannot be unreeled in one piece. 15 The Chinese originally used boiling water to kill the pupae, and later abandoned that process in favor of packing the cocoons in salt for two weeks. By the eleventh century they were baking the cocoons, a process that continues today. Early Arab sericulturalists placed cocoons in the hot sun to destroy the pupae. In the wild, and for seed moths, the enzyme that dissolves the silk allows the moth to exit from its cocoon. Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 160. 16 The gender use here is intentional. The processing of cocoons, including reeling and spinning, appears to have been done exclusively by women. Weaving could be done by men or women, but as the weaving became more complex, men tended to take over in most cultures. 17 Jacoby, Trade, Commodities and Shipping, 51–52. 18 There is a good deal of wastage in the reeling process, part of the weight reduction from cocoon to thread. The outsides of the cocoons often have damaged fibers that must be removed before the filament can be removed in one piece. These short pieces of fiber are spun into a cheaper, less lustrous type of thread, rather like that used for the fabric called “raw silk” today. When sources talk about the lower classes wearing silk, this is the type of silk they were wearing.

62

Sericulture and Silk Weaving As can be seen, sericulture is very labor intensive. In Byzantium it required many different labor specialties, including caretakers for the growing silkworms, farmers to care for the mulberry trees, sorters, bakers who heated the cocoons, reelers, degummers who removed the sericin, spinners, and specialized weavers who produced a variety of different types of cloth.19 EARLY SILK: TRADE AND TRANSMISSION

Although tradition holds that sericulture was discovered in the mid-third millennium BCE by a Chinese princess who accidently dropped a cocoon into a cup of hot water, it actually began a full millennium earlier. China and her possessions held a monopoly on sericulture and silk textile manufacture from its first development until the fourth or fifth centuries CE. This does not mean that all production was done by government workshops. Farmers were allowed to raise silkworms and to weave cloth with government permission. By the time Silk Road trade developed during the Han Dynasty in the third century BCE, sericulture was widespread in China, and many Chinese farming communities practiced sericulture and silk weaving as ancillary activities.20 Throughout China’s history, farmers used rolls of silk to pay their taxes and to buy their way out of state labor levies. Their production was enormous. In an example from the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese government received 7,400,000 twelvemeter-long bolts of silk textiles annually in lieu of manual labor in a fourteen-year period from 742 to 756 CE.21 Sericulture and silk weaving originated in the eastern provinces of China, but because of its lucrative nature, silk weaving spread to China’s western provinces even before Silk Road trade. Khotan (in modern Xinjiang Province, China) began weaving silk during the second century BCE. Cocoons dating from the third century CE have been found in Niya (also in Xinjiang province), and third- and fourth-century painted bricks from China’s western border regions depict farmers practicing sericulture.22 However, even before this, Europeans had a limited exposure to silk. Small amounts of Chinese silk thread and fabric reached ancient Greek weavers and embroiderers. This silk probably crossed Asia, being passed from trader to trader, finally arriving at the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast. This early trade is supported by finds from Athens’ Kerameikos cemetery dating from the fifth century BC. Burials there contained at least five silk textiles woven from imported silk thread. These are believed to have been woven in Greece or elsewhere in Europe because the silk weft was Z-spun (whereas the Chinese did not normally spin silk thread), and one ­fragment shows

19 Anna Muthesius, Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving (London: Pindar Press, 1995), 18. 20 Anna Muthesius, Studies in Silk in Byzantium (London: Pindar Press, 2004), 39. 21 Feng Zhao, Treasures in Silk: An Illustrated History of Chinese Textiles (Hong Kong: ISAT/Costume Squad, 1999), 125. 22 Ibid., 95, 125; C. G. F. Simkin, The Traditional Trade of Asia (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 87; Liu, Silk and Religion, 19.

63

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken evidence of a starting cord—a technique used with European vertical warp-weighted looms, but not with Chinese draw looms or European late classical horizontal looms.23 The ancient Greeks explored silk production independently using cocoons from native silk moths, such as the Saturnia pyri (Great Peacock Moth), Pachypasa otus, or Lasiocampa otus.24 Whether these were collected from the wild or whether rudimentary attempts were made at domestication is not known.25 The philosopher Aristotle (384–32 BCE) wrote that women from Cos, an island just off the southwestern coast of Turkey, “unraveled the cocoons, reeled up the fiber and then wove it.”26 Aristotle’s description (and the translator’s use of the term “reeled”) cannot be construed to mean that the filaments were unreeled in one long piece as with Bombyx mori. The filaments produced by the Greek moths are not strong enough to be reeled in this way. The Greeks probably pulled the cocoons apart, separated the fibers, and then spun the fluffy mass into thread. The resulting fiber would be rougher than Chinese silk but much softer than wool, and it must have been quite rare and extremely expensive.27 TRANSMISSION TO CENTRAL ASIA

Between the second and seventh century CE, sericulture began to move outside eastern China. Farmers in China’s western provinces were allowed the same freedom of production as those in eastern China. This allowed a thriving silk-weaving industry to be established while at the same time providing excess silk fiber for export. The oasis towns along the Silk Road in modern Xinjiang province were the first to develop silk weaving and sericulture. In some cases the government was instrumental in establishing weaving workshops at military garrisons along the trade route. Not only did this boost the local economy, but the women who worked the silk must have been welcome in the previously all-male military posts. Merchants and traders may also have promoted sericulture and silk weaving to help cut the cost of goods shipped farther westward.

23 Marta Hoffman, The Warp-Weighted Loom: Studies in the History and Technology of an Ancient Implement (Oslo: Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, 1974), 297–336, passim; E. J. W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 192. 24 John Peter Wild, “Some Early Silk Finds in Northwest Europe,” Textile Museum Journal 23 (1984): 17–23, at 20. 25 These and other European moths that produce wild silk do not lend themselves to domestication, so any attempt would have had only minimal success. 26 Aristotle, Historia Animalium [The History of Animals], book 5, chap. 19, trans. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, available online at the Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/ history_anim.5.v.html (accessed Aug. 15, 2011). 27 My further research on early Greek silk production from wild silk cocoons (Coan silk) conducted at the American Academy in Rome in the summer of 2012 under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute points to a far greater impact of Greek wild silk in the Roman Empire than formerly believed. Most silk references in the Augustinian period, including those dealing with the immorality of wearing silk, concern Coan rather than Chinese silk. Continued research may require a reanalysis of our current beliefs on silk in the early Roman Empire.

64

Sericulture and Silk Weaving The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsuan-tsang reported a thriving economy in sericulture in Khotan when he passed through in the mid-seventh century on his way to India.28 The Sassanid Persian Empire functioned as a middleman between East and West. The Caspian Plain, just south of the Caspian Sea, was an excellent location for growing the white mulberry tree. Sericulture was practiced there by the early sixth century, although Persia had a history of silk weaving that began several hundred years earlier due to its strategic location on the Silk Road. It is probable that silkworm eggs originally came to Persia from the western Chinese provinces during one of the times that China’s control over those areas weakened. It has been held that the Sassanid government tried to keep sericulture and silk weaving a state monopoly. However, this should be questioned. Raw silk was more readily available to independent workshops in Persia than in, say, Byzantium. This would point to a more lax government attitude toward the industry, including sericulture, and account for Persia’s continued ability to export quantities of both raw silk and silk textiles. From Persia, sericulture was introduced into western Central Asia, reaching Transoxiana by at least the seventh century, although the method of that introduction is unknown.29 Before the Islamic invasions this region was part of Sogdian Empire (224–640), a loose confederation of cities. The Sogdians were, for the most part, merchants engaged in Silk Road trade, but they are especially interesting because their empire served as a nexus where Eastern and Western technologies and motifs met and merged. Sogdian silk weaving was more primitive than that of either China or Byzantium, with designs adapted to appeal to the local population.30 Part of the inferior quality of their cloth was due to their religion, Buddhism, which prohibited the taking of life. As a result, the Sogdians and many other Central Asians allowed the Bombyx mori to hatch rather than killing the pupae. The broken filaments could not be reeled, and the result was rougher and less shiny thread and cloth.31 THE SPREAD OF SERICULTURE TO EUROPE: THE ROMAN AND BYZANTINE WORLDS

The use of silk in Europe and the development of sericulture there begins in the context of the Roman Empire. However, the Western Empire did not engage in sericulture 28 The locals told him that sericulture was brought to Khotan by a Chinese royal bride who, around 440 CE, smuggled both silkworms and mulberry seeds out of China in her headdress. Despite her title, it is unlikely she was a member of the Chinese royal family. Similar stories exist throughout Central Asia. Simkin, Traditional Trade, 71; Sir Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan (1907; repr., Bangkok: SDI Publications, 2001), 1:230. 29 See note 6. 30 Morris Rossabi, “The Silk Trade in China and Central Asia,” in When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles, ed. James C. Y. Watt and Anne E. Wardwell (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 8, 12, 21–23. 31 By contrast, the Zoroastrian philosophy of the Sassanid Persians did not have the same life-taking prohibitions as the Buddhism of Central Asians, so the Sassanids killed the pupae and reeled their silk.

65

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken but imported large amounts of raw silk to supply its private workshops. Regulatory laws such as The Prices Edict of Diocletian in 301, which set maximum prices on critical commodities, attest to silk’s importance.32 Almost anywhere in the late Western Empire, wealthy Romans could procure a loom, raw silk, and a weaver to produce silk textiles for family use.33 Unlike the Chinese, who wove textiles with unspun reeled threads, Romans spun the reeled silk into thread. They may have done this because they were accustomed to spinning other fibers, such as wool and linen; or because they acquired silk thread by unraveling imported cloth, which produced shorter filaments that had to be spun before reweaving.34 A third possibility is that the silk fiber they received was inferior, requiring spinning before use, especially for warp threads.35 Whatever the reason, the Romans’ spun threads made it easy to differentiate Roman silks from those of China, and the less lustrous Roman product meant that Persian and Chinese goods remained in high demand. After the division of the Roman Empire in 284, the Eastern Empire, later called Byzantium, controlled the eastern European provinces, Anatolia, the Levant, the Trans-Caucasus, and Egypt. The court of the Eastern Empire became known for its lavish use of silk and its sumptuary hierarchy of clothing, with laws that defined which social classes could wear silk and restricted some colors to the sole use of the imperial family. As in China, the silk-weaving industry in Byzantium was strictly controlled, but unlike China, Byzantine production was accomplished mainly through imperial workshops. The first imperial workshops for silk weaving in Constantinople were established in the fourth century. Initially the weavers in the imperial workshops were exclusively Christian females, and the workshops were located in the gynaeceum, the women’s section of the imperial palace. A few private workshops, some run by Jewish weavers, could also be found in early Constantinople. Records show a stiff competition for weavers between the imperial workshops and the private ones. In one example, silk weavers were enticed away from the imperial workshops to work privately. When discovered, the women were punished and forced to return to the imperial workshops.36 By the sixth century, perhaps due to increasing demand for silk, workshops began to employ Christian male weavers as well, and the workshops were moved outside the gynaeceum.37 However, increasing the number of weavers caused another problem. The supplies of imported raw silk were insufficient to meet the demand. To control the 32 Roland G. Kent, “The Edict of Diocletian Fixing Maximum Prices,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 69, no. 1 (Nov. 1920): 35–47, at 47. 33 Wild, “Some Early Silk Finds,” 22. 34 Theodoretus of Cyrrhus (393–ca. 457) reported that the “nimble fingers of [Roman] women and children” unraveled imported Chinese and Persian silk textiles so that the threads could be rewoven in a style and fabric weight more appealing to the Roman market. Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 52. 35 John Peter Wild, “The Eastern Mediterranean, 323 BC–AD 350,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1:108. 36 Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 248. 37 Ibid.

66

Sericulture and Silk Weaving silk industry, and to give priority to the imperial workshops, all purchases of raw silk were funneled through an imperial officer, the Comes Commerciorum per Orientem. Many private weavers, forced to make do with leftovers, if any, were driven out of business despite having established guilds to protect themselves. Many left Byzantium for Persia, where silk supplies were more readily available to independent weavers.38 With demand for raw silk rising and the supply precarious, the Emperor Justinian (482–565) further protected the official silk workshops by setting a maximum price for imported raw silk. However, his maximum was so low that foreign merchants refused to do business with the Empire.39 Interest began to grow among officials in establishing a domestic source of supply. According to Byzantine historians, the Emperor sent monks to the East to bring back silkworm eggs. The story has two versions. Procopius of Caesarea (500–65) tells that Nestorian Christian monks from Serinda (Central Asia) offered to bring silkworm eggs to the emperor in 551. Two years later they returned to Byzantium with the eggs, which became the foundation of Byzantium’s sericulture industry. A second version, from the end of the sixth century, says that Persian monks came from “the country of the Seres” with silkworm eggs concealed in a hollow walking stick. As charming as these stories of early industrial espionage are, they are just legends. The technical difficulties of transporting silkworm eggs in the heat makes these accounts questionable. We now know that sericulture was already being practiced, at least to some extent, in Byzantine Syria as early as the fifth century, a hundred years earlier.40 Justinian’s government did finance more mulberry orchards and extend sericulture in Syria, and the region became an important supplier of raw silk for Byzantium up until the Muslim invasions. However, the strict control of the industry meant that the domestic supply of raw silk never met demand. Byzantium’s need to import large quantities of silk thread continued. ISLAM AND THE TRANSMISSION OF SERICULTURE

The Muslim conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries formed a critical milestone in the spread of sericulture and the development of silk weaving. Large areas of the Middle East, including the most important sericulture and silk-weaving sites of Byzantium and Persia, quickly fell to the Muslim armies. Syria and Iraq were conquered between 633 and 639, Egypt was completely overtaken by 642, and Persia came under Islamic rule by 644. The new Umayyad Caliphate (632–750), an empire comprising all the conquered territories, gained control of not only important silk-producing areas, but also the land trade routes from the East. This gave the Muslims, with the exception of what remained of Byzantium, a virtual lock on the silk trade west of China. 38 Robert Sabatino Lopez, “Silk Industry in the Byzantine Empire,” Speculum 20, no. 1 (Jan. 1945): 1–43, at 9–11. 39 Ibid., 11. 40 Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 20, 176; Luce Boulnois, Silk Road: Monks, Warriors and Merchants on the Silk Road, trans. Helen Loveday (New York: Norton, 2004), 228–33.

67

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken The silk industry in Muslim hands was, at least for the first few centuries, marked by explosive expansion and increased opportunities for groups formerly locked out of the industry by the Byzantines. Three key factors explain the quick spread and the high production of sericulture and silk weaving in the Muslim world. First, Muslims built on the existing Byzantine and Persian practices, thus avoiding a lengthy startup period. The skilled workers from conquered areas could be relocated to other parts of the empire to start new industries, which helped to transmit the newest technologies. Second, Islam opened sericulture, the silk industry, and trade to include not only Muslims, but also Christians and Jews. This increased the number of skilled individuals who could be employed in either sericulture or silk weaving and helped increase production. A third reason for Muslim success was that while Muslim rulers supported official workshops, they also encouraged the development of a strong, family-based cottage industry, much like the Chinese. This not only helped spread weaving and sericulture but also increased production. The Muslims’ control of prime sericulture territories and their liberal attitude toward production made the Islamic Empire relatively free from the vagaries of outside supply.41 Silk from China continued to be imported because it was seen as being of the highest quality, and exoticism may have also played a role. However, Chinese raw silk was no longer essential, at least to the Islamic silk industry. Under Muslim rule, the mulberry orchards in northern Syria destroyed by fighting during the conquest were replaced, and new plantations were established. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact locations of the mulberry plantations and sites of Syrian sericulture before the thirteenth century, it stands to reason that the new mulberry plantations were established on or near the locations of the old ones. Silk weaving in the Syrian cities of Antioch and Aleppo was reestablished, and Syria became a key source of silk for the Muslim world as it formerly had been for Byzantium. From Syria, sericulture spread northward into the mountains of Lebanon, which became another important silk-producing region.42 Byzantium’s ill treatment of non-Christian silk workers worked in the Muslims’ favor. Workers fled Byzantium for the more liberal Islamic lands. Although those who were not already Muslim were required to pay special taxes if they did not convert to Islam, they experienced more freedom than they had had under the Byzantines. They were free to engage in all aspects of the silk trade, and they flourished as new markets opened up.43

41 It also became easier to extend the trade networks in Europe and northern Africa. Jewish merchants played an important role in this trade. They had been active in the silk trade in the region for some three centuries. Talmudic literature discusses Jewish silk merchants involved in trade at Nisibis before 299 CE. By the eighth to ninth centuries Radhanite Jewish traders were the primary silk merchants in the Mediterranean, connecting Byzantium, Europe, the Islamic world, and even China. J. B. Segal, Edessa: “The Blessed City” (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 42; Constable, Trade and Traders, 176. 42 Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 43. 43 Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 245.

68

Sericulture and Silk Weaving The capture of Syria was devastating for Byzantium. As their holdings in the eastern provinces fell to the Islamic armies, the Byzantines moved their official workshops farther west. At first, the Syrian workshops of Tyre and Sidon were moved beyond the Taurus Mountains frontier, but later they were relocated to Constantinople itself.44 To make up for the loss of Syrian raw silk, the Byzantines established sericulture in Asia Minor, the Balkans, and the Greek Islands. These sites fulfilled the majority of Byzantium’s raw silk needs through the eighth and ninth centuries.45 The new rulers in Persia continued to promote sericulture, and soon northwestern Persia’s production supplied the needs of the Persian workshops with a surplus of raw silk for export. Large quantities of silk cocoons and thread were shipped to Central Asia to supply workshops in Muslim Transoxiana, where the climate was less conducive to sericulture.46 In southern areas where the rainfall was less than on the Caspian Plain, irrigated moriculture was introduced around the cities of Sūs and Nishapūr, and in newly established cities such as Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1248).47 Muslims introduced irrigation for moriculture in Transoxiana and Central Asia, as they had in Persia. This increased the production of raw silk, as did the population’s conversion to Islam. The now-acceptable practice of killing the pupae before unreeling the cocoons meant the silk thread and therefore the textiles produced were of a higher quality. The silk industries of Transoxiana and Central Asia never became fully self-sufficient and continued to import raw silk to meet their needs. However, production received a big boost after the Muslim victory over Chinese armies at the Battle of Talas River in 751. Some Chinese prisoners of war turned out to be weavers. Some stayed in Central Asia, while others were transferred to Islamic workshops throughout the caliphate, where they infused the local production with Chinese methodology. As the Muslim armies moved across northern Africa, mulberry plantations and weaving workshops sprang up in their wake. Egypt, long known for its fine linens and cottons, had engaged in silk production during the Byzantine period. Muslims established silk weaving in the cities of Alexandria, Akhmim, Bahnasa (Oxrhynchus), and Cairo.48 Southern Egypt produced fine, plain fabrics, while northern Egypt built on the earlier traditions of the Copts. Besides pure silk fabrics, Muslim workshops continued producing linen textiles with multicolored tapestry decorations that were associated with Egypt’s Coptic weavers, substituting colorful silks for wool. They also

44 Herrin, Byzantium, 52. 45 Joan Allgrove McDowell, “Early Islamic Textiles,” in Harris, Textiles, 75. 46 Ibid., 72. 47 Persia became especially known for its figured silks, often called khusrawan after the northwest province of Khorasan, known for its skilled weaving. Baghdad itself became known for its production of mulhām, a cloth made of silk and cotton. Burns, Sea of Silk, 30; Boulnois, Silk Road, 238. 48 One of the earliest known silks produced in Egypt, dated to no later than 636, was found in the town of Avdat in the Negev desert (now part of Israel). This piece serves as an important benchmark to show the high degree of weaving skills in the region just before the Islamic conquest. Alisa Baginski and Amalia Tidhar, Textiles from Egypt: 4th–13th Centuries CE (Jerusalem: L. A. Mayer Memorial Institute for Islamic Art, 1980), 8, 10; Anna Muthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World,” in Jenkins, Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 1:326.

69

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken frequently added inscriptions in Arabic or pseudo-Arabic (tiraz) woven between rows of Coptic-style interlace.49 Egyptian silk was of such high quality that Alexandria was chosen to weave the heavy silk covering for the Kab’ba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine.50 From North Africa, sericulture and silk weaving spread across the Mediterranean. In the late ninth or early tenth century, Fatimid emirs from Egypt set up tiraz factories at Palermo in Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy. They brought their own weavers with them, relocating Arab, Greek, and Jewish artisans to work in the new factories. Sericulture may have been introduced at the same time, but was definitely well established by the early eleventh century, although the quality was not the best.51 In 1072, when Crusaders from Europe captured Sicily, the Sicilian product was considered so inferior that Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily, chose Theban rather than Sicilian silk for his coronation robes. To rectify the situation, he quickly made improvements. Roger forcibly relocated Byzantine artisans from newly captured Thebes, Athens, and Corinth to Palermo, but unfortunately his changes had only limited success.52 Sericulture and silk weaving were also introduced to Cyprus, from either Egypt or the Levant, before the tenth century.53 By the late thirteenth century, papal inventories listed “lavish Cypriot silk brocades with a variety of designs” and also mentioned the high-quality gold thread with a silk core produced there.54 Although northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean were important areas of silk production outside the Middle East, the most favorable area for the new development was southern Spain. Mixed silk and linen textiles had been produced in Segovia as early as the sixth century, but pure silk weaving did not occur until Muslim rule. The conquest of Spain, called al-Andalus by Muslims (Latin: Andalusia), began in 712. Sericulture in al-Andalus first began in the Sierra Nevada Mountains around the town of Jaén, where the white mulberry thrived, but the Muslim rulers established 49 Tiraz, borrowed from the Persian word for embroidery, originally referred to any embroidered motifs on a textile. The term grew to be used to describe bands of inscription embroidered on, woven into, or painted on a textile or garment. These inscriptions are usually found on the upper sleeves of a garment, on turban cloths, or on sashes. The word tiraz is also applied to the workshops that produced the fabrics. Lisa Golombek and Veronika Gervers, “Tiraz Fabrics in the Royal Ontario Museum,” in Studies in Textile History in Memory of Harold B. Burnham, ed. Veronika Gervers (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1977), 82. 50 Before Alexandria became the supplier, the Kab’ba covering was made from cotton ikat fabric from Yemen. McDowell, “Early Islamic Textiles,” 72; Liu, Silk and Religion, 161; Thomas Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships: European Silk Industry in the Medieval World Economy,” Medieval History Journal 9, no. 2 (2006): 243–70, at 257. 51 Before its takeover by Muslims in 831, Sicily was under the control of Byzantium, so it is at least possible that sericulture was introduced by the Byzantines, not the Muslims. Hall, “Historical Development and Trade,” 110; John Feltwell, The Story of Silk (Stroud, UK: Alan Sutton, 1990), 10; Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 201; Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships,” 246. 52 Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 29; Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships,” 252. 53 Both were mentioned by two tenth-century Arab geographers, Ibn Hawqal and Al Maqdisi, so these industries were established by that time. 54 Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 237, 239.

70

Sericulture and Silk Weaving silk farms wherever possible, introducing irrigation as they had in Persia and Central Asia where rainfall was insufficient.55 The date of introduction is unknown, but the first reference to silkworms is found in the Almanac of Córdoba (961), which noted that incubation should begin on the last day of February. The Umayyad Dynasty of Spain (755–1031) brought with it lucrative trade contacts, especially with Persia and Iraq.56 Because it relocated silk workers and weavers from Syria and Iraq to Spain, early Spanish silk textile motifs mirrored Middle Eastern ones. The Spanish silk industry was successful from the beginning. By the end of the ninth century. Spanish raw silk, silk textiles, knotted silk carpets, and silk clothing were traded throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. Vatican records of that time period list silks received from Spain, alongside those from Alexandria and Byzantium.57 CHANGES IN THE SILK INDUSTRY FROM THE TENTH TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

Changes in sericulture and the silk industry brought about by the Muslims, including their liberal attitude toward spreading that technology, resulted in a dramatic spread of sericulture and silk weaving not only in their own territories but throughout the Mediterranean as well. In Central Asia and Persia, sericulture and silk weaving continued until the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century destroyed the precious irrigation systems. With no source of water for the mulberry trees, the silk industries in Central Asia and Persia declined. Central Asia never recovered, although some oasis cities continued to practice sericulture on a more limited scale and to produce some textiles, especially the famous Bukharan silk ikats.58 In Persia, however, the new Mongol Il-Khanate saw the error of its ways and rebuilt the irrigation systems. They supported and revitalized both sericulture and silk weaving. Although not invaded by the Mongols, Byzantium was the big loser in Mediterranean silk production.59 As Byzantine political power continued its slow collapse, the government still clung to its monopoly. Economic legislation, including the 55 Florence Lewis May, Silk Textiles of Spain: Eighth to Fifteenth Century (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1957), 3. 56 The Umayyad dynasty in the Middle East lost the position of Caliph of Damascus in 750 to the rising Abbasids. Abd-ar-Rahman fled to Spain and became the emir of Córdoba in 756. There he reestablished the Umayyad dynasty. The Córdoba caliphate was abolished in 1031. May, Silk Textiles of Spain, 3. 57 The tenth-century writer Al-Rāzi described the variety of textiles produced in Spain: “stout linen tissues,” possibly fabrics with linen warp and silk weft, from Córdoba; “silk tissues brocaded with gold” from Almería; and “excellent silks” from the districts of Almuñécar and Elvira. Jacqueline Herald, “Spanish Silks,” in Harris, Textiles, 176; Constable, Trade and Traders, 176, 180; May, Silk Textiles of Spain, 3–4, 10–11; Philippa Scott, The Book of Silk (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 102. 58 Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital, and Merchant Ships,” 253. 59 Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 9.

71

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken tenth-­century Book of the Prefect, contained strict regulations on silk production that attempted not only to maintain high standards of production but also to re-enforce the imperial monopoly.60 These regulations included a prohibition against Jews handling raw silk except in the dye works. This blocked them out of silk weaving entirely.61 Despite the regulations the quality declined. The tenth-century writer Nicetas Choniates spoke of the fine silks he saw in the capital, but those silks had not been woven in Constantinople. They were from the Peloponnesian cities of Thebes and Corinth. Despite the government’s best efforts, a few private workshops in Constantinople managed to eke out a living using surplus silk from the imperial supply or purchasing raw silk from other sources, probably Persia or Spain. By the tenth century, despite repeated government attempts to stifle them, private producers in Constantinople were strong enough to set up their own strictly governed non-imperial silk guilds to control output and ensure quality production.62 The most devastating blow to Byzantium was the takeover of Syria by the Muslims. Byzantine sericulture was moved farther west and north. Although the exact areas are unknown, it seems probable for quality reasons that they were fairly close to Constantinople: Raw silk arrived in Constantinople either as reeled thread or as cocoons. By the tenth century, most cocoons arrived packed in salt. This method of killing the pupae had been used in China since the Tang Dynasty, but the Chinese were aware that storing the cocoons in salt for over two weeks resulted in a brittle filament that could not be reeled easily. Assuming the Byzantines also understood this, their sources are likely to have been nearby: probably Greece, western Anatolia, or the Caucasus.63 In a phenomenon seen in many closely controlled silk-producing areas, Constantinople’s silk supply was never sufficient, and it continued to import raw silk. Chinese raw silk was no longer readily available by the tenth century due to fighting in China, and Muslim control of the trade routes dried up much of that former source.64 Nonetheless, the Byzantines, while importing raw silk, were also exporting raw silk from their own provinces to the rest of the world. Having to import raw silk from their former holdings in Syria and elsewhere must have been particularly galling. Why they imported raw silk while exporting their own raw silk is unclear. Given Byzantium’s financial situation at the time, it is possible they may have been forced to do so to maintain some sort of balance of trade. A more likely explanation is that their own production had declined in quality, so they imported better raw silk from abroad and sold their own inferior silk to others who were less fastidious about quality. Certainly 60 Ibid., 32, 202; McDowell, “Early Islamic Textiles,” 75. 61 Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 247–49. 62 Ibid., 232. 63 The Chinese removed cocoons from salt within two weeks of packing to preserve the silk filaments. Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 40. 64 The tenth-century decline in Byzantium’s silk supply coincides with a reduction in the availability of silk from China. At that time China’s Song Dynasty (907–1276) abandoned attempts to reoccupy towns along the silk routes it had earlier lost to Islamic, Turkic, and Tibetan armies. With no towns or oases available to provide food, water, and lodging along the route and no garrisoned troops to protect them, merchants were reluctant to continue the overland silk trade.

72

Sericulture and Silk Weaving the information on salt-packed cocoons might lead one to this conclusion.65 Whatever the reason(s), over the next two centuries Byzantium was forced further to decentralize its raw silk supply, finally relying almost entirely on imported raw materials.66 The twelfth century was particularly devastating for Byzantium. Islamic silk textiles made inroads into Byzantium’s former markets, although Byzantine silks continued to be sought-after in the European market. The turmoil of the Crusades, especially the fall of Constantinople to the Latin Crusaders in 1204, was a severe blow to the silk industry, and it never fully recovered.67 As Byzantium declined, Spain stepped in to fill the market void. The mid-twelfth-century writer Al-Idrīsī counted as many as three thousand farms engaged in sericulture around the city of Jaén, the site of its introduction. Sericulture was also practiced in Baza and Guadix in Granada province, Fiñana, and Cataluña (Catalonia), eventually creating a network of sericulture stretching from the southern coast of Spain to Zaragoza in the north.68 At one time Córdoba alone housed thirteen thousand textile workers.69 By this time tiraz workshops and raw silk markets in Spain were controlled by the administrative and commercial structures of important cities, although private production was still allowed.70 The silk weavers were considered so important that they were under the protection of the emirs.71 The Western Umayyad Caliphate in Spain ended in 1031, although some of southern Spain remained under Muslim control until 1492. The conflict between Christians and Muslims, and internally among Muslim groups themselves, had little initial effect on the silk industry, and indeed the industry may actually have increased under the control of petty Christian kingdoms that began to spring up in northern Spain in the late eleventh century.72 However, the conflicts affected the movements of silk workers: As Spain was rocked by waves of invaders from northern Africa and by Christians from the north, Jews and Mozarabs (Christians from al-Andalus) fled to Castile and Aragon.73 Muslim workers also moved south to remain in Muslim-held territories and escape Christian persecution. The new Christian rulers in Spain became avid consumers of silk and supported local production, when that production was undertaken by Christian workers. In León, 65 If interpreted differently from above: If the Byzantines were not quickly unpacking cocoons dispatched from close sources, as suggested above, but were receiving cocoons that had deteriorated, their silk would be inferior. 66 Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 238; Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 178. 67 Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships,” 250, 253; Rossabi, “Silk Trade in China,” 10; Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 257. 68 Constable, Trade and Traders, 173–74; May, Silk Textiles of Spain, 5. 69 Leon Ardzrooni, “Commerce and Industry in Spain During Ancient and Mediaeval Times,” The Journal of Political Economy 21, no. 5 (May 1913): 437, 443. 70 These included Córdoba, Almería, Granada, Málaga, Murcia, Seville, and Toledo. McDowell, “Early Islamic Textiles,” 76. 71 May, Silk Textiles of Spain, 3. 72 Ibid., 10. 73 There they continued to practice silk weaving until the Spanish inquisition in the sixteenth century, when non-Catholics and recent converts to Catholicism were severely persecuted.

73

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken the Christian king Alfonso V set up a sericulture and textile workshop in 1024. He granted the farm “with all its appurtenances” to three Mozarab brothers and gave them the title “tiraz weavers for the King.”74 This workshop and others like it were controlled by the local governments, but were able to take orders from private clients. The new rulers continued the Muslim policy of establishing moriculture wherever irrigation was possible. Silk weaving itself became more decentralized, as towns that formerly sent their raw silk to major weaving centers began to weave it locally.75 More local weaving of silk in Spain, the decline of Byzantine sources and quality, and the turmoil of the Crusades in the Middle East, combined with a decrease in Chinese trade due to the Mongol invasions, left European silk weavers in short supply of raw materials. This came at a time when European demand for silk was rising. Europeans were introduced to silk on a large scale during the Crusades, and on their return to their homes in France, Germany, and England, the local markets for silk in those places exploded. With continued high demand for silk cloth and a reduced supply due to the raw material scarcity, the situation was ripe for the introduction of a new source: Enter the Italians. The Italian silk industry was built on the foundations of Byzantium and the lessons learned there by the Venetians.76 Unfortunately one of the lessons was industrial monopoly. Although some experiments in sericulture were conducted in the tenth century, it was not until the eleventh century that sericulture was commercially established in the Po River valley.77 This region, along with Calabria in southern Italy, later became a center for Italian sericulture. The Italian silk manufacture expanded slowly. Like their Byzantine counterparts, each city-state tried to establish a monopoly. Established first in Venice, by the thirteenth century silk production had spread to only four other cities: Genoa, Bologna,

74 Not all Christian rulers were as tolerant as Alfonso V. As other Christian rulers conquered more of the Muslim territories in Spain, Arab, Jewish, and Mozarab weavers were expelled, to be replaced by Christians. However, due to their skill, even during the Inquisition a few Arab weavers were given amnesty and allowed to continue weaving. Those who fled or were forced out went to northern Africa or Anatolia, enriching the textile industries there. May, Silk Textiles of Spain, 5; Herald, “Spanish Silks,” 176. 75 Europeans, in general, showed little interest in Spanish textiles until the twelfth century, although there was a small amount of importing and gifting of textiles. A few early pieces are known as they were used for church vestments or to wrap holy relics. By the twelfth century, however, French and English romances are full of silk references to the “precious Andalusi fabrics woven in Almeria” as well as “drap de Mulce (Murcia) and siglatons d’Espagne.” Constable, Trade and Traders, 9, 17; May, Silk Textiles of Spain, 10. 76 From the ninth century on, Venetians served as middlemen for the Byzantine silk trade. The Byzantines considered them so important that they exempted the Venetians from the 10 percent silk export tax and allowed them to establish weaving workshops in Constantinople. The Venetians took that knowledge back with them to open their own workshops in Italy. Muthesius, Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving, 11; Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 123. 77 Around 950, the monastery of Santa Giulia of Brescia, situated at the foot of the Italian Alps, produced ten pounds of silk every year. The silk, sold in the state-controlled market at Pavia, was of rather poor quality. Lopez, “Silk Industry,” 42 n. 1.

74

Sericulture and Silk Weaving Lucca, and Florence.78 Most city-states specialized. Venice and Genoa produced mainly high-quality silks using gold and silver threads. Bologna made cheaper silk cendal. Lucca, in Tuscany, however, produced both luxury textiles and cheaper cloth, and this diversification may have been the key to Lucca’s success. It eventually became the main production center for Italian silk.79 Records from Lucca show that although sericulture in Italy had expanded, it could not keep up with production requirements. Importation of raw silk continued as it had in other areas of monopoly.80 To keep the quality of silk high and to protect their monopolies, the Italian citystates established guild systems.81 Milan soon became a silk producer and, by the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, Verona, Vicenza, Pistoia, Pisa, and Arezzo joined the cities producing silk products for domestic use and for marketing abroad.82 With great profits to be made in silks, and a shortage of raw silk, it was only logical that those outside the optimal zone of sericulture should try their hand at it. However, these attempts were not particularly successful until the early modern period. Some researchers have posited the possibility of early moriculture, and with that sericulture, in medieval England, far outside the range of the white mulberry.83 Firm evidence of sericulture in England does not occur until the seventeenth century, although raw silk was being produced in France in the fifteenth century.84 CONCLUSION

Unsurprisingly, the spread of silk weaving occurred first where raw materials were readily available, either as a result of existing local sericulture or the proximity of silk trade routes. The spread of silk weaving was gradual at first. However, once it was established, sericulture followed in those places where conditions were favorable, or where conditions could be artificially modified to be so. Sericulture itself shows five major phases of expansion. The first begins with its discovery in China and its spread throughout the Chinese empire, which maintained a monopoly on sericulture for 2,500 to 3,000 years or longer. China built a thriving industry by liberalizing production and involving small farmers rather than monopolizing production in imperial workshops. Silk weaving moved slowly west along the trade routes, reaching the Middle East in the first or second century CE, followed three to four centuries later

78 Molà, Silk Industry, 29. 79 Ibid., 3. 80 Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships,” 252. 81 Florence had a “Union of Silk Workers” in 1248, and by 1256 there was also a silk-weaving guild in Venice. Muthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World,” 339; Molà, Silk Industry, 3; Ertl, “Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships,” 256. 82 Molà, Silk Industry, 4–5. 83 This idea is based on accounts of fresh mulberries being sold in a London market in 1170. It is more likely that the berries sold in London were black mulberries, which have a far superior flavor to the white ones. Feltwell, The Story of Silk, 13. 84 Ibid., 13, 15.

75

Rebecca Woodward Wendelken by sericulture. Within two centuries after its initial establishment, sericulture was thriving in Syria and other parts of the Byzantine Empire as well as in Central Asia and on Persia’s Caspian Plain. Byzantium, unlike China and Persia, monopolized all aspects of silk production. The Islamic conquests of the seventh to ninth centuries created an explosion in sericulture and silk weaving outside Byzantium. Free trade and the spread of ideas in early Muslim holdings spread both technologies into Lebanon, Egypt, northern Africa, Spain, and the Mediterranean islands of Crete and Sicily. As the Byzantines lost power and the Muslim empire fragmented, the final expansion of sericulture prior to the thirteenth century was undertaken by the Italian city-states using the Byzantine model of monopoly. This overview of the spread of sericulture and silk weaving points out two key factors in the expansion of both technologies. First, countries or groups that tried to monopolize the production of silk, such as Byzantium, found themselves unable to provide enough raw silk to supply their workshops. Those that adopted a more open policy, such as China and the Islamic regions, were able to supply themselves and to export raw silk without having to import it from elsewhere to meet their needs. This points to a fatal flaw in strict monopolies in general: As the demand for a product increases, market forces will find a way to break a monopoly.85 Moreover, those areas where monopolies did not exist appear to have been the most inventive and influential overall. Second, there is the critical importance of Islamic cultures in the spread of sericulture and Eastern weaving technologies to Western Europe. Particularly crucial were both governmental support for extending irrigation, which allowed sericulture to be carried out in regions that had been too arid for the production of mulberry

85 While the question of further research is not germane to this paper, it is important enough to be addressed here to provide a platform for future work. Byzantium has rightly been the focus for much of the research into the early European sericulture and silk textile industries. Byzantium’s role in promoting sericulture, albeit under close government control, led to the industry’s spread from the Levant to the Caucasus and eastern Europe, and the takeover of Byzantine orchards and workshops in the East laid the foundation for the Islamic industry. Muthesius, in her works on Byzantine silk, points to a number of unanswered questions concerning the spread of Byzantine sericulture, and they are equally relevant for sericulture in other areas. They include the exact locations of mulberry plantations, the processing techniques used, and the distribution networks for raw silk. Why did some areas import raw silk while at the same time exporting their local product? In tightly controlled markets, such as Byzantium, there were alternative sources, such as black markets in raw silk, and these would help explain how private workshops were able to stay in business under strict monopolies (Muthesius, Silk in Byzantium, 42, 126 n. 6). Equally important in the story of cultural transfer is the movement of silk workers from one area to the other, either by self-selection or by force. Some major forced transfers are known, such as that of weavers from Baghdad to Spain, or prisoners of war from Byzantium to Persia. A more thorough understanding of paths of migration would enrich our understanding of the spread of not only techniques but also motifs. For the most part, extant fabrics have been preserved because of their association with either religious uses or the upper class. Additional studies are necessary to determine how the lower end of the silk market worked and how far down the social hierarchy the use of silk filtered. In China even the lower classes could afford some silk clothing because silk was so abundant and so much of its waste was used for textiles, but what was the case in other silk-producing regions?

76

Sericulture and Silk Weaving trees, and the lack of monopoly on sericulture and weaving techniques. The Islamic conquest of Spain and the movement of silk weaving from Byzantium to northern Italy gave Western Europe two foci for the later development of the silk industry in France.

77

The Liturgical Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia: Their Historical Significance and Current Condition Maureen C. Miller

Most liturgical garments surviving from the Middle Ages come down to us as ensembles recovered from burials or as single garments, the latter often preserved because of their association with a venerated cleric.1 These are often spectacularly beautiful and technically impressive, but they are hardly representative. The elite bias of preservation and recovery tends to be compounded by the interests of collectors and museums in garments made of rare silks or decorated with precious materials. What a medieval church may have owned in the way of vestments can be reconstructed with the help of inventories, but these valuable texts give only minimal descriptions of the material characteristics of the garments.2 The collection of liturgical garments from The research for this article was generously supported by the Committee on Research of the University of California, Berkeley. I thank Mayor Rodolfo Mazzolini and Floriana Ortenzi for their invaluable assistance in Castel Sant’Elia. I am also grateful to Marica Mercalli and Silvia Checchi for graciously allowing me to visit their conservation laboratory in Rome to view and discuss work on the collection. An initial version was presented at the 2012 International Medieval Congress at Leeds in a session sponsored by DISTAFF, and I thank Gale Owen-Crocker for her invitation to submit it to Medieval Clothing and Textiles and for her helpful suggestions for its revision. Special thanks are owed to Silvia Checchi for providing the photographs that accompany this article.  1 The burial garments of Pope Clement II (ca. 1047) and those of Archbishop Hubert Walter of Canterbury (d. 1205) are good examples of recoveries from tombs, while the “holy Willigis” chasuble in the Bayerische Nationalmuseum and the Saint Bertulf alb in the Utrecht Catharijneconvent Museum are single vestments preserved through their association with esteemed prelates. Sigrid Müller-Christensen, Das Grab des Papstes Clemens II. im Dom zu Bamberg (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1960); Anna Muthesius, “The Silks from the Tomb of Archbishop Walter,” in Anna Muthesius, Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving (London: Pindar Press, 1995), 45–54; Saskia DurianRess, Meisterwerke mittelalterlicher Textilkunst aus dem Bayerischen Nationalmuseum (Zurich: Schnell & Steiner, 1986), 17–19; Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation and Research: A Documentation of the Textile Department on the Occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Abegg Foundation (Bern, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 1988), 190–95.   2 Some inventories distinguish between vestments made of precious materials and those that were not, but others appear to list only the most valuable liturgical garments considered part of the church’s treasury. For examples, see Bernhard Bischoff, ed., Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse, vol. 1, Von der Zeit Karls des Großen bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel, 1967), 16, 18–19, 27, 30–31, 35, 40–41.

Maureen C. Miller the ­monastery of Sant’Elia in Castel Sant’Elia, Italy3 however, offers us some view of what one medieval church owned. Consisting of twenty-six vestments, the collection includes two miters, three pairs of pontifical sandals, one tunicle, two dalmatics, six albs, and twelve chasubles.4 While some of these are beautifully crafted and made of precious materials, many are simply constructed and made of plain linen or cotton. Although certainly not complete, the Castel Sant’Elia collection offers a more diverse view of medieval liturgical garments than do most surviving specimens. My aim in this article is to offer an introduction to the collection, some observations on its historical significance, and an overview of its current condition on the basis of the most recent publications and my own research in Castel Sant’Elia. Since my expertise is as a historian and not as a textile specialist, I append a working handlist of the garments in the collection in the hope that it will aid those with appropriate skills to pursue research on these important liturgical vestments.5 STUDY AND RESTORATION OF THE COLLECTION

First described in an inventory of the goods of the church of Sant’Elia drawn up in 1615, the collection came to the notice of the scholarly world when several pieces from it were featured in an exhibition of sacred art organized to accompany the 1896 Eucharistic Congress held in Orvieto. It was fortunate for textile specialists that Joseph Braun (1857–1947), the learned Jesuit historian of the liturgical arts, attended the congress. He subsequently went to Castel Sant’Elia to examine the entire collection, and he published a detailed appraisal of it in 1899.6 The collection was moved several times in the 1920s and 1930s, but fortunately survived the war and was repatriated to Castel Sant’Elia in 1951. Conservation efforts at this juncture led to the publication

  3 Located in northern Lazio about 30 miles north of Rome, Castel Sant’Elia today is accessible by car or by COTRAL bus that departs from the stop at the Colosseum.   4 Marica Mercalli, “I preziosi paramenti. Storia di una collezione e della sua conservazione,” in I paramenti liturgici di Castel Sant’Elia: La loro storia e la cronaca del restauro, ed. Marica Mercalli and Silvia Checchi (Rome: Gangemi, 2012), 19–29, at 19. Henceforth, references to this volume, which includes essays about the collection and its restoration as well as discussion of the specific items, will be abbreviated as IPL.   5 References to these artifacts will be given by their ICCD catalog number; for details on the numbering system, see Appendix 4.1.   6 Joseph Braun, “Der Paramentenschatz zu Castel S. Elia,” Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst 12 (1899): 291–302, 343–56. Braun also discussed articles from the collection in his Die liturgische Gewandung im Occident und Orient: Nach Ursprung und Entwicklung, Verwendung und Symbolik (Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany: Herder, 1907), 75–77, 180, 188, 193–95, 216, 402, 468. Braun’s careful observations aided in the recent conservation of the chasuble designated no. 00174800. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, when she visited the collection in 1980, noted that a piece of tapestry orphrey on the front of the chasuble described by Braun was missing. Both scholars’ work allowed conservators to track down the missing piece and reunite it with the chasuble. Giusy Lalli and Silvia Checchi, “I manufatti tessili,” in IPL, 100–137, at 101–7.

80

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia of a brief appraisal by Luisa Mortari.7 Beyond the notes offered by Mechthild Flury-­ Lemberg after a visit to Castel Sant’Elia,8 the only serious studies, before the most recent conservation campaign, were undertaken by an intrepid student, Giusy Lalli. Her thesis, completed in 2000, provided catalog entries on each of the vestments and a more in-depth analysis of the decorated leather pontifical sandals.9 She continued her studies of the abbatial footwear, contributing catalog entries for the sandals that were included in the Nobiles Officinae exhibition mounted in Palermo in 2003–04.10 Lalli’s mentor at the Università degli Studi della Tuscia di Viterbo, Rosalia Varioli Piazza, was instrumental in getting state funding for a collaborative intervention to restore and conserve the Castel Sant’Elia collection. In 2001, a team from the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro (ISCR) led by Irene Tomedi performed an initial analysis and triage at the grossly inadequate installation of the collection in the custodian’s house at the sanctuary of Santa Maria ad Rupes. Their documentation of the conditions at the site led relatively quickly to the transfer of most of the collection in 2002 to the ISCR’s textile conservation laboratory in Rome where detailed analyses, conservation treatments, and restoration efforts were coordinated by Marica Mercalli, an art historian, and Silvia Checchi, a textile restorer.11 Select items underwent microchemical analysis and infrared spectroscopy.12 Meanwhile, three successive mayors of Castel Sant’Elia, particularly Rodolfo Mazzolini, coordinated with the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali and the diocese of Civita Castellana to find a more suitable home for the collection. These efforts led to the restoration of the former oratory of Sant’Anna in Castel Sant’Elia, including treatment to eliminate microorganisms and the installation of adequate climate and light controls. Special storage units were constructed so that most of the garments could be protected from light, but still consultable on slide-out drawers, while a large climate- and light-controlled display case   7 Luisa Mortari, “Il Museo di Arredi Sacri a Castel S. Elia,” Bollettino dell’Arte 41 (1956): 275–77. On the various movements of the collection, see Mercalli, “I preziosi paramenti,” and Giusy Lalli, “I paramenti liturgici di Castel Sant’Elia,” in IPL, 48–55.   8 Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation, 219–21.   9 Giusy Lalli, “Un Gruppo omogeneo di paramenti liturgici ritrovato nel Santuario di S. Maria ad rupes a Castel S. Elia,” laurea thesis, Università degli Studi della Tuscia di Viterbo, 2000. I thank Dott. Floriana Ortenzi of Castel Sant’Elia for calling this thesis to my attention. 10 Maria Andaloro, ed., Nobiles Officinae: Perle, filigrane e trame di seta dal Palazzo Reale di Palermo (Catania, Italy: Giuseppe Maimone, 2006), 1:254–57, 403. 11 Silvia Checchi, “L’intervento conservativo sui paramenti,” in IPL, 75–85. 12 Maria Rita Giuliani and Marcella Ioele, “Indagini scientifiche applicate alla conservazione dei paramenti,” in IPL, 56–73, and Anna Valeria Jervis, Michael Jung, and Federica Moretti, “I sandali pontificali,” in IPL, 89–99, at 93. Results are reported for four chasubles, the two miters, and the pontifical sandals. The results identified fabric fibers, revealing the use of cotton as well as linen, but mainly illumine the different methods used to create metallic thread and the appliquéd ornament on the sandals. Most of the core threads were silk (no. 00174800, 00178411) but one used linen (no. 0017804). The metal used—silver, “gilded silver” (argento dorato), or a gold-silver mix—was applied to leather strips or, in one case (no. 00174804), to gut membrane. The boot-style pontifical sandals (no. 00174813) had goatskin uppers colored green using a copper dye with a small quantity of zinc intermixed and an internal lining of alum-tanned leather colored red with an organic dye using cochineal.

81

Maureen C. Miller was designed so that some of the vestments could be made available to the public.13 The structure was inaugurated as the Museo della Spiritualità in September 2010. At this writing, however, some of the garments are still under conservation, and the Museo has no regular hours.14 CHRONOLOGY OF THE COLLECTION

The dates assigned to the collection are various. Mercalli located it from the eleventh century to the first half of the thirteenth century, the terminus ante quem being 1258 when the Benedictine community at the church of Castel Sant’Elia ceased to exist.15 This dating needs to be considered within the context of the collection’s chain of custody from 1258 to the late eighteenth century. When the monastery was suppressed in 1258, Pope Alexander IV gave the church and property over to the Canons of Santo Spirito in Sassia, who held it until 1540, when Pope Paul III bestowed it upon the Farnese family. Since the monastery was located in a ravine below the village, placing it outside the fortifications the new overlords constructed, the Farnese built a new church, Sant’Antonio Abate, within the village. By 1648, this more conveniently located church had supplanted the basilica of Sant’Elia as the community’s parish.16 Sometime after 1648, the vestments from the old basilica of Sant’Elia were transferred to this new parish church of Sant’Antonio Abate.17 A mid-nineteenth-century historian, Giuseppe Ranghiasci, recounted that this occurred in two phases, in 1769 and 1776, when the tombs of Saint Anastasius and Saint Nonnoso, early abbots of Sant’Elia, were opened and their relics placed in an urn under the altar of Sant’Antonio Abate.18 From this time on, sources mention simply “relics” or “vestments and relics.” Although the vestments were clearly associated with Saints Anastasius and Nonnoso, it is not certain that all the vestments came from these venerated tombs. It seems likely to me (for reasons described below) that both the vestments in the sacristy of Sant’Elia and the contents of the tombs were transferred to Sant’Antonio Abate and treated together as relics. The seventeenthand eighteenth-century inventories of the collection describe articles that seem to

13 Elisabetta Giani, “Esposizione e conservazione dei paramenti liturgici nell’ex Oratorio di S. Anna,” in IPL, 141–45; Silvia Checchi, “I supporti espositivi,” in IPL, 146–51; Fabio Scala, “Indagini microclimatiche negli ambienti di deposito,” in IPL, 152–55; and Silvia Checchi, “Il deposito dei paramenti: Progettazione, realizzazione e utilizzo,” in IPL, 156–61. 14 Those wishing to consult the collection should contact the office of the mayor (sindaco) by e-mail ([email protected]) or by fax (0761 570152). 15 Mercalli, “I preziosi paramenti,” 19. 16 Alison Locke Perchuk, “In the Image of Elijah: The Artistic Foundations of Community in a Medieval Italian Monastery” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2009), 5–7. I thank Professor Perchuk for sharing her dissertation with me. 17 Lalli, “I paramenti,” 49–50. 18 Mercalli, “I preziosi paramenti,” 19–20.

82

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia correspond to items in the collection that comes down to us today (abbatial sandals and miters), but usually more vestments than it now includes.19 In dating the collection to ca. 1000–ca. 1258, Mercalli excluded one obviously early modern chasuble (no. 00174803) made of blue and yellow silk brocade. The fact that this probably sixteenth-century vestment was stored with the rest of the collection in the reliquary urn in Sant’Antonio Abate after its transfer in the late eighteenth century indicates that the collection represents more than only the pre–1258 vestments of the Benedictine monastery of Sant’Elia. It is reasonable, therefore, to consider whether any of the other items date from after 1258. Braun considered the pontifical sandals to date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the miters from the early thirteenth century, the chasubles from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and the dalmatics from the fourteenth century.20 He dated the albs to the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries.21 Braun, of course, did not have the scientific methods now available. The forms of the chasubles, however, suggest greater chronological range, and even the summary inventory published on page 161 of I paramenti liturgici distinguishes between the large bell-chasubles typical of the eleventh and twelfth centuries (classified as casule) and shorter, narrower cuts usually considered thirteenth-century or later (classified as pianete).22 The research accomplished during the recent conservation does demonstrate in specific cases (nos. 00174800, 00174801, 00174802, 00174804) reuse of medieval fabrics and likely refashioning of older vestments.23 These refashionings, however, suggest at the very least that the medieval vestments of the Benedictine community at Sant’Elia continued to be used and adapted by the canons of Santo Spirito in Sassia who took over the church in 1258. The addition of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century decorative panels to two of the albs also indicates this.24 In sum, while it seems appropriate to characterize the Castel Sant’Elia collection as mostly medieval vestments, researchers may want to interrogate further whether all—save the one obviously early modern chasuble—date before 1258. Another chronological distinction put forward in I paramenti liturgici also begs further investigation. Giusy Lalli argues that part of the collection can be dated from the early eleventh century to the mid-twelfth and another part from the mid-twelfth century to the mid-thirteenth based on stylistic elements shared with Islamic-Sicilian textiles. The evidence she presents in I paramenti liturgici is too meager to sustain this

19 Ibid., 20–21. 20 Braun, “Der Paramentenschatz,” 992–93. 21 Braun, Die liturgische Gewandung, 75. 22 Braun held for an “atrophy” of the chasuble from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, even using the chasubles of Castel Sant’Elia as an illustration, but the thirteenth century, in his view, was the era of transition; ibid., 173–97. The change may have been associated with the practice of elevating the host during the Canon of the Mass, a liturgical change also dating to the thirteenth century; John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 40. As far as I know, no more refined chronology of this change has been worked out. 23 Lalli and Checchi, “I manufatti tessili,” 100–28. 24 Braun, “Der Paramentenschatz,” 855.

83

Maureen C. Miller assertion, although it remains an interesting hypothesis.25 At least one chasuble seems to be from her earlier period, and the boot-style liturgical sandals from the later.26 From a historical perspective, however, it seems most plausible to date the bulk of the collection from the early twelfth century to the early thirteenth. Although there was monastic practice on the site from the sixth century, and an organized community building on the site of the present basilica from the tenth century at the latest, the research of Alison Locke Perchuk has demonstrated that the church of Sant’Elia was significantly rebuilt around 1126 under the leadership of Abbot Bovo.27 No documentation survives definitively to substantiate the abbey’s patronage, but Perchuk convincingly links the style of the architecture and frescoes to a Roman papal or curial milieu most likely connected to Pope Calixtus II (1119–24) and Petrus Pierleoni, who became (anti)Pope Anacletus II (1130–38).28 The restoration of the community that this rebuilding suggests, and the substantial resources evident in the architecture, the extensive fresco cycle, the Cosmati pavement, and the sculpted marble liturgical furnishings, make it reasonable to suspect that new liturgical garments were also acquired around this time. Indeed, Perchuk also finds connections between the monastery of Sant’Elia and its more illustrious Benedictine neighbor to the south, Montecassino.29 This religious and cultural nexus seems the appropriate context in which to understand the presence in the Castel Sant’Elia collection of vestments—such as the liturgical sandals, the gold-embellished (aurifregiata) miter, and chasuble no. 00174800—that are decorated with Islamic-Sicilian motifs. The Pierleoni were powerful allies of the Norman rulers of southern Italy and Sicily, and Montecassino too had strong ties with both the Norman kingdom and the reform papacy.30

25 Lalli, “I paramenti,” 52. Lalli’s study of chasuble no. 00174800 (“I manufatti tessili,” 101–3), which she cites as support for her broader dating schema, dates the tapestry-woven decorative bands detached from the garment (which were on the front when Braun consulted the collection) and those around the neck to the eleventh- to early-twelfth-century Fatamid period of Islamic-Sicilian production based on the style of the decorative motifs. Her basis for claiming that this dating is “in stretta relazione con gran parte degli altri manufatti del museo” [closely related to most of the other artifacts in the museum] is supported only by reference to the liturgical sandals with a pseudo-kufic inscription. These sandals, however, in her entry on them in the Nobiles Officinae catalog (254–57), are dated to the second half of the twelfth century. 26 Lalli and Checchi, “I manufatti tessili,” 101–3; Jervis, Jung, and Moretti, “I sandali pontificali,” 89–99. 27 Some rebuilding clearly began in the late eleventh or very early twelfth century, but Perchuk’s careful analysis of the masonry establishes a rapid construction of most of the Romanesque basilica around the time of the 1126 inscription naming Bovo. Perchuk, “In the Image of Elijah,” 47–48, 81, 270. 28 Ibid., chapters 5 and 6, but especially 213, 232, 267–91. On the Pierleoni and the papal politics of this period, see I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 8–11; and on their artistic commissions, Mary Stroll, Symbols as Power: The Papacy Following the Investiture Contest (Leiden: Brill, 1991), especially 95–105. 29 The monastery of Sant’Elia was one of five Benedictine communities in and around Rome given over to Odo of Cluny for reform, and Montecassino was also among these. Devotional and liturgical resonances also suggest a connection: Perchuk, “In the Image of Elijah,” 3–4, 82–84, 157, 291–92. 30 Robinson, The Papacy, 68, 212–15, 381–85; G. A. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 143–54.

84

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia One last chronological observation must be made. Early-thirteenth-century dates have been posited for the most ornamented abbatial insignia in the collection: the pontifical sandals and the gold-embellished miter. Although abbots who had received privileges to wear these episcopal insignia certainly used them in their local liturgical context, the great gathering of hundreds of bishops and abbots at Rome in November 1215 for what has become known as the Fourth Lateran Council may have provided the occasion for the abbot of Castel Sant’Elia to update his pontifical attire.31 The council was called in a decree of April 19, 1213, to allow ample time for prelates throughout Europe to prepare for the solemn gathering. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GROUP

While surviving single vestments and most ecclesiastical treasury inventories might give the impression of a very finely dressed medieval clergy draped in silks ornamented with gold, the Castel Sant’Elia collection tempers this image. Of the eleven medieval chasubles, the base fabric of more than half (63%) is plain, and rather coarse (grezzo), linen or cotton.32 One is entirely plain with no surviving ornamentation. The others have applied bands (stoloni) on front, back, or both, and some of these are of colored silk, but they could also be dyed strips of the same base material, as in the case of no. 00174793 (fig. 4.1), a cotton bell chasuble with a blue cotton applied band down the back. It is impossible to determine, of course, when even these simple bands were added,33 so one has to entertain the possibility that even in a well-to-do Benedictine community such as Castel Sant’Elia, the priest’s chasuble might be plain, undyed linen or cotton. The five albs reveal similar proportions of plain versus ornamented vestments in their present condition, but in the central Middle Ages they were entirely plain (fig. 4.2). Two of the five have decorative rectangular apparels (parure) at the bottom front, but both of these date to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries.34

31 Brenda Bolton, “A Show with Meaning: Innocent III’s Approach to the Fourth Lateran Council,” in Brenda Bolton, Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1995), 55. 32 See appendix. Cotton was being cultivated and woven in Sicily and in southern Italy (Calabria and Apulia) from at least the tenth century, perhaps as early as the late eighth or ninth. Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 25–26. 33 Given the lack of uniformity or even symmetry in the presence of these applied bands (some only on one side, some with a lateral cross piece but some without), one hypothesis the restorers suggest is that these bands—especially those of silk—were added to stabilize the fabric more than to decorate the garment. The weight of the fabric worn or hung leads to distension, a phenomenon influencing the decision to create storage for most of the vestments so that they can lie flat. Checchi, “I supporti espositivi,” 148. 34 Braun judged both decorative panels to be late medieval, describing one as a blue and white brocatelle of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries (“ein weissblauer Brokatell dürfte allerdings erst dem XIV. oder gar XV. Jahrh. angehört haben”). Braun, “Der Paramentenschatz,” 855.

85

Maureen C. Miller

Figure 4.1: Cotton bell chasuble (front), Castel Sant’Elia, Museo della Spiritualità, Cat. Gen. ICCD no. 00174793. Photo: Rome, Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Laboratorio Restauro e Conservazione Manufatti Tessili.

Despite the unadorned character of the Castel Sant’Elia albs, three vestments within the collection do suggest the allure of the high-end silk look and the desire to achieve it at a more affordable price. One chasuble, one dalmatic, and one tunicle (fig. 4.3) are made of a bright indigo-dyed blue linen-silk union, the warp being of linen fibers and the weft of silk.35 Even in a rather deteriorated state, these fabrics have a beautiful sheen, but they would certainly have been more economical than pure silk. One has to wonder, in light of this, how many of the garments described in inventories as de serico may have been half-silks. The measurements of the chasubles still in their bell form suggest an attempt to accommodate men of different statures. Their lengths vary from a modest 114 centimeters (about 45 inches) to a gigantic 183 centimeters (72 inches), with most ca. 165 centimeters (65 inches). A similar variation is apparent in the albs, the shortest measuring 160 centimeters (63 inches) and the longest the longest 193 centimeters (76 inches). Unlike the chasuble, of course, the alb was worn with a cincture, and so its length could be adjusted by hiking the fabric up over the tightened cincture. A 35 Chasuble no. 00174802, dalmatic no. 00174805, and tunicle no. 00174807; see Giuliani and Ioele, “Indagini scientifiche,” 60; Lalli and Checchi, “I manufatti tessili,” 119. The fabric is described as “lino settificato” or “mezza seta.”

86

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia

Figure 4.2: Alb, Castel Sant’Elia, Museo della Spiritualità, Cat. Gen. ICCD no. 00174797. Photo: Rome, Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Laboratorio Restauro e Conservazione Manufatti Tessili.

striking characteristic of these medieval albs and a dozen others studied by Braun is their width. The measurements of each alb differ, but the middle widths reported by Braun range from 80 to 115 centimeters (31½ to 45¼ inches). These numbers, at first look, suggest a range akin to the difference between a small and a large men’s dress shirt. However, modern measurements are taken around the chest, whereas Braun’s measurements are of the width across the garment as it is laid flat. Therefore medieval albs are about twice as wide as a modern man’s dress shirt. Unless we assume that most medieval clerics were morbidly obese, this amplitude must have been gathered in with the cincture to create a pleated or billowing appearance. The widths at the hems are much more extreme: six to eight feet. Increasingly, this look of ample folds of fabric was achieved by inserting multiple panels (gores) at the sides. As Braun noted, there is no functional reason for these dimensions: it was a matter of taste or “fashion” (“sind 87

Maureen C. Miller

Figure 4.3: Indigo-dyed blue linen-silk tunicle, Castel Sant’Elia, Museo della Spiritualità, Cat. Gen. ICCD no. 00174807. Photo: Rome, Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Laboratorio Restauro e Conservazione Manufatti Tessili.

die Folge ihrer Anfertigungsweise”).36 It does accord, however, with the emphasis of Amalarius of Metz (d. ca. 850), in his liturgical commentary on the meaning of sacred vestments, that in contrast to the Old Testament high priest’s tunic, which was straight and narrow, the Christian priest’s tunic was “loose,” symbolizing “the freedom Christ had won for us.”37 One wonders whether such symbolic, devotional meanings fostered this style emphasizing width and ample fabric.

36 Braun, Die liturgische Gewandung, 75. 37 John Michael Hanssens, ed., Amalarii episcopi opera liturgica omnia, Studi e Testi 139 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1948), 2:240 (II.18): “In eo discrepat vestimentum istud a nostro, quod illud strictum est, nostrum vero largum. Etenim hi in veteri testamento spiritu servitutis erant astricti, de quo dicebat Paulus: Non enim accepistis spiritum servitutis in timore. Nos vero quia Filius liberavit, liberi sumus; non accepimus spiritum servitutis in timore, sed spiritum adoptionis filiorum, ac ideo sit illorum strictum, nostrum largum, propter liberatatem qua Christus nos liberavit.”

88

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia REUSE AND “RELIQUARY” VESTMENTS

The eighteenth-century documentation regarding this collection of vestments indicates that the garments were preserved in the modern era because they were considered relics of the holy sixth-century abbots Anastasius and Nonnoso. Certainly none of the vestments in the collection could have been worn by these two saints, but this association, as Lalli noted, “had the merit of safeguarding these simple vestments in linen both from many attempted plunderings and from the daily use for which they were made.”38 Still, there is a chasuble within the collection—no. 00174801—that can be considered a reliquary vestment. Since at least the eighth century, liturgical vestments were blessed and considered sacred because of their use at the altar where the Eucharist was confected. Early sacramentaries included blessings or consecrations for the altar and things used on it: the paten, chalice, and the linteamina. Included in this last category were the linens that covered the altar but also “vestimenta pontificalia sacerdotibus et levitis ornamenta,” meaning the vestments by which priests and deacons are distinguished, or with which they are furnished.39 We also know that from at least the ninth century, clerics recited prayers as they donned their vestments in preparation for the Mass.40 If normal liturgical vestments were holy, what then of the vestments of clerics believed to be especially holy? The answer to this question seems to have been the development of a class of super-sacred vestments associated with saintly clerics. The tendency to associate a beautiful liturgical garment with a venerated prelate has long been noted by textile specialists.41 Often, the date of the materials employed in making the vestments precludes the direct association with the saintly cleric. The beautiful “Vitalis chasuble” owned by the Abegg-Stiftung in Bern, Switzerland, for example, could not have been worn by Saint Vitalis, the bishop and abbot of Saint Peter’s, Salzburg, who died before 730, since it is made of eleventh-century silk, but 38 Mercalli, “I preziosi paramenti,” 19–20; Lalli, “I paramenti,” 49. 39 The eighth-century Gelasian sacramentaries have separate prayers for the chalice, paten, and linteamina, and a general benediction “ad omnia in usu basilice”: Leo Cunibert Mohlberg, ed., Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Aeclesiae Ordinis Anni Circuli (Cod. Vat. Reg. Lat. 316/Paris Bibl. Nat. 7193, 41/56) (Sacramentarium Gelasianum), Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta, Series maior, Fontes 4 (Rome: Herder, 1968), 109–10; Patrick Saint-Roch, ed., Liber Sacramentorvm Engolismensis: Manuscrit B.N. Lat. 816: Le Sacramentaire Gélasien d’Angoulême, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 159C (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1987), 363–65. 40 An introduction to these using one particularly developed example is Joanne M. Pierce, “Early Medieval Vesting Prayers in the ordo missae of Sigebert of Minden (1022–1036),” in Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith: Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh, O.S.B., ed. Nathan Mitchell and John F. Baldovin (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 80–105: see also Pierce, “Sacerdotal Spirituality at Mass: Text and Study of the Prayerbook of Sigebert of Minden (1022–1036)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1988). The earliest extant version of a set of vesting prayers survives in a ninth-century sacramentary from Amiens (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 9432); Victor Leroquais, “L’Ordo Missae du sacramentaire d’Amiens,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 41 (1927): 439. 41 Anna Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving AD 400 to AD 1200 (Vienna: Fassbaender, 1997), 185 (M64 C.ii), 186 (M68 C.iii.a and M70 C.iii.a), 187 (M72 C.iii.a), 188 (M75 C.iii.a), 189 (M78 C.iii.b), 192 (M87 D.ii), 195 (M97a I.C.iii.a); Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation, 158, 190, 196–201.

89

Maureen C. Miller the garment may well have been made for, or worn regularly to celebrate, the feast day of the saint. Cases in which some of the materials date from the saint’s era can reveal a different developmental process. The linen alb of Saint Bernulf, Bishop of Utrecht (1028–56), in the Utrecht Catharijneconvent Museum is a good example. Study of the garment’s style yielded “no evidence to contradict its having been created in the mid-eleventh century, as is traditionally believed.”42 Details of its construction, however, suggest a more complex story. The sleeve insets, the side gores, and the general cut of the alb make an early-eleventh-century date possible, so the plain, base garment could plausibly have been worn by the saint. What is striking about the alb, however, is its decoration. Seven different widths of golden tablet-woven bands ornament the neckline, cuffs, shoulder and sleeve seams, and hem—and these date, at the earliest, from the late twelfth century. The saint’s cherished garment could have been “updated” for continued ceremonial use. The urge to preserve and to continue to wear liturgical apparel associated with a venerated cleric is consonant with a spirituality of sacred vestments that developed particularly strongly from the Carolingian reforms of the ninth century to the “Gregorian” reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.43 Vesting prayers, for example, summoned clerical virtues as liturgical garments were donned and associated those virtues with different vestments. This fostered the devotional practice of “putting on virtue” in preparation for the performance of sacred rites. It is in this context that “reliquary vestments” developed. Continuing to use a garment associated with a saintly cleric, of course, inevitably led to wear and tear that at some point rendered the vestment unwearable. Instead of retiring these tattered vestments, the devout remade them. A baroque chasuble, belonging to the Cistercian monastery of St. Urban in Lucerne and called the chasuble of Saint Ulrich (bishop of Augsburg, 923–73), provides an example of this process. Under the eighteenth-century silk of the chasuble, conservators discovered many fragments of various fabrics stitched onto a kapok and linen base. Most of the fragments were of a purple tenth- or eleventh-century Islamic silk, some with pieces of a golden tapestry-woven border. Like so many puzzle pieces, the fragments could be reconstructed to form the type of bell-shaped chasuble typical of Saint Ulrich’s time. Apparently, when the saint’s chasuble began to disintegrate, its pieces were gathered together and enclosed within a new vestment so that Ulrich’s chasuble could still be worn.44 Castel Sant’Elia chasuble no. 00174801 exhibits some of these features, with an admittedly much less pleasing aesthetic result (fig. 4.4).45 The form of the chasuble suggests it was reconfigured in the sixteenth century to achieve the baroque style that 42 Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation, 190–93. The style and embroidery technique of the chasuble of Bishop Bernhard of Hildesheim (d. 1153) also lend “credence to the traditional assumption that the chasuble was made in the first half of the twelfth century”; ibid., 197. 43 Developed at length in my book, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800– 1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 51–95. Color photographs of the Vitalis chasuble, the alb of Saint Bernulf Bishop of Utrecht, and the Saint Urban reliquary chasuble can also be found there. 44 Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation, 282–84, 448–53. 45 Lalli and Checchi, “I manufatti tessili,” 110–17.

90

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia

Figure 4.4: Yellow-gold samite chasuble with red samite applied bands on front and back, lined with red linen, Castel Sant’Elia, Museo della Spiritualità, Cat. Gen. ICCD no. 00174801. Photo: Rome, Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Laboratorio Restauro e Conservazione Manufatti Tessili.

left the arms free. It is constructed from pieces of yellow-gold samite, sewn together with different types of thread in a manner the restorers generously call “imprecise.” Pieces of a red samite are used as applied bands on front and back and to create an abbreviated cross piece just under the neck opening. Traces of previous stitching on this red silk reveal that it too was recycled. The chasuble is lined in red linen. The piecing together of these fabrics indicates reuse. The lines of the garment and the neck opening suggest that it was created from a medieval bell chasuble. 91

Maureen C. Miller

Figure 4.5: Detail of brown and green textile discovered inside the neckline of the chasuble in fig. 4.4. Here, the narrow piece lies beneath the fragmented white lampas edging and on top of the yellow silk fabric and red lining of the chasuble. Photo: Rome, Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Laboratorio Restauro e Conservazione Manufatti Tessili.

The discovery of a delicate piece of white lampas-weave fabric worked into the neckline lends further support to this theory. The pattern of interlocking medallions with animals within them has led restorers to date this fabric to the eleventh or twelfth century. Lalli suggests that this delicate piece of lampas may possibly have come from a stole and maniple described in the 1615 inventory as being made of white damasco. Were several liturgical garments believed to have belonged either to Saint Anastasius or Saint Nonnoso combined into one wearable vestment in the early modern era? Another finding suggests so. A fragment of brown and green cloth with metallic weft threads was discovered hidden under the white lampas (fig. 4.5). Since it serves no structural or ornamental purpose, the aim seems to have been to embed an object into the vestment. This hidden piece of fabric was too small to discern a weave pattern for dating, and no scientific analyses are reported in I paramenti liturgici, but both these tiny pieces of fabric incorporated into the neckline of the chasuble suggest a devotional motive. The holes in the yellow-gold silk, through which the red lining is visible, might also be explained by continuing belief in the status of the garment as a relic. Indeed, as Lalli noted, Joseph Braun heard of such occurrences when he visited the collection at the end of the nineteenth century. “Individual vestments were occasionally brought 92

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia to the sick as supposed relics,” Braun related, “[and] during these opportunities a considerable number of pieces were torn off by the overzealous devout.”46 CONCLUSION

Although chronological questions remain to be resolved, the medieval liturgical vestments of Castel Sant’Elia give us at least a glimpse into the sacristy of a medieval church. The collection includes some very fine garments of silk and some beautifully ornamented items such as the gold-embellished miter and the pontifical sandals. But the majority of the vestments were made of plain, undyed linen or cotton with little or no decoration. These artifacts should temper our image of the medieval clergy and underscore the idealized character of the representations presented in manuscript illuminations and frescoes. The sizes of the Castel Sant’Elia vestments indicate the expectation of clerics of varying statures, but also a stylistic (and perhaps spiritual?) preference for heavily draped and flowing albs. The variations within the large group of chasubles offer evidence of the stylistic changes in this priestly vestment over the Middle Ages and of how communities recycled and refashioned their liturgical garb over time. The collection is also significant for including at least one “reliquary vestment” illustrating the devotional mentalities and practices of the clergy. Although there were different styles of liturgical garments over the Middle Ages, sacred vestments were more than just clerical “fashion.”

46 Als vermeintliche Reliquien wurde nämlich einzelne der Ornatstücke gelegentilich zu Kranken gebracht, bei welchen Gelegenheiten leider erhebliche Stücke im frommen Uebereifer von demselben abgerissen wurden.” Braun, “Der Paramentenschatz,” 294; Lalli and Checchi, “I manufatti tessili,” 111.

93

Maureen C. Miller

Appendix 4.1 Working Hand-List of the Castel Sant’Elia ­Vestments

I paramenti liturgici di Castel Sant’Elia (IPL; see page 80, note 4) makes available a wealth of data from the recent conservation and restoration work done on the collection. It does not, unfortunately, provide a systematic catalog. One cannot be offered here, but to facilitate research on the collection I offer my rough attempts to synchronize some basic data on the vestments. One of the difficulties in studying these vestments is that the catalog numbers now used to identify them seem only to have been assigned in 1984, when Anna Maria Pedrocchi surveyed the collection for the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD). Notations at the beginning of this survey—which Rodolfo Mazzolini, mayor of Castel Sant’Elia, graciously allowed me to consult in the summer of 2009 at the communal offices—indicate that there was an old set of catalog entries made by A. Santangelo in November 1928 with a different system of numbering. Pedrocchi’s 1984 survey did not, however, assign discrete numbers to all the vestments: three of the six albs were left uncatalogued. On the entry for the first alb, no. 00174808, she noted the albs “totaled six, of which only the best three were catalogued.” This incomplete assignment of numbers, and the complexity of the conservation effort, appears to have confused the numbering of the items in the collection further. In the summary list of the items in the collection published in 2012 in IPL, Pedrocchi’s three numbers for albs (00174808, 00174809, and 00174810) are missing, and the six albs are reassigned numbers already used for chasubles (00174793–00174797 and 00174802), thus creating six duplications in the numbering system. In the hand-list below, duplicates are italicized, with three of the albs tentatively identified as corresponding to Pedrocchi’s numbered entries. Beyond their present confused state, the relatively recent assignment of these numbers often makes it difficult to correlate the observations of Joseph Braun and Luisa Mortari with the latest findings.

1

Inventory of the collection of liturgical vestments compiled by Dr. Anna Marie Pedrocchi (Commune of Castel Sant’Elia, 1984), no. 16: “in totale numero di sei, di cui vengono catalogato soltanto i tre migliori.”

94

Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia In the following list I give the ICCD catalog number; a brief identifying description based on the summary table on page 161 of IPL; the dimensions reported in IPL (the width of the albs was measured at the hem); supplemental or different information from the 1984 Pedrocchi survey; and finally, references to significant published information on the vestment, including IPL as well as Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation (see page 79, note 1) and Giusy Lalli’s entries in the Nobiles Officinae exhibition catalog (see page 81, note 10). Asterisked items were designated on the IPL summary list for display in the museum; all other items were to be kept “in deposito” [in storage].

ICCD catalog IPL number description

IPL measurement (centimeters, width x length)

Pedrocchi description

00174793

200 x 162

cotton with applied blue cotton band linen with yellow-gold applied bands front and back linen

References

00174797

chasuble [casula]

160 x 140

00174798

chasuble [casula] chasuble [casula] chasuble [pianeta]

196 x 163

IPL, 60; FluryLemberg, 221 Flury-Lemberg, 220? Flury-Lemberg, 219 linen with blue applied bands Flury-Lemberg, 220? front and back, blue lining and border Flury-Lemberg, linen, blue applied bands 221 front and back, and blue bordering neckline red silk with yellow border

132 x 114

linen with red applied band

148 x 86

linen with a white applied silk band and a piece of tapestry-woven silk ornamenting the neckline

IPL, 60, 101–9; Flury-Lemberg, 219

00174801*

chasuble [pianeta]

150 x 72

yellow silk with applied red silk band

IPL, 58, 61, 111–17

00174802

chasuble [pianeta]

138 x 77

linen-silk union with applied IPL, 60, 119–23 white linen cross on back

00174803

chasuble [pianeta]

132 x 97

blue and yellow brocaded silk with red silk orphrey with figures of saints

00174804*

chasuble [pianeta]

136 x 76

red silk with red and gold orphrey decorated with rosettes

00174794 00174795 00174796

00174799 00174800*

chasuble [casula] chasuble [pianeta] chasuble [casula] chasuble [casula]

160.5 x 91 165 x 167 186 x 183

95

IPL, 56, 60, 125–28

Maureen C. Miller ICCD catalog IPL number description

IPL measurement (centimeters, width x length)

Pedrocchi description

00174793

alb

177 x 160

00174794

alb

232 x 164

00174795

alb

250 x 193

may be Pedrocchi’s no. 00174808: coarse cloth with long sleeves, measuring 178 x 170 may be Pedrocchi’s no. 00174809: coarse cloth, wide sleeves, piece of silk at bottom, measuring 230 x 175 may be Pedrocchi’s no. 00174810: coarse cloth, wide sleeves which narrow at the wrist

00174796 00174797 00174802 00174805

alb alb alb dalmatic

211 x 182 212 x 190 172 x 176 125 x 124

00174806

dalmatic

110 x 106

00174807

tunicle

140 x 174

00174811*

miter

29 x 23

00174812* 00174813*

miter sandals

18.5 x 22 30 x 10/12 x 18

00174814*

sandals

30 x 11 x 13

blue silk with wide border in red and gold green silk; fourteenth century? linen-silk union, narrow sleeves, gold bands at shoulders, broad gold border at hem with double eagles linen, decorated with green, blue and red silk and gold embroidery linen high, leather decorated with gold floral motif low, with inscription on heel

00174815

sandals

30 x 11 x 14

light leather

96

References

IPL, 119

IPL, 58, 119

IPL, 61, 130–36 IPL, 61, 129, 134 IPL, 69–73, 89–99 Lalli, Nobiles Officinae, 1:254–57

Clothing Distrained for Debt in the Court of ­Merchants of Lucca in the Late Fourteenth Century Christine Meek

The records of the Court of Merchants in the archives of Lucca, a commercial and manufacturing centre in Tuscany, central Italy, contain two extensive lists of clothing, textiles, and other articles that were distrained for debts in 1370 and 1380. Mentions of items distrained in such circumstances are quite common in Lucchese court records generally, but they tend to be single scattered examples. It is unusual to find many together, and the fact that the court in question was the Court of Merchants, which had oversight of wholesale trade, banking, the manufacture of silk and woollen cloth, leatherworking, and a number of crafts such as tailoring, means that clothing and textile items are particularly likely to figure among possessions seized for debts or offered as security. This article will concentrate on items of clothing, attempting to identify them and discuss their value and the significance of their appearance in these records. It will not deal with related textile items, such as bedding, towels, or table linen, except where these appear in conjunction with clothing. THE USE OF CREDIT IN MEDIEVAL LUCCA

Although this article is primarily concerned with the objects seized, not with the distraint system as such, it is necessary to explain the use of credit and the problems of enforcing payment by debtors in order to understand the parameters of relations between creditors and debtors, and the forms of action available to creditors to obtain payment from those reluctant or unable to pay. The use of credit was widespread at all social and economic levels. Not only was there direct lending of sums of money, ranging from a few florins to several hundred, but purchases of goods—whether raw materials and luxury fabrics worth hundreds of florins or minor acquisitions of clothing and household goods for a few lire—were regularly made on credit. Services, too, often involved credit, both deferred payment I would like to thank Gale Owen-Crocker for encouraging me to work out my ideas on the documents discussed in this article.

Christine Meek for professional services and advances of money by those commissioning tasks, which were to be paid off by subsequent work. There was often a credit period also for the payment of fines and dues, though there were penalties of an additional 25 percent for payment made once that period had elapsed. Inevitably some individuals were unable to meet the payments they had committed themselves to and found themselves in debt. From the creditors’ point of view there then arose the problem of trying to obtain payment. In fact creditors were quite often prepared to wait for their money. It is not at all uncommon for debts to be settled months or years after the agreed term without any indication that this had caused friction or that the creditor had been making efforts to obtain payment. The term for payment under private agreements often seems to be the date after which payment was due and might be sought rather than the date at which it was seriously expected that the money would be paid. However, if the creditor did want to exact payment, there were forms of action open to him. He could have the debtor summoned to a civil court and make a claim. If the defendant acknowledged the debt, he would be given a fairly brief term in which to pay. If he contested the debt, the plaintiff would be required to prove his claim, which might win the defendant further time but would be likely to increase the legal costs. If the plaintiff had proved his claim and still not received his money or if the defendant failed to appear, the creditor could ask for a licentia predandi, which entitled him to have a court official take items belonging to the debtor as preda. The noun preda and the verb predare literally mean “prey,” but given the connotations of “prey” in English, “distraint” and “distrain” give a more accurate impression of what was involved and will be the terms used in this article. The court would authorise one of its nunzii (sworn messengers) to take some appropriate item or items belonging to the debtor which were of sufficient value to cover the sum involved. Although distraint was carried out on the initiative of the creditor, he could not simply help himself to goods of appropriate value, nor were they necessarily handed over to him. They might be kept by the nunzio, in which case he was responsible for them, or they might be entrusted to a third party for safekeeping. Even if they were handed over to the creditor, they did not become his property, nor could he sell them to recoup his debt. They remained legally preda levata, that is, distrained goods, of which the debtor lost immediate control but still retained ownership and which served as a surety for payment. Preda could be sold only after a further legal procedure, in which the creditor asked the court to authorise the nunzio to auction them to the highest bidder. If that was agreed, which would normally be only after a further claim for payment by the debtor, the nunzio held a public auction and the creditor would then be paid from the proceeds of the sale, any surplus going to the debtor. These proceedings, of course, leave traces in the court records, and it is efforts at distraint and recovery of debts that have produced the lists of goods in the Court of Merchants that are the subject of this article.

98

Clothing Distrained for Debt There is information of this kind in Corte de’ Mercanti no. 14 for 1370 and no. 15 for 1380.1 The records of the Court of Merchants for the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are fragmentary, and even the volumes that survive are rather disordered. Corte de’ Mercanti 14 records fifty-two cases of distraint in the second semester of 1370, while Corte de’ Mercanti 15, which covers the whole of the year 1380, records 137. The articles distrained were by no means necessarily clothing or textiles; almost anything could be taken as security for a debt. Items such as barrels, a bucket, an axe, arms and armour, furniture, copper and iron pans, even a frying pan with half a handle, might be taken as pledges. Non-textile items are particularly numerous in the records for 1380, where a number of the debtors seem to be unconnected with the activities that came under the jurisdiction of the Court of Merchants. However articles of clothing predominate in 1370, with twenty-one distraints consisting solely of such items and a further six including them. They played a less dominant role in 1380, but were still heavily represented, with thirty-one distraints consisting solely of clothing and a further twenty-four including such items. (Tables 5.1 and 5.2 list all clothing items distrained in 1370 and 1380. Textiles and other items are included only in cases where clothing was also distrained.) Licences for distraint authorised the taking of goods up to a specified value, without indicating any particular item or category of items. The nunzio had a certain discretion, and the items taken may have been the subject of negotiation between the nunzio and the debtor, and even been offered by the debtor. The communal Statute of 1308 speaks of nunzii taking or accepting items as preda, which suggests that the initiative on what might serve as preda could sometimes come from the debtor. There were limitations on what could be taken as preda under the communal Statutes; in particular, bedding, arms, and agricultural implements could not be offered or accepted.2 It is not clear whether this applied in the Court of Merchants. The only specific limitation in the Statute of the Court of Merchants of 1376 appears to be a prohibition on taking as preda any loom on which there was a partly woven piece of cloth.3 However, the possibility of limitations seems to be indicated by two lists of licences to pawn items that were normally forbidden. Pawning goods is not, of course, the same as having them distrained for debt, but might not be totally unrelated, since raising money by pawning goods might provide funds to pay the debt and avoid distraint. Twenty-six such licences were granted in the second semester of 1370 and thirty in the    1 Archivio di Stato in Lucca, series Corte de’ Mercanti 14 and 15 (hereafter abbreviated as CM14 and CM15, with folio numbers for specific citations). The only other extant volumes of acts before 1500, nos. 16 for 1389, 17 for 1415–33, and 18 for 1498–1509, do not contain details of items distrained for debt.   2 Statutum Lucani Communis anno MCCCVIII, reprinted with an introduction by Vito Tirelli (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1991), lib. II, cap. xxv, 88; originally published as vol. 3, part 3, of Memorie e Documenti per Servire all’Istoria del Principato Lucchese (Lucca: Tipografia Giusti, 1867). These limitations were repeated in the Statute of 1372, Statuti del Comune di Lucca 6, lib. III, cap. cxxi, 89v.   3 Augusto Mancini, Umberto Dorini, and Eugenio Lazzareschi, eds., Lo Statuto della Corte dei Mercanti in Lucca del MCCCLXXVI (Florence: Leo Olschki, 1927), lib. I, cap. viii, 28. Such a loom could, however, be sequestrated, entrusted to someone, or taken in lieu of payment (in insoluto).

99

Christine Meek year 1380, often to weavers and others engaged in the cloth industry and all of them involving licences to pawn cloth (see Tables 5.3 and 5.4). The lists of preda for 1370 and 1380 make it clear that arms and armour, agricultural implements, and bedding, though rarely beds, were in fact taken as preda. Perhaps rather more surprisingly, tools and equipment—such as looms and parts of looms, dyeing vats, shears, and raw materials—regularly served as preda, sometimes in quantities that suggest that the craftsman in question must have found it difficult to carry on with his trade, even where he was not apparently bankrupt. Nevertheless there was obviously an element of selection in the items offered or taken as preda, perhaps especially where relatively small debts were involved. Occasionally the nunzio did not find anything that could be taken, so clearly could not take the clothing off the debtor’s back or perhaps very basic household items.4 Where garments were taken they must have been to some extent items that could be spared. CLOTHING DISTRAINED FOR DEBT

Articles of clothing distrained for debts consisted primarily of men’s and women’s main outer garments: gowns, tunics, doublets, overdresses (guarnacchia), and cloaks.5 No children’s clothes are mentioned. It might perhaps be thought that children’s clothing had little value and was likely to be sold or passed on when the child had outgrown it, but items of children’s clothing do appear in inventories and clearly had some value. It seems likely that at least some of those being distrained for debts would have children’s garments that were not immediately needed; nevertheless none appear in these lists. There are also virtually no undergarments. Again underwear might be thought to have little value and in any case played a relatively minor role in medieval dress. The   4 The nunzio who went to take preda from Jacobo Dominici of Venice, a weaver living in Lucca, found nothing he could take for all or part of the sum covered by the licence, CM15, 160v, Dec. 15, 1380.    5 A glossary of some clothing terms found in this article appears in the Appendix. In addition, there are useful glossaries of terms for garments, textiles, and colours in Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale: Vesti e società dal XIII al XVI secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 353–62; Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 301–20; Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. Allan Evans (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1936), 411–35; and Florence Edler, Glossary of Medieval Terms of Business: Italian series 1200–1600 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1934). However, the definitions vary somewhat. Laurence Gérard-Marchant, “Compter et nommer l’étoffe à Florence au Trecento (1343),” Médiévales 29 (1995): 87–104, covers many of the terms found in the present article, though at a higher social level, since she is dealing with lists of garments liable to a luxury tax. Marco Paoli, Arte e committenza privata a Lucca nel Trecento e Quattrocento (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1986), 57–72, discusses clothing in Lucca over a longer period and again mainly at a higher social level. Luigi Fumi, “Usi e costumi lucchesi: I, Le vesti,” Atti della Reale Accademia Lucchese 32 (1904): 177–249, is mainly concerned with sumptuary laws, but discusses many of the terms used here. Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), and Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), are also useful for understanding dress and identifying terms.

100

Clothing Distrained for Debt inclusion of a woman’s shirt and a man’s shirt (camicia), both of them new, among the items taken for the £10 picc. owed by Federigo Johannis shows that underwear might be taken, but this remains the only example.6 There are few examples of minor articles of clothing. There are no mentions of separate sleeves, although pairs of sleeves quite frequently occur in contemporary inventories. Married women normally wore veils, coifs, or wimples and girls garlands and other forms of headdress, but none appear in these lists, though minor textile articles such as hand towels are sometimes mentioned. Hoods were worn by both sexes, but were very rarely among the items distrained for debts; a pale blue hood was taken from Francesco Blasi along with a vermilion silk lining for a man’s cloak for a debt of 1 florin in 1370, and three different hoods, two of them men’s and one a woman’s, were taken from the weaver Tuccio Ricci, known as Tristano, for a debt of 1 florin in 1380, along with a women’s tunic of panno albagio (locally produced woollen cloth) and a leather hat,7 but these remain isolated examples. The only gloves mentioned were in fact a pair of iron gauntlets.8 Hose and footwear are very rarely mentioned, apart from cases where the distraint was against a hosier or a shoemaker. A pair of hose made of white English wool was among the items taken from Zacchino Nelli in June 1380, but he was a tailor and they are likely to have been part of his stock.9 This must also have been the case for Benincasa Pardelli, a shoemaker, who had a long list of items of furniture and bedding and also twenty-two pairs of boots (aluctarum), sixty-two pairs of clogs (soccholis), 176 pairs of forms for boots, two pairs of uppers for shoes (tomariis), and various skins and wood taken on May 29, 1380,10 and Jacobo Nerii, a shoemaker, who had twenty-two pairs of boots for women and children (the only mention of children in these lists) and fifty-seven pairs of forms for boots, large and small, taken on June 18.11 Apart from these, footwear is mentioned only among the articles taken from a Florentine furrier, Johanne Amadoris, but he and his son Amadore were bankrupt and everything was being taken, not just the two pairs of old boots included in a long list;12 the pair of boots of white (or undyed) leather and the black hide taken from Manno Neri in December 1370 may also have been among his stock, though his profession is not given.13 There are only two mentions of a dress accessory. One was a belt of gilded silver, which must have been extremely heavy and elaborate, since it was distrained for a debt of £100 picc., the equivalent of about    6 CM15, 157v, Sept. 25, 1380. The abbreviation picc. stands for piccioli, a Lucchese silver coinage denominated in lire, solidi, and denari (abbreviated in this article with the symbols £, s., and d.) at a value that, in the 1370s and 1380s, varied from around £5 2s. to £5 3s. to the florin.    7 CM15, 156v, Sept. 22, 1380. A boiled leather hat (“unum capellum de corio cocto”) appears in a long list of items taken for bankruptcy, 153r–153v, Aug. 6, 1380.    8 “unum par cilotecarum de ferro,” CM15, 143r, May 4, 1380.    9 CM15, 146v, June 13, 1380 (in fact the distraint had been carried out on March 9). The items also include 2 braccia of this white English cloth.  10 CM15, 145v, May 29, 1380. Also two pairs of hose, which may not have been part of his stock.  11 CM15, 147v, June 18, 1380.  12 “duo paria stivalium veterum,” CM15, 153r–153v, Aug. 6, 1380; bankruptcy proceedings against them, 196r–200v, Aug. 9–22, 1380. In fact proceedings against bankrupts involved different legal procedures from distraint for debt.  13 “unum par stivalium pellis albe, unam pellem nigram de … [sic],” CM14, 44v, Dec. 18, 1370.

101

Christine Meek 19 florins, owed to Johanne Passavantis, a silk spinner, by the prominent citizen and notary ser Guido Onesti.14 The other was a much more modest woman’s girdle of red silk with silver fittings, and this was taken from a tailor, Juntorino Cionis, for a debt of 2 florins and 10s. picc., to a cloth merchant, so may have been something he had made for sale.15 Despite the frequency with which accessories such as girdles, belts, and purses appear in inventories, they were not apparently thought appropriate to be distrained for debts, though they would seem quite suitable in terms of their value, portability, and marginal role as dress items. The preference among articles of dress was overwhelmingly for major items of clothing, both men’s and women’s.16 The frequency with which women’s garments appear among items distrained for debt need cause no surprise, although the overwhelming majority of debtors, and indeed of creditors, were men. There were various ways in which men might become the owners of women’s garments, by inheritance from female relatives or perhaps because they had prepared items for the trousseau (corredo) of a daughter who had not yet gone to her husband. But the main reason that women’s garments figured among the items seized for men’s debts was undoubtedly that a wife’s clothing was the property of her husband, if he himself had provided it, and he also had control over anything she had brought with her as part of her corredo for the duration of the marriage. He was thus perfectly entitled to pawn his wife’s clothing, and it could legitimately be distrained for his debts. The items of clothing distrained for debt were described with some care. It was usually specified whether they were men’s or women’s, except in the case of garments such as doublets, which were worn exclusively by men. The notary usually indicated the colour and whether the garments were old or new, and in some cases worn or shabby (triste). Rather surprisingly, however, length or size was virtually never indicated, though this must have made a difference to how much material the garment contained and thus to its value. In some cases length was implicit in the nature of the garment; a doublet was a garment for the upper part of the body, and would be limited in length, whereas any gown, tunic, or palandra worn by a woman can be assumed to be ground-length or nearly so. But a man’s gown, tunic, or palandra might be any length from above the knee to near full-length.17 Some of the same problems apply  14 “unum scagialla de argento aureato,” CM14, 42r, Nov. 16, 1370. This was entrusted to the Lucchese merchant Piero Ciomei. Johanne Passavantis was himself in ser Guido Onesti’s debt for the sum of £75 picc., and the next entry, made on the same day, is the distraint in respect of this debt of a man’s gown of deep red lined with white fur, a man’s cloak of the same colour with a vermilion lining, and a striped and checkered bedcover. It is not at all easy to explain these two transactions.  15 “unam fectam de seta rubeam fulcita argento pro domina,” CM15, 159v, Dec. 1, 1380. On belts, see Stuard, Gilding the Market, 46–51.  16 The one possible exception to this is furs, but as these occur both as linings for garments and separately, and might also be taken as part of the stock of furriers, they will be considered later.  17 See, for example, the illustrations in the near-contemporary chronicle of Giovanni Sercambi, Le Croniche di Giovanni Sercambi, Lucchese, ed. Salvatore Bongi (Lucca: Tipografia Giusti, 1892), vols. 1 and 2, and the colour reproductions of these illustrations in Giovanni Sercambi, Le Illustrazioni delle Croniche nel codice Lucchese, ed. Ottavio Banti and M. L. Testi Cristiani, 2 vols. (Genoa: Silvio Basile, 1978).

102

Clothing Distrained for Debt to the volume of the garment. A gown (gonnella) was a basic everyday garment and perhaps not particularly voluminous, though in the case of a woman it would be full-length. A tunic may have been very similar, while a palandra or a gamurra was a more voluminous and elaborate garment, but it is far from easy to be certain whether different terms systematically represented different types of garments or were used more or less synonymously. The same problems apply to various words for a cloak. In one case a cloak was described as being in the form of a large cape,18 and was perhaps especially voluminous, but there is at least one example of a cloak that the notary listed under the classical word clamide while a chit from the nunzio characterised it as a mantellum.19 It seems unwise to make any assumptions about differences in length, cut, or volume on the basis of which of several words is used for a cloak, tunic, or gown. There are occasional indications of matching garments that may have formed part of a roba or suit of clothes consisting of a tunic, an overgown, and a cloak, although the term roba itself is never used in these lists. A man’s cloak of violet sanguine melange and a man’s gown of the same colour were distrained, along with another melange cloak the colour of which is unspecified, for a debt of 6 florins owed by Simone Vannis on March 20,20 and a man’s gown of deep red colour lined with white fur and a man’s cloak of deep red with a vermilion lining for a debt of £75 picc. owed by Johanne Passavantis on Nov. 16, 1370.21 However, the only example of matching garments in the list for 1380 is the distraint of a woman’s guarnacchia that was particoloured in scarlet cloth and cloth checkered in silk and a woman’s tunic particoloured in the same cloth, and it may be significant that both the debtor and the creditor were members of the noble di Poggio clan.22 It may be that matching suits of clothing were beyond the reach of many of those who found themselves being distrained for debt.  18 “unum mantellum ad capparone coloris biodi,” CM15, 144v, May 18, 1380.  19 “unam clamidem maschilem coloris violetti mischi,” recorded by the notary in CM14, 38v, Aug. 27, 1370, was referred to as “mantellum maschilem coloris violetti mischi” in a cedula or separate slip of paper between folios 39v and 40r.  20 “unum mantellum mischium violetti sanguinetti, una gonellam maschilem dicti coloris,” CM14, 43v, March 20, though recorded only under Dec. 3, 1370. The term “melange” is used in this article to translate the Latin mischium, which is quite commonly found in Italian documents; see Hidetoshi Hoshino, “The rise of the Florentine Woollen Industry in the Fourteenth Century,” 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), 198, where it is explained as cloth woven from yarn dyed in varying shades, which together made up the colour stated. “Melange” is preferred to alternatives such as “marbled,” because there is no indication that it involved striped or checkered effects. Lucchese references never indicate contrasting colours and sometimes state that the overall effect tended toward a particular colour. On marbling and mixing colours, see Camilla Luise Dahl, “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 B. Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), 122–38.  21 “unam gonellam maschilem foderatam pelliccia alba coloris acollei, unum mantellum maschilem coloris acollei cum fodera vermilia,” CM14, 42r, Nov. 16, 1370.  22 Messer Johanne de Podio and Johanne di Chello de Podio, CM15, 155v, Sept. 3, 1380. For matching garments in Florence, see Gérard-Marchant, “Compter et nommer l’étoffe,” 90, 102–3. On the term “scarlet” to indicate a type of cloth, which was not necessarily red in colour, see John H. Munro,

103

Christine Meek Much greater detail is given of some other features, especially trimmings and particularly buttons. This was important for purposes of recognition and to prevent disputes later. The items distrained were often entrusted to the nunzii or other minor officials of the Court of Merchants, who must frequently have had quite a number of garments in their care, so it was necessary to be certain which was which. Items might also be entrusted to the creditor, to the consul of the contrata (ward) in which the debtor lived, or to a fellow craftsman such as a weaver, all of whom would want it to be on record whether the garment was already old, how many buttons there were, and whether they were silver, brass, or cloth, to prevent claims and accusations later. Typical simple descriptions are “a new doublet of white [or undyed] guarnello [a lightweight material],” “another doublet of black velvet, old,”23 “a man’s palandra of pale blue melange, shabby,”24 “a woman’s gamurra of vermilion cloth”25 or “a woman’s tunic of dark blue cloth, new.”26 Even these simple descriptions can present problems to the historian, but these are much greater where more detail is given, since the notaries were often careless about making number, gender, and case agree in their Latin descriptions of garments that both they and the parties concerned must have been more accustomed to think of in the vernacular.27 Nevertheless these detailed descriptions can convey a better impression of what a garment was like, such as the “woman’s tunic of bright blue colour with a bit of trimming around the neck and the sleeves,”28 “a woman’s cloak of purplish cloth with three large gilded silver buttons and one small one,”29 “a woman’s tunic of turquoise cloth with cloth buttons on the bodice and the sleeves,”30 “a man’s cloak of grey cloth with twenty silver buttons,”31 or

“The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Harte and Ponting, Cloth and Clothing, 13–70, and Munro, “Scarlet,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450– 1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 477–81.  23 “unum giubonem de guarnello albo novum, unum alium jubone de velluto nigro veterem,” CM14, 40v, Oct. 21, 1370.  24 “unam palandram maschile coloris biodetti mischi tristem,” CM14, 39v, Sept. 24, 1370.  25 “unam gamurram panni vermilii pro domina,” CM15, 136r, Feb. 23, 1380.  26 “unam tunicam pro domina panni celesti novam,” CM15, 146v, June 13, 1380. Lisa Monnas demonstrates that cilestrino rather surprisingly signified dark blue in “Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles,” chapter 2 in this volume.  27 For example, “unam palandram mischiam azurina foderati panno mischio sanguino,” CM14, 39v, Sept. 9, 1370.  28 “unam tunicam pro domina coloris arzuri cum parvo fregetto ad girum colli et ad girum manice,” CM15, 156r, Sept. 5, 1380.  29 “unum mantellum panni paonassi ad usum mulieris cum tribus maspillis argenteis auratis grossis et uno alio parvo,” CM15, 135v, Feb. 20, 1380.  30 “unam tunicam panni turchini ad usum mulieris cum maspillis de panno ad pectus et manicas,” CM15, 135v, Feb. 20, 1380.  31 “unum mantellum panni berrectini cum XX maspillis argenteis pro homine,” CM15, 144v, May 18, 1380.

104

Clothing Distrained for Debt “a palandra of blue cloth with 71½ silver buttons.”32 There was even “a woman’s tunic of deep red with counterfeit buttons.”33 Some of the garments described were plain and sober in colour: “a man’s tunic, pale blue in colour and old,”34 “a new doublet of white [or perhaps undyed] guarnello,”35 “two women’s cloaks, old and of brown [or dark] cloth,”36 “a man’s tunic of panno albagio, new,”37 “a woman’s tunic of grey cloth” though this one was edged with squirrel backs,38 “a woman’s tunic of romagnol cloth, new,”39 “a pale blue cloak in the form of a large cape, a woman’s tunic of dark woollen melange, and a man’s cloak of grey cloth” (though the latter had twenty silver buttons).40 But more frequently they were of brighter colours and with more decoration. Colours such as blue, vermilion, purplish (paonasso), violet, sanguine, and acolleo (which seems to be a deep red)41 are mentioned regularly, with black, green, tan, and orangeish colours less common. Colours are quite often said to be mischio, or mixed, translated as “melange” in the present article, which probably indicates some kind of marled or marbled effect and would presumably tone the colour down somewhat. A surprising number of garments were particoloured or in some other way made of more than one colour. The term normally used is dimidiata, literally “halved” or “divided in two,” with the two colours indicated. That this does indeed mean that one side was one colour and the other a different colour is indicated by a more detailed description of a woman’s gown that was old and “halved with one side of vermilion scarlet cloth and the other of violet cloth with 35½ gilded silver buttons on the sleeves.”42 One tunic is described somewhat differently, as made of muted blue woollen cloth and russet melange affectatam.43 A fecta or fetta was a strip or a band, and this description may indicate a garment that was made up of horizontal bands of two different coloured

 32 “unam palandram panni celesti cum maspillis LXXI et medii argenti,” CM15, 132v, Jan. 26, 1380. The half button is not easy to explain, but perhaps meant a button that was broken and missing part of it.  33 “unam tunicam acolleam ad dorsum mulieris cum maspillis contrafactis,” CM14, 37r, July 3, 1370. Given the variety of buttons indicated elsewhere and the fact that they were often decorative rather than functional, it is difficult to be certain what “counterfeit” involved, but see Stuard, Gilding the Market, 179–81, on the manufacture of cheaper versions of desirable items.  34 “unam tunicam veterem blodam ad dorsum hominis,” CM14, 37r, July 3, 1370.  35 ‘‘unum giubonem de guarnello albo novum,” CM14, 40v, Oct. 21, 1370.  36 “duas clamides panni bruni pro domina veteres,” CM15, 150v, July 23, 1380.  37 “unam tunicam panni albagii novam ad usum hominis,” CM15, 154v, Aug. 11, 1380. Panno albagio was a locally made woollen cloth of modest quality.  38 “unam tunicam pro muliere panni berettini cum lontora de dossis variorum,” CM15, 141v, March 31, 1380.  39 “unam tunicam pro domina panni romagnuoli novam,” CM15, 147r, June 14, 1380. This would be cloth made in the Romagna of modest quality and likely to be brown or grey.  40 CM15, 144v, May 18, 1380. These were taken from a man in the rural village of Collodi.  41 “Acollei” is mentioned as the equivalent of “bruschini,” which was a deep red, CM15, 41r, Sept. 12, 1380.  42 “unam gonellam pro muliere veterem dimidiatam ex uno latere panni scherlacti vermilii et ex alio panni violetti cum maspillis XXXV et medio argenteis aureatis ad manicas,” CM15, 161r, Dec. 20, 1380.  43 “unam tunicam panni biodetti et mischi rossetti affectatam,” CM15, 143r, May 4, 1380.

105

Christine Meek cloths.44 Where a garment is described as double with two colours, this probably means that it had an inner and outer layer, perhaps resembling a modern reversible garment, rather than that it was one colour at the top half and another at the bottom. This seems to be the meaning of a double palandra, which is explained as dark melange cloth on top and vermilion cloth underneath.45 A man’s double cloak of deep red and scarlet distrained on Sept. 11, 1370, would thus be deep red on one side and scarlet on the other, and somewhat different from a man’s deep red cloak with a vermilion lining, distrained on November 16.46 Some particoloured garments were of relatively sober though still striking colour combinations, such as the “doublet of woollen cloth particoloured in black and beige,”47 but others were of sharply contrasting colours. “A man’s tunic particoloured in bright blue and violet” was distrained on Sept. 24, 1370,48 and a woman’s particoloured in brown (or dark) and vermilion on December 18 the same year.49 Others were of more garish and even clashing colour combinations; the woman’s tunic which was particoloured vermilion and violet with 35½ silver buttons on the sleeves already mentioned,50 a woman’s guarnacchia that was orangeish colour and sanguine and edged with squirrel heads (niffis variorum),51 a man’s gown that was particoloured in striped sanguine and bright blue,52 and to quote the most extreme case, though it was not apparently particoloured, a “gown of bright blue and yellow baudekyn [an elaborately woven silk cloth] lined with vermilion linen.”53 Even cloth itself could be more than one colour; two and a half braccia of divided cloth was distrained on Aug. 6, 1380,54 and a man’s hood made of divided cloth on September 17 the same year.55 In one case a woman’s tunic was particoloured of bright blue divided cloth on one side and purplish cloth on the other.56

 44 A “fetta” could also mean a girdle, but girdles were usually indicated separately, and it seems more likely that the garment was made of horizontal bands than that it was simply “girdled.”  45 “unam … palandra duplam viz. panno misto cupo di sopra et de suptus panno vermilio,” CM14, 37v, July 23, 1370.  46 “unum mantellum duplum maschile coloris acollei et scherlattini,” CM14, 39v, Sept. 11, 1370; “unum mantellum maschilem coloris acollei cum fodera vermilia,” 42r, Nov. 16, 1370.  47 “unum giubonem panni lani dimidiatum coloris nigri et bigi,” CM14, 41v, Nov. 4, 1370.  48 “unam tunicam maschilem dimidiate coloris arzurini et violetti,” CM14, 39v, Sept. 24, 1370.  49 “unam gonellam feminilem dimidiatam coloris bruni et vermilii,” CM14, 44v, Dec. 18, 1370; a similar garment, CM15, 130v, Jan. 7, 1380.  50 CM15, 161r, Dec. 20, 1380, and note 42.  51 “unam guarnacchiam feminilem coloris arancigni et sanguinei foderatam de niffis variorum,” CM14, 39r, Sept. 3, 1370.  52 “unam gonellam dimidiatam maschilem coloris sanguine vergati et arzuri,” CM14, 39v, Sept. 9, 1370.  53 “unam gonellam de baldachino coloris arzuri et gialli feminilem foderatam panni lino vermilio,” CM14, 41v, Nov. 4, 1370. On the taste for bright and even garish colours, see Stuard, Gilding the Market, 1, 41–42.  54 “brachia duo et medio panni divizati,” CM15, 153r–153v, Aug. 6, 1380.  55 “unum … caputeum ad usum hominis panni dimidiati,” CM15, 156v, Sept. 17, 1380.  56 “unam tunicam pro domina dimidiatam panni arzurini divisati et panni paonassi sine manicis veterem,” CM15, 147r, June 14, 1380.

106

Clothing Distrained for Debt The majority of the clothing distrained for debt seems to have been of woollen or linen cloth, for which the term “panno” is used in Lucchese documents. Silk is relatively rarely mentioned, although there are some garments made of velvet, which was by definition silk.57 A little velvet and scarlet cape with silver medallions and four toggles was among three garments distrained from Luiso Tegrimi on July 23, 1370, for a debt of 7½ florins to Guasparino Dinelli,58 and a doublet of silk cloth was one of four garments distrained from Yzacchino custore (tailor) for a debt of 20 florins owed to the same creditor on the same day.59 In 1380 a woman’s guarnacchia of striped velvet and another particoloured of striped velvet and scarlet were among items distrained from Piero Cimbardi for a debt of 23 florins,60 and a very elaborate-sounding guarnacchia that was particoloured of baudekyn and carnation pink cloth, sleeveless, with trimming round the neck and an edging half a belly of squirrel wide at the bottom, among those distrained from Nicolao Laurentii for a debt of 22 florins,61 but examples are not numerous. Garments were, however, sometimes lined with silk. One of the other items taken from Luiso Tegrimi was a woman’s guarnacchia particoloured and lined with striped silk.62 Silk linings might even be distrained separate from any garment, as in the case of the vermilion silk lining for a man’s cloak taken from Francisco Blasii on Aug. 30, 1370.63 Samples of silk or silk trimmings also appear occasionally, such as the length of camuca weighing 1 libbra 4¼ uncie taken from Michele Trentacosta in addition to three garments for a debt of 8 florins 32s. 8d. bona moneta on Sept. 9, 1370,64 or the decorative border embroidered with gold or perhaps of rich silk-and-gold cloth, measuring two braccia, among the items distrained from the cloth merchant Nicolao Simonis for a debt of 10 florins and 36s. 6d. bona moneta on Sept. 17, 1380.65 One final item deserves comment, though it is the only one of its kind and it is not  57 Mancini, Dorini, and Lazzareschi, Statuto, lib. IV, cap. xxvi, 142–4; Lisa Monnas, Renaissance Velvets (London: V & A Publications, 2012); Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), esp. chap. 6; Christine Meek, “Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011): 141–68, esp. 154–57.  58 “unam capatella de velluto et scherlacto cum medalliis de argento et cum iiii aggiolis,” CM14, 38r.  59 “unum alium giubbonem de drappo de seta,” CM14, 38r. Drappo always seems to mean silk cloth in Lucchese documents. As a tailor, he may have been making or altering this.  60 CM15, 131r, Jan. 16, 1380.  61 “unam guarnacchiam sine maniconibus dimidiatam ex una parte de baldacchino et ex alia panni garofanati fregiatam ad girum colli et cum una lontora medie pancie variorum ad pedem,” CM15, 150r, July 20, 1380.  62 “unam guarnacchiam dimidiatam pro muliere et foderatam sendado virgato,” CM14, 38r, July 23, 1370.  63 “unam foderam sindonis vermilii unius clamidis maschilis,” and also a pale blue hood, for a debt of 1 florin, CM14, 38v.  64 “unum scampolum de camuca,” CM14, 39v. A libbra weighed 334 grams and was divided into 12 uncie, each containing 4 quarti. Bona moneta was a money of account with a fixed rate of 58s. to the florin.  65 “unum fregium raccamatum auri brachiorum duorum,” CM15, 156r. See Lisa Monnas, “Silk Cloths Purchased for the Great Wardrobe of the Kings of England, 1325–1462,” Textile History 20, no. 2 (1989): 285, in which she comments, “In the Lucchese statutes of 1376, racamaz, imperial, and cigaston were all cloths of gold, with imperial and racamaz the heaviest among them.”

107

Christine Meek easy to envisage. On June 13, 1380, a woman’s tunic of purplish cloth with forty-five gilded silver buttons on its sleeves and with a small kerchief sewn to it (corrected from two small kerchiefs sewn to it) was distrained from Barteo Andree of Vinci, presumably the rural village of that name, for a debt of £12 5s. picc. owed to a firm of cloth dealers.66 The word tovalliolino could mean a small towel, but kerchief seems the most likely translation, given the relative elaboration of the rest of the garment, though it is unfortunately not indicated whether it was sewn to the neckline of the garment. In a number of cases a garment is said to be edged with fur. Apart from one case where the garment may be part of a set and the fur is specified to be white,67 it is always said to be the familiar medieval vair, which is probably squirrel. In one case an elaborate guarnacchia is said to have an edging half a belly of squirrel wide at the bottom,68 but in two others the fur was from the backs of squirrels and in another the heads (niffis).69 The fur lining or trim did not necessarily make the garment particularly valuable; the orangeish and sanguine guarnacchia lined with squirrel heads was distrained for only £12 3s. picc., which was less than 2½ florins,70 and a woman’s tunic of grey cloth with an edging (lontora) of squirrel backs was distrained for only 2 florins along with a shabby old doublet of bright blue cloth.71 In one case a woman’s guarnacchia of sanguine colour lined with unspecified fur was distrained for a debt of £6 picc. owed by a woman in the village of Collodi, who may have been a textile worker.72 As with silk, fur linings could be distrained separate from any garment. It is not clear whether the “old fur for a woman” distrained from the well-known citizen Gherardo Anguilla was a garment in its own right or a lining, though it apparently took a man’s cloak and a doublet as well to cover a debt of £10 picc.73 A new fur that is specified to have sleeves was certainly a lining, since it was distrained along with three other linings. However these were distrained from a furrier, Barto Jacobi, and said to be unfinished.74 Quite large numbers of furs and fur linings were among the many items taken from the house and workshop of the furriers Johanne Amadoris and his son, but this was in the special circumstances of their bankruptcy and the items are not described in any detail.75

 66 “unam tunicam panni paonassi pro domina cum XLV maspillis argenteis aureatis ad manicas cum uno tovalliolino adpuntato ad eam” [corrected by the notary from “duas tovalliolinis adpuntatis ad eam”], CM15, 146r, June 13, 1380. An old towel was distrained at the same time.  67 CM14, 42r, Nov. 16, 1370.  68 “una lontora medie pancie variorum ad pedem,” CM15, 150r, July 20, 1380, and see above, note 61.  69 CM15, 140r, March 10, 1380; 141v, March 31, 1380; niffis, CM14, 39r, Sept. 3, 1370.  70 CM14, 39r, Sept. 3, 1370.  71 CM15, 141v, March 31, 1380.  72 CM14, 42r, Nov. 22, 1370. Seven other women who owed the same sum had articles such as an old copper pan or sheets and towels distrained.  73 “unum piliccionem veterem pro domina,” CM15, 142v, April 24, 1380.  74 “unum pelliccione cum manicis novum, tres alias foderas non fulcitas,” CM15, 148v, June 28, 1380. They were distrained for a debt of £13 bona moneta owed to a cloth merchant.  75 CM15, 153r–153v, Aug. 6, 1380.

108

Clothing Distrained for Debt DEBTORS

Although the name of the creditor is always recorded, as well as that of the debtor, there is unfortunately never any indication of the origins of the debt. Many of those involved are obscure individuals indicated only by a Christian name and a second name given in the genitive, and almost certainly representing the name of the individual’s father. It is difficult to say much about Johanne Bonturi, Francisco Blasii, or Manno Nani, all recorded as debtors in 1370, or Santo Tucchini, Francischello Nuti, or Michael Pighini, debtors in 1380. A number of those who found their goods distrained were craftsmen of various kinds, some of them connected to textile industries, such as weavers, tailors, silk spinners, dyers, and cloth shearers, but there were others who were not, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, tanners, and a number of men from rural villages around Lucca. Even where a tailor or a hosier was distrained for a debt to a cloth merchant, there is no certainty that the debt was connected to their professional activity, however probable this may seem. Those recorded as creditors were rather more likely to have names familiar in Lucchese documents of the period, but it is by no means the case that the debtors were obscure men and the creditors prominent citizens. Weavers, hosiers, and tailors appear as creditors as well as debtors, and men prominent enough to hold political office in Lucca might nevertheless find themselves being distrained for debt, though not perhaps members of the most important trading and banking companies. In a number of cases men who appear as creditors in one case were themselves being distrained for debt in another. It seems that almost anyone might find himself subject to distraint for a petty debt. It is useful to look at a number of individuals who appeared in the records more than once, and see what their cases can tell us. The most striking of these is Izacchinus or Yzacchinus, a tailor (custor), who was distrained for debt no fewer than six times by five different creditors for sums that ranged from 2 florins to 20 florins in the second semester of 1370. While there is no indication of the origins of the debts in question, it may be significant that four of the debts were owed to Landuccio Bocci, Michele Juntini (two), and Nicolao Lupori, who were merchants or cloth dealers, and another to Francesco Andree, a weaver. With the exception of a copper pot and an old tablecloth, which were taken on the last occasion,76 the articles distrained were all garments, several of them said to be new or unfinished. Others were specified to be made of silk, which is relatively rare among garments taken under distraint, or sounded decidedly elaborate. All these items must have been Izacchino’s own property, or they could not have been distrained for his debts. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Izacchino had a business that included making garments on his own account, and perhaps in the case of an old black velvet doublet, altering them, for later sale, as opposed to undertaking bespoke tailoring from the customer’s materials, though the number of times he had goods distrained suggests he was experiencing cash-flow problems. However, it is worth noting that he was still in business more than a decade

 76 CM14, 43r, Nov. 29, 1370.

109

Christine Meek later. He is obviously to be identified with the Zacchinus Nelli, custor, who had four items of cloth or clothing distrained for a debt of £34 picc. on March 9, 1380, and a woman’s new gamurra of vermilion cloth distrained for £4 2s. picc. (under a licence that authorised distraint for a total of £24 picc.) on July 20, 1380. Although the items taken on March 9 were auctioned to meet his debts, his business may now have been on a sounder footing, since he was only distrained twice.77 Another case of a man who appears several times is Simone Vannis, who was described as a weaver when distrained for a debt of 2 florins to Raynerio del Caro, but as a dyer when distrained for a debt of 20 florins 8s. bona moneta to Luiso Boccella. Simone Vannis had also had a man’s robe of violet sanguine melange, a cloak of the same material, and another melange cloak distrained for a debt of 6 florins to Lomorino Lomori on March 20, although it was reported to the court only on December 3.78 There is no indication that he later recovered these and no record of what happened to them. The debt to Luiso Boccella was a different matter. It was much more substantial and the 20 florins 8s. bona moneta were also said to be the remains of a larger sum. The articles distrained were a number of copper dye vats and cauldrons, and nine bundles of woad weighing 1,000 libbre. These items were entrusted to another Lucchese dyer, Bettuccio Bettucci, who may have been an associate of Simone, because later marginal notes indicate that Bettuccio reached an agreement with Luiso Boccella on December 18 in court before witnesses to pay him the debt, and by Feb. 21, 1372, Luiso acknowledged that he had been paid in full and was happy for Simone to recover the items.79 Simone, too, was able to remain in business. He was distrained three times in 1380, mainly for household items, but still appears among the dyers who declared their companies to the Court of Merchants in 1381.80 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DISTRAINED PROPERTY?

In some cases it is possible to trace the fate of items after they had been distrained for debt. The aim of distraint was, of course, to give the creditor some security and encourage the debtor to pay what he owed. The distrained items would be entrusted to the nunzio or to the creditor or to an outsider, such as the consul of the debtor’s contrata or commune or a fellow craftsman. Whoever it was had to acknowledge  77 The two distraints may have been really been the same one, since the creditor was in each case the cloth merchant Bartolomeo Nuccii and his partners. The distraint for £34 picc. was carried out on March 9, though not entered by the notary until June 13. These goods were auctioned for only 4 florins on July 19, and the second distraint on July 20 may have been to make up the difference. Both were carried out under a licentia predandi dated March 6, for an original claim in court dated February 16, CM15, 146v, 150r.  78 “unum cervillieram cum froda panni arzuri,” “unum cosolerium seu spadam,” “unum paiolum de ramine,” “unum mantellum mischium violetti sanguinetti,” “unam gonellam maschilem dicti coloris,” “unum alium mantellum mischium maschilem,” CM14, 43v, Dec. 3, 1370 (two different entries).  79 CM14, 44r, Dec. 11, 1370.  80 Distraints, CM15, 140r, 141r, 141v; declaration of 1381, transcribed by Paolo Pelù, I libri dei mercanti lucchesi degli anni 1371–1372–1381–1407–1488 (Lucca: Nuova Grafica Lucchese, 1975), 126.

110

Clothing Distrained for Debt receipt and make himself responsible for the items. Unfortunately in many cases the record ends there, and it is not possible to say what happened to them after that. But subsequent developments can be traced in sixteen cases out of fifty-two in the second semester of 1370 and sixty-two out of 137 in the year 1380 (not all of them involving clothing).81 In a small number of cases the distraint was challenged by a third party who claimed ownership some of the items, so that they could not be seized for the debts claimed. But these were unusual, and the most likely outcomes of distraint were either that the debtor recovered his property or that its auction was authorised to the benefit of the creditor. In some cases the sum owed was paid by the debtor himself or someone else on his behalf.82 The creditor then acknowledged he had been paid and authorised the cancellation of the distraint. But in quite a number of cases the debtor recovered his property with no indication that the debt had actually been paid. Either the debtor simply acknowledged that he had received his property back,83 or the creditor authorised its return and the cancellation of the distraint.84 Presumably they had reached an agreement about terms for payment or the debtor had offered some alternative security.85 There are occasional indications of terms for payment at a later date,86 but more often the details are lacking. More interesting are the cases where the debtor was not able to pay and the creditor proceeded to request that the distrained goods be auctioned to the highest bidder.87 These provide information about the relationship between the original debt and the money realised from the sale of the goods, and also about the type of individuals likely to bid for them at auction. The goods distrained were supposed to be of sufficient value to cover the original debt, plus the various expenses the creditor had incurred for court dues, documents, and payments to the nunzii who served summonses and carried out distraints. These expenses are virtually never specified,

 81 These figures include cases where the item was claimed by a third party and cases where an auction licence was issued, even if no actual sale is recorded. They do not, however, include cases where the items were simply transferred to the care of a different individual. In a number of cases the preda is described, but there is no indication of whom it was entrusted to.  82 Examples: CM14, 40r, Oct. 1, 1370; CM15, 158v, Dec. 18, 1380, for distraint on November 20; 161r, June 5, 1381, for distraint on Dec. 20, 1380; 155v, Sept. 12, 1380, a Lucchese banker advanced the money as a loan. In one case the debtor paid on March 9, 1381, for distraint on June 27, 1380, but did so at the bars of the Lucchese prison, CM15, 148v.  83 For example, CM14, 41r, Oct. 30, 1370, for a distraint on October 26; CM15, 147v, June 19, 1380.  84 CM15, 137r, Feb. 27, 1380, a distraint was cancelled next day at the wish of the creditor; 159v, Dec. 1, 1380, cancellation on word of the debtor and the creditor.  85 In one case the debtor is recorded as having paid only the expenses the creditor had incurred in the case, but the creditor nevertheless authorised the return of the goods distrained, CM14, 44v, Jan. 21, 1371 (distraint on Dec. 18, 1370). In another case, the creditor had died and the debtor produced a guarantor for payment to his heir, CM15, 154v, Nov. 19, 1380 (distraint on August 11).  86 For example, CM14, 44r, Dec. 11, 1370. In one case the creditor returned the item the same day, but reserved his rights, CM15, 137v, March 1, 1380.  87 It should be noted that there are many cases where the auction of the goods was authorised, but no sale is recorded. Perhaps in at least some cases the debtor was impelled to make a final effort to redeem his property before it was too late.

111

Christine Meek but might add significantly to the smaller debts.88 Often the sums realised at auction seem to coincide fairly closely with the original debt and expenses. Thus a bedcover distrained for £8 picc. plus expenses on Aug. 6, 1370, sold for £9 picc. on August 30, and two cloaks distrained for a debt of 2 florins and 44s. 4d. picc. on Sept. 11, 1370, sold for £13 12s. picc. on October 3.89 With an exchange rate of £5 3s. to the florin, these sums seem about right, depending on the amount of the expenses. There rarely seems to have been much surplus, but the cloth shearer who had two pairs of shears distrained for a debt of £7 picc. plus expenses on July 24, 1370, and auctioned for 2 florins on September 2 ought to have received the £2 picc. or so difference.90 Margarita Junte Coluccii, whose old and torn bedcover of bands of yellow and vermilion had been distrained for a debt of £3 picc. on November 29 and auctioned for £6 picc. on December 3 should have received about the same.91 There are occasional indications of less than the total received at auction being paid to the creditor, the rest presumably going to the debtor.92 Sometimes the auction failed to realise enough to cover the debt and expenses. Luiso Tegrimi’s cloak, little cape, and woman’s guarnacchia sold at auction for only 7 florins and £2 1s. 3d. picc., on Aug. 22, 1370, although the little cape was made of velvet and scarlet with silver trimmings and the guarnacchia was lined with striped silk. This sum would not quite cover the debt of 7½ florins, let alone any additional expenses.93 The helmet (barbuta) and woman’s melange gown distrained for 5 florins and expenses on Sept. 18, 1370, sold for only 4 florins on November 4, but in this case the shortfall was made up from the sale of a corselet (corettum) and a checkered palandra lined with white cloth distrained for another debt of 5 florins owed to the same creditor, which was auctioned for 6 florins and £3 3s. picc. on November 21.94 Sometimes the sum raised by the auction was very much less than the debt. The furniture and what seems to be the stock-in-trade of a locksmith distrained for 25 florins on March 3 fetched only 12 florins at auction on June 20, 1380;95 a piece of baudekyn distrained for 15 florins on Dec. 7, 1380, sold for only 9 florins 2s. bona moneta on Feb. 26, 1381;96 and on July 19, 1380, only 4 florins was paid for several garments and a small length of cloth distrained for £34 picc. on March 9.97 In these cases the debtor would have lost his possessions, but still not settled all of the debt.  88 In one case where the expenses are quantified, they came to £1 11s. 6d. picc. for an original debt of 5 florins, CM14, 41v, Nov. 2, 1370. They might be a more significant proportion of a smaller debt, such as 22s. on a debt of half a florin, which was rather less than £2 12s., CM15, 143r, May 4, 1380.  89 CM14, 38v, Aug. 6, 1370; 39v, Sept. 11, 1370.  90 CM14, 38v, Aug. 30, 1370. There is no record of any payment to him, though the nunzio informed him of the sale, as he was required to do.  91 CM14, 43v, Dec. 3, 1370. She was notified of the sale the same day, but the money was given to the creditor with no indication that she received the surplus.  92 CM15, 159r, the creditor got 1 florin out of £6 3s. picc. realised; 159v, 30s. out of 40s. picc. realised.  93 CM14, 38r, July 23, 1370.  94 CM14, 41r, 41v.  95 CM15, 139r.  96 CM15, 160r.  97 CM15, 146v, recorded under June 13, 1380.

112

Clothing Distrained for Debt The system of auctioning distrained goods does not, in fact, seem likely to have realised the best possible prices. There was obviously a fire-sale element in selling distrained goods at all. It only happened because the owner had not been able to redeem them, and his creditor was probably not too concerned about the price they fetched, even though the money realised went to him, because his claim to anything still outstanding was not affected. Anyone could bid at auctions, and there are examples of ordinary people as purchasers, as when Ottaviano de Vulterris, presumably originally from Volterra though a resident of Lucca, paid 2 florins for two pairs of cloth shears, which had been distrained for £7 picc.,98 or Borghese Lotti, a footsoldier in Lucchese service, bid 6 florins for a white bedcover and a pair of sheets that had been distrained for 7 florins.99 The individual who bought the stock-in-trade of a locksmith was the Lucchese painter Andrea Puccini.100 There is even one case in which the buyer was a woman, Johanna Francisci living in the contrata of S. Matteo, who perhaps picked up a bargain when she paid 2½ florins for a blue cloth cloak that had been distrained from Piero Cimbardi for 4 florins.101 But in the majority of cases the highest bidder was a pacterio, or secondhand dealer, who was, of course, accustomed to buying used items, knew just what to pay and certainly expected to turn a profit on their resale.102 In 1380 the secondhand dealers Bartolomeo Finati and Francesco Nanni each made two such purchases, while Tonio Pieri made four, or, if Antonio Pieri called fabro (smith) is the same man, five.103 Francesco Nanni had also made two purchases in 1370, as had Francesco Martini and Antonio Fridiani, while Tonio Peruccii had made one.104 Thirteen individuals had taken the oath under the heading of pacterii in 1380, including three women, although they are not actually called pacterii, but sellers of clothes and other things (venditrix pannorum et aliarum rerum).105 It is more difficult to estimate how many there were in 1370, since there is no list of oaths for that year. In the few surviving volumes of declarations of companies made each year, pacterii did not form a separate category but were included with coltriciai (quiltmakers) and bambacari (dealers in cotton goods) in 1371, and only four out of a total of seventeen firms specifically called themselves pacterii, though they included Antonio Fridiani and Bartolomeo Finati.106 These numbers are, however, sufficient to demonstrate that there was a thriving market in secondhand goods, especially clothing and textiles.  98 CM14, 38v, Sept. 2, 1370, distrained July 24.  99 CM15, 155r, Oct. 10, 1380, distrained August 31. 100 CM15, 139r, June 18, 1380, paying 12 florins, though the goods had been distrained for 25 florins. 101 CM15, 148r, Aug. 28, 1380, distrained June 27. 102 On the used goods market, see Stuard, Gilding the Market, 138–42. 103 Bartolomeo Finati, CM15, 138v–139r, 140v; Francesco Nanni, 150v, 158r; Tonio Pieri, 140r, 146v, 159v, 160r; and Antonio Pieri fabro, 143v. 104 Francesco Nanni, CM14, 38r, 41v; Francesco Martini, 39v (two); Antonio Fridiani, 41r, 43v; Tonio Peruccii (perhaps the same man as Tonio Pieri), 38v. 105 CM15, 70r–72v, records these oaths with the names of guarantors and witnesses. There is one example of two pacterii, Bartolomeo Finati and Domenico Tomasii, in partnership (71r). 106 Corte de’ Mercanti 82–86, in Pelù, Libri dei mercanti, 64. Pacterii do not feature in the list for 1372, but numbered nine firms and ten individuals in 1381 (131–32), and four firms and five individuals in 1407, in two cases combining the roles of secondhand dealer and hosier (181).

113

Christine Meek CONCLUSIONS

The clothing items found in these lists were on the whole of modest to middling value. Some were of locally produced cloths, such as panno albagio or romagnol, or were of the less prized colours, such as beige, or were specifically said to be old or shabby. There were, however, a number of garments of better quality. While the origin of cloth is rarely stated, melange was usually of at least reasonably good quality, and a number of garments are said to be dyed in rich colours, lined with silk or fur, or ornamented with various trims or with buttons, which might be numerous and of gilded silver. But there is nothing to compare with the precious cloths and rich trims and embroideries found in the list of garments liable to luxury tax in Florence studied by Laurence Gérard-Marchant or even those found in Lucchese inventories by Marco Paoli.107 There is no real indication of how obscure individuals who were often craftsmen or peasants from the countryside (contadini) came to possess the articles distrained for their debts. It has already been suggested that in some cases, such as tailors or shoemakers, the items formed part of their stock rather than their personal clothing, and it is worth noting that a number of these items were said to be new or even unfinished. But for others the items may have formed part of their own wardrobes or those of their wives. It is perhaps unlikely that the smith Andrea Morovelli wore a cloak of violet melange or the wife of the cloth shearer Juntorino Cionis wore a red silk girdle with silver fittings for everyday, but these items may have formed part of their clothing for high days and holidays. Some other garments may have been more ordinary wear, such as the carpenter Andrea’s old blue cloth cloak or the woman’s tunic of dark melange owned by the contadino Jacobo Ciomei of Collodi, though these must have been spare garments to be distrained for debt. While one can do no more than speculate on the role that these garments played in their owners’ lives, these two lists illustrate the range of garments that might be owned by quite ordinary people in late-fourteenth-century Lucca.

Tables 5.1 and 5.2: Articles of clothing distrained for debt in the Court of Merchants, Lucca Note: The two tables on the following pages list all clothing distrained, but do not indicate other items except where they are distrained along with clothing, and where they are numerous do not list them in detail. Entries are ordered by their appearance in the record, which reflects the date at which the nunzio reported back to the Court; this was normally within a few of days of the distraint being carried out. A bracketed ellipsis indicates a lacuna.

107 See note 5 above.

114

Clothing Distrained for Debt Table 5.1: Clothing distrained for debt, July 1 to Dec. 18, 1370 (from Corte de’ Mercanti 14) Debtor

Sum owed

Articles

Fol. no.

Izacchinus, tailor (custore)

5 florins

A man’s pale blue (blodam) tunic

37r

Stefano da Quarto Ghirardo Anguilla Johannes Bonturi

16s. picc. £7 picc. 2 florins

37r 37r 37r

Ysacchinus, tailor

20 florins

Luiso Tegrimi

7½ florins

Andrea Morovelli, smith (faber) Francesco Blasii

£7 picc.

A man’s old pale blue tunic A man’s particoloured tunic A woman’s deep red (acolleam) tunic with counterfeit buttons (maspillis contrafactis) A small towel, quite shabby (satis tristis) A double palandra of melange cloths (pannorum mistorum) Another double palandra, i.e., of dark melange cloth on the upper layer and vermilion cloth on the underneath layer A new particoloured doublet Another doublet of silk cloth A melange cloak in green A little cape (cappatella) of velvet and scarlet with silver medallions (medalliis de argento) and with four toggles (aggiolis) A woman’s guarnacchia, particoloured and lined with striped silk A man’s cloak of violet melange

Agostino Benegrandis Michele Trentacoste

Ser Guido Onesti

Johanne Gentilis

Ysacchino, tailor Johanne Gentilis Jacobo Andruccii

1 florin

The vermilion silk lining of a man’s cloak A pale blue hood £12 3s. picc. A woman’s guarnacchia of orangeish and sanguine colour, lined with squirrel heads (niffis variorum) 8 florins 32s. A sample of camuca weighing 1 libbra 4 uncie and 1 quarro 8d. bona A palandra of bright blue melange, lined with cloth moneta of sanguine melange A man’s gown, particoloured in striped sanguine and bright blue A man’s tunic of beige colour 2 florins 44s. A man’s cloak of purplish (paonazzo) or violet 4d. picc. melange A man’s cloak, double of deep red and scarlet colour (scherlactini) £3 6s. picc. A man’s tunic particoloured in bright blue and violet colour A man’s palandra of pale blue melange, shabby (tristem) 9 florins £3 A new doublet of white (or undyed) guarnello 5s. picc. Another doublet of black velvet, old £8 picc. A woman’s gown of black coloured camlet (giambellotto) 5 florins A helmet (barbuta) A woman’s gown of melange

115

37v

38r

38v 38v 39r 39v

39v

39v

40v 41r 41r

Christine Meek Debtor (cont.)

Sum owed

Jacobo Andruccii

5 florins

Ysachino, tailor Ysachino, tailor

Ser Guido Onesti Johanne Passavantis

3 florins

Simone Vannis, dyer 6 florins (tintore) Carduccio Dini, doublet-maker (farsettario) Manno Nani

Fol. no.

A corselet (corettum) A checkered palandra lined with white (or undyed) cloth 2 florins A woman’s gown of baudekyn, blue and yellow coloured, lined with vermilion linen cloth 6 florins A new doublet of white (or undyed) linen cloth A doublet of woollen cloth, particoloured in black and beige A man’s gown of melange cloth, unsewn £100 picc. A belt (sciagalla) of silver gilded £75 picc. A checkered and striped bed cover A man’s gown of deep red colour, lined with white fur A man’s cloak of deep red with a vermilion lining All of these are in a bag (tasca) Each of them An old copper pan for £6 picc. A large towel and a small hand towel

Pina Gottori of Collodi Nuta Francisci Dini of Collodi Maddalena Puccini Fridiani of Collodi Lemma Andree Puccinelli of Collodi Margarita Manni Coluccii of Collodi Nuta Baldere of Collodi Gemma Francisci of Collodi Caterina Pieri Bianchi of Piagiore Ysachino, tailor £32 picc.

Francesco Andree

Articles

£13 4s. picc. £5 picc.

41v 41v 41v

42r 42r

42v

A woman’s guarnacchia, sanguine lined with fur Four face towels in one piece An old bed sheet An axe A woman’s gown, brown and old A small hand towel A copper pot A palandra without sleeves and unsewn, of beige colour An old tablecloth A man’s gown of sanguine melange, lined with white (or undyed) guarnello A cloak of violet sanguine melange A man’s gown of the same colour Another man’s cloak of melange cloth An old doublet of white (or undyed) guarnello A pair of scissors (cesorie) Three bars of pewter A pair of boots of white (or undyed) leather A black [. . .] skin A woman’s gown, particoloured brown (or dark) and vermilion Also a man’s gown of vermilion colour

116

43r

43r 43v 44r 44v

Clothing Distrained for Debt Table 5.2: Clothing distrained for debt, 1380 (from Corte de’ Mercanti 15) Debtor

Sum owed

Articles

Fol. no.

Johanne Tedaldini

4 florins 38 (soldi?) picc. £50 picc.

A man’s cloak of vermilion cloth, old Another cloak of beige cloth, also a man’s and old A woman’s tunic, particoloured of dark melange and vermilion melange Three bed sheets of various descriptions A man’s tunic of beige colour, old Another tunic, also a man’s and old, pale blue colour

130r

A man’s cloak of bright blue (arzurini) cloth A woman’s guarnacca of striped velvet Another woman’s guarnacca, particoloured in striped velvet and scarlet cloth Two bed sheets of various descriptions A palandra of blue (celeste) cloth with 71½ silver buttons A woman’s cloak of purplish (paonassi) cloth with three large gilded silver buttons and another small one A woman’s tunic of turquoise (turchino) cloth with cloth buttons on the bodice and the sleeves A woman’s gamurra of vermilion cloth

131r

A palandra A particoloured doublet A new tunic of melange cloth

137r

A piece of yellow valiscio Another piece of valiscio, bright blue and divided into two pieces A woman’s gamurra, vermilion A small face towel A woman’s tunic, particoloured of vermilion cloth and sanguine melange with 35 silver buttons on the sleeves A woman’s tunic of tawny cloth (panni leonine) edged with squirrel backs (lontoratam dossorum variorum) A shabby tunic of panno albagio without sleeves Two bed sheets A shabby tunic of panno albagio without sleeves (pro domina panni leonini, i.e. “of tawny cloth for a woman,” crossed out) Two bed sheets A man’s tunic of bright blue cloth

137r

Nicolao Michelis

8 florins Justo Comi as guarantor for Rodolfo ser Bonaiuncte, weaver (testore) Piero Cimbardi 23 florins

Dominico Orsucci £17 picc. called Guastarafe Pelegrino Tolomuccii 10 florins

Francisco Johannis, furnaceman (fornario) Piero Jacobi Cimbardi Simone Simonis, tailor Ghirardo Johannis Anguille

3 florins

Cristofano Mancini

£11 7s. picc.

Jacobo Andruccii, silk boiler (cocitore sete)

6 florins

Simone Vannis

4 florins

Jacobo Ciuffarini

30s. picc.

7 florins £10 picc. 3 florins

117

130v 130v

132v 135v

136r

137r

137v 140r

140r

141r

Christine Meek Debtor (cont.)

Sum owed

Marco Bellomi

2 florins

Articles

Fol. no.

A doublet of bright blue cloth, old and shabby A woman’s tunic of grey cloth (panni berettini) edged with squirrel backs (cum lontora de dossis variorum) Dominico Bonuccii 18 florins A man’s cloak of dark violet cloth A doublet of bright blue cloth A new cover (farsa) of striped guarnello A striped bed cover A mail corselet Ghirardo Anguilla £10 picc. A man’s cloak of sanguine cloth, old A doublet of bright blue cloth, old A woman’s fur (piliccionem), old Lexio Puccinelli ½ florin A pair of iron gauntlets Martini A tunic of pale blue cloth and russet melange in bands Andrea, carpenter 46s. picc. An old cloak of bright blue cloth (magister lignaminis) A new saw for sawing wood Jacobo Ciomei of £34 12s. 10d. A cloak in the form of a large cape (ad capparone), Collodi picc. pale blue colour A woman’s tunic in dark melange cloth A man’s cloak of grey cloth (panni berettini) with 20 silver buttons £177 picc. A doublet of violet cloth Benincasa Pardelli, A pair of hose of pale blue colour shoemaker A pair of white (or undyed) hose with decorations (calsorario) (coloris albi concigiati) Also various items connected with his trade: 22 pairs of boots, 62 pairs of clogs, 176 pairs of forms for boots, 2 pairs of uppers for shoes, skins, wood, etc. Piero Cimbardi 20½ florins A woman’s cloak of sanguine cloth A doublet of dark violet cloth Bartolomeo Andree £12 5s. picc. A woman’s tunic of purplish cloth (paonassi) with of Vinci 45 gilded silver buttons on the sleeves and with a little kerchief attached to it (corrected from duobus tovalliolinis adpuntatis ad eam, two little kerchiefs attached to it) An old towel (scugatorum) Simonino, tailor 1 florin A woman’s tunic of bright blue sargia with brass buttons on the sleeves, old A doublet of baracano, worn Masseo Aytantis 55s. picc. A man’s tunic of turquoise cloth, old Another man’s tunic of bright blue cloth, old Zacchino Nelli, tailor £34 picc. A woman’s tunic of blue cloth, new A doublet of hairy baracano, black A pair of hose of white (or undyed) English woollen cloth 2 braccia of white (or undyed) English woollen cloth

118

141v

142r

142v 143r 144r 144v

145v

146r 146r

146r 146v 146v

Clothing Distrained for Debt Debtor (cont.)

Sum owed

Dominico Orsuccii, tailor

£40 picc.

Corsoro Coluccii, dyer Jacobo Nerii, shoemaker Luporino Dominici, weaver Piero Cimbardi Bartolomeo Jacobi, furrier (pellippario) Bartolomeo Jacobi, furrier Nicolao Laurentii

Zacchinus Nelli

Guasparino fratris Luporini Lexio Montini, weaver

Articles

Fol. no.

147r A new cloak of cassadicelo (blue) melange cloth A woman’s tunic of romagnol cloth, new A length (cavesso) of striped guarnello with three little cords (ad tres cordellas) (possibly a braid decoration) of 8½ braccia A length of striped cloth on a bright blue field, damped and sheared (balneati et cimati) of 4½ braccia Another length of bright blue cloth, damped and sheared, of 4 braccia 25 florins A woman’s tunic, particoloured of bright blue cloth 147r divisati (the cloth itself divided) and purplish cloth (paonassi) without sleeves, old Also several items of furniture and bedding 147v 57 pairs of forms for boots, large and small 5 florins of a larger sum 22 pairs of boots for women and children covered by the licence £4 7s. picc. A man’s tunic of melange, old 147v Four weaver’s shuttles (spuolas) 4 florins A cloak of bright blue cloth 148r 10 florins 90 worked skins 148v £13 bona moneta 22 florins

A new fur with sleeves 148v Three other uncompleted linings 150r A woman’s cloak of purplish cloth (paonasso) A sleeveless guarnacchia, particoloured with one side of baudekyn and the other of carnation pink cloth (panni garofanati) with a trim around the neck and with a border half a squirrel belly wide at the hem (cum una lontora medie pancie variorum ad pedem) A large towel with a border Four uncompleted forms used by goldsmiths A woman’s gamurra of vermilion cloth, new 150r

£4 2s. remaining of the £24 covered by the licence £6 5s. 8d. A doublet of bright blue cloth picc. Two hand towels in one length 5 florins 12s. Two women’s cloaks of brown (or dark) cloth, old picc.

119

150v 150v

Christine Meek Debtor (cont.)

Sum owed

Johanne Amadoris of 100 florins Florence, furrier who lived in Lucca

Domenico Orsuccii, tailor Nicolao Pardori, weaver Messer Johanne de Podio

The brothers Martino and Johanne Mignani of S. Cassiano a Vico Nicolao Simonis, cloth merchant (pannario)

Tuccio Riccii, called Tristano, weaver

Nicolao Celli, weaver Federigo Johannis Dominico Bonuccii, silk spinner (filatore sete)

2 florins

Articles

Fol. no.

2½ braccia of panni divizati A cotehardie (coctardita) of dark brown cloth (panni monachini) A guarnacchia of scarlet cloth A boiled leather hat Two pairs of old boots An old tunic of pale blue colour An old black doublet An old tunic of melange (panni mischi) Also numerous furs and fur linings, and furniture and household goods of Johanne and his son Amadore, who were bankrupt A man’s tunic of panno albagio, new

153r–153v

not stated

A cloak of beige cloth, shabby and coming unsewn (tristem et deraciatum) A large towel, torn A small hand towel, shabby 36 florins A woman’s guarnacchia, particoloured of scarlet and sanguine cloth Another guarnacchia, also a woman’s, particoloured in scarlet cloth and cloth checkered in silk (panni scherlacti et panni schaccati in seta) Also a woman’s tunic, particoloured of the same cloth Also three items of bedding and two bed sheets 2 florins 26s. A woman’s tunic of bright blue colour with a little picc. decorative border around the neck and the sleeves (cum parvo fregetto ad girum colli et ad girum manice) A decorative border of gold, or a decorative border 10 florins 36s. 6d. bona embroidered with gold (unum fregium raccamatum auri), 2 braccia in length moneta A man’s cloak, particoloured in cloth of violet and another colour Also two silver spoons and a silver seal on a silver chain 1 florin A woman’s hood of sanguine cloth Another hood, for a man, of panni dimidiati Another man’s hood of mixed cloth A woman’s tunic of panno albagio A leather hat 6 florins A man’s cloak of sanguine cloth £10 picc. A woman’s shirt (camicia), new A man’s shirt, also new A bed cover and a sheet, both shabby £7 10s. picc. A doublet of pale blue cloth

120

154v 155r

155v

156r

156r

156v

156v 157v 157v

Clothing Distrained for Debt Debtor (cont.)

Sum owed

Articles

Fol. no.

£6 bona moneta

A woman’s cloak of dark blue cloth with a little bit 158r of yellow silk cloth underneath (or at the bottom, panni persi cum pauco sendado giallo de suptus), old A tablecloth 3½ libbre of white (or undyed) spun cotton 158v Simone . . . draw-boy 4 florins A woman’s tunic of pale blue cloth (lacciarolo) A little chest containing this tunic and another one A number of household items, a crossbow, etc. 2 florins 10s. A woman’s girdle of red silk with silver fittings 159v Junctorino Cionis, picc. cloth shearer (cimatore) 160r Simone Simonis, 11 florins A new cloak of purplish cloth, not yet finished tailor Another cloak of this cloth, also new and not yet finished 160r Nicolao Piumentani 15 florins A piece of narrow baudekyn refisso without selvedges on one side (baldaghino refisso stricto sine cordonibus ex uno latere), 8 braccia and 1 quarra or thereabouts, weighing 2 libbre 6 uncie and 2½ quarre Also a bag in which this piece is contained 160r Bartolomeo del 1 florin A woman’s gown of bright blue sargia with an Bianco edging (lontora) of green silk cloth and with brass buttons on the sleeves An over-tablecloth Francisco Andree 20 florins A doublet of black guarnello 161r Also 4 gold florins in cash 161r 5 florins 45s. A woman’s gown, particoloured with vermilion Maestro Johanne picc. scarlet cloth on one side and violet cloth on the of Como, mason other, with 35½ gilded silver buttons on the (muratore) sleeves, old

Lucchesinus Fioris, weaver

121

Christine Meek Tables 5.3 and 5.4: Licences to pawn forbidden goods Note: These take the form of a licence to any pawnbroker to lend whatever he wishes to the person named and to accept the goods as pledge. They often specify that this was to be done only once, and the person named swears that the goods are his or hers. These conditions probably apply even if not specifically stated.

Table 5.3: Licences to pawn forbidden goods, 1370 (from Corte de’ Mercanti 14) Date

Owner

Goods

Fol. no.

Sept. 3

Piero Dini, weaver

2 braccia of beige cloth

70r

Sept. 4

Dominico Benvenuti of Prato, Lucchese citizen

25 braccia of pale blue cloth

70r

Sept. 7

Johanna, widow of Johanne Porcari of 16 canne of linen cloth contrata S. Marie Filii Corbi

Sept. 9

Lorenso Felicis, secondhand dealer (pacterio), Lucchese citizen

70r 18 canne of linen cloth A scampolo (less than a whole cloth) of violet cloth of Vervey, of 9 braccia A scampolo of bright blue trepignana, of 7 braccia or thereabouts Another scampolo of vermilion cloth, of 6 braccia or thereabouts A scampolo of brunetto cloth, of 3 braccia A scampolo of sanguine cloth, of 2½ braccia Another scampolo of sanguine cloth, of 2 braccia

Sept. 9

Guido Nicolai, weaver of Lucca

9 braccia of pale blue cloth

70r

Sept. 16

Bartolomeo Puccinelli, weaver, Lucchese citizen of contrata S. Leonardo

6 braccia of bright blue cloth

71r

Sept. 20

Stefano Tomei, silk spinner, Lucchese 4 braccia of beige cloth citizen of contrata S. Cristoforo

71r

Sept. 20

Johanne Vannuccii Nati of contrata Burgo S. Frediano

6 braccia of linen cloth

71r

Sept. 23

Johanne ser Luti, weaver, Lucchese citizen of contrata S. Maria Foris Portam

5 braccia of violet melange

71r

Sept. 27

Stefano Tomei, silk spinner, Lucchese 8 braccia of beige cloth citizen of contrata S. Cristoforo

71r

Oct. 12

Johanne Vannuccii, weaver, Lucchese 3 braccia of beige cloth citizen of contrata S. Jacobo de Tumba

71r

Oct. 31

Bonincontro ser Guillelmi, weaver, Lucchese citizen of contrata S. Bartolomeo in Silice

6 braccia of beige cloth

71r

122

70r

Clothing Distrained for Debt Date (cont.) Owner

Goods

Fol. no.

Nov. 4

Bonaccurso Ciomei, cloth manufacturer (lanaiuolo), Lucchese citizen of contrata S. Alessandro Maggiore

6 braccia of Lucchese woollen cloth, sanguine colour

71r

Nov. 21

Johanne Lapi, velvet weaver (testore vellutorum) of contrata or brachio S. Petro Somaldi

10½ braccia deep red cloth

71r

Nov. 27

Andrea Pippi, silk spinner, Lucchese citizen

5 canne of vermilion melange and white (or undyed) cloth

71r

Dec. 3

Coluccino Vannuccori of commune 6 braccia of linen cloth of S. Maria ad Colles, Pieve di Arliano

71r

Dec. 3

Ugolino Nelli of brachio Pulie

71r

Dec. 4

Paolino Bartolomei, weaver, Lucchese 9 braccia of white (or undyed) woollen cloth citizen of contrata S. Maria Foris Portam

71r

Dec. 10

Tomaso Simi, goldsmith (bactitore auri), Lucchese citizen of contrata S. Anastasio

6 braccia of sanguine melange

71r

Dec. 12

Francesco Chesis, weaver, Lucchese citizen of contrata Burgo S. Frediano

2 braccia of vermilion cloth

71r

Dec. 16

Johanne Puccini, agricultural worker 4 canne of linen cloth (laboratore terre), who lives in the suburbs of Lucca, i.e., in contrata S. Bartolomeo in Silice

71r

Dec. 16

7 braccia of linen cloth Bartolomeo magistri Jovannini, called Moschetta, Lucchese citizen of brachio Filiorum Altiberii

71v

Dec. 16

Lotto Gesis of commune of Pontetetto 8 braccia of linen cloth

71v

Dec. 17

Guido Martini, silk spinner, Lucchese 12 braccia of melange and 6 braccia of 71v white (or undyed) cloth citizen of contrata S. Johanne in Capite Burgi

Dec. 20

Francesco Andree of Florence, hosier 8½ braccia of panno albagio (calsariolo), who lives in Lucca in contrata S. Sentio

Dec. 23

Johanna, wife of Paolo, who lives in contrata S. Pietro in Cortina

8 canne of linen cloth

123

3 scampoli of beige, deep red, and purplish cloth, less 1 braccio 2½ (?)

71v

71v

Christine Meek Table 5.4: Licences to pawn forbidden goods, 1380 (from Corte de’ Mercanti 15) Date

Owner

Goods

Fol. no.

Jan. 9

Nanne Chesis, weaver of contrata S. Jacobo de Tumba

4 braccia of purplish or sanguine cloth

40r

Jan. 20

Antonio Fanuccii Nicolai, weaver of contrata S. Maria Foris Portam

3½ braccia of melange tending toward 40r bright blue

Jan. 26

Johanne Michaelis of Florence, hosier, 9 braccia of melange tending toward floram scepe (or fiore di scopa, which who lives in Lucca in contrata S. was pale blue) Pietro Cigoli

40r

Jan. 13

Tomasio Nini, nunzio of Court of Merchants

27 braccia of panni agnellini taken as preda from Argali Narii

40r

March 19 Gherardo Anguilla

A piece of valescii, yellow Another piece of valescii, bright blue and divided into two sections

40r

March 29 Andrea Johannis Falabarba

6 braccia of black cloth Also another 9 braccia of beige cloth Also another 9 braccia of panni divizati (cloth of more than one colour)

40v

March 31 Bartolomeo Salvi, goldsmith

10 braccia of beige cloth

40v

April 21

Marco Francisci of Venice, weaver, Lucchese citizen

6 braccia of bright blue cloth, damped 40v and sheared

April 28

18 braccia of bright blue cloth Nicolao Rastichi (Rustichi?), carpenter, Lucchese citizen of contrata Burgo S. Frediano

40v

May 2

Johanne, draw-boy of second ruga of 10 braccia of bright blue cloth contrata S. Frediano, Lucchese citizen

40v

June 23

Bartolomeo Ciardi of San Miniato, apothecary, who lives in Lucca in contrata S. Pellegrino

40v 8¾ braccia of scarlattino cloth, damped and sheared 7½ braccia of blue cloth, also damped and sheared Also 5½ braccia of panno scarlattino, also damped and sheared

June 23

Tomasio Toccii of Assisi, cloth manufacturer, who lives in Lucca in contrata S. Maria in Via

A piece of panno agnellino, untreated 41r (crudo)

July 24

Bartolomeo Junte, weaver of contrata S. Johannis Capitis Burgi, Lucchese citizen

9 braccia of melange

41r

Aug. 11

Johanne Cecchi of Bologna, servant (famulo) of the Lucchese Anziani

6 braccia of bright blue cloth

41r

Sept. 5

Stefano Guillelmi of Milan, cloth shearer, who lives in Lucca

4 braccia of pale blue cloth

41r

Sept. 11

Nicolao Rustichi, weaver of contrata S. Frediano

18 braccia of vermilion cloth

41r

124

Clothing Distrained for Debt Date (cont.) Owner

Goods

Fol. no.

Sept. 12

Nicolao Nesis, carpenter and Lucchese citizen

11 braccia of deep or dark red cloth (acollei seu bruschini)

41r

Sept. 15

Antonio Dominici of Fermo, mercenary (stipendario) in Lucchese service

4½ braccia of grey cloth (panni berettini)

41v

Sept. 17

Nicolao Turelli of Orbicciano

3 braccia of panno albagio

41v

Sept. 19

Puccinello Nuti of Sorbano del Giudice

22 canne of linen cloth with a towel

41v

Oct. 1

Simone Jacobi of Reggio, furrier, who 10 canne of linen cloth lives in Lucca in contrata S. Giusto

Oct. 1

Coluccio Pieri, velvet weaver of contrata Via Nuova

Oct. 28

6 braccia of panno scarlattino, Guido Nicolai Guiduccii, Lucchese citizen of contrata brachio Fracte Intus damped and sheared Portam

41v

Nov. 13

Domenico Benvenuti of Prato, weaver, 8 braccia of black cloth who lives in Lucca

42r

Nov. 27

Francesco Turini, weaver of linen cloth (testore pannorum lini) of contrata S. Martini, Lucchese citizen

Dec. 5 Dec. 20

8 braccia of bright blue cloth

41v 41v

11 canne and 1 braccio of linen cloth

42r

Piero Puccinelli Tayssi

6 braccia of sanguine melange

42r

Andriolo Jacobi, velvet weaver of contrata S. Salvatore in Muro

5½ braccia of dark violet cloth

42r

Dec. 22

Martino Mey of Pistoia, innkeeper (hospitatore), who lives in Lucca

30 canne of linen cloth in one piece

42r

Dec. 24

Bernardo Corsi, roofer (copritore domorum) of contrata Burgo S. Frediano

6 braccia of bright blue cloth

42r

Dec. 24

Turello Bonturi, weaver of contrata Filiorum Jordani et Passi and Lucchese citizen

8 braccia of vermilion cloth

43r

125

Christine Meek

Appendix 5.1 Some terms related to textiles and clothing from the Lucchese Court of Merchants records, 1370 and 1380 Acolleus/a: deep bright red, similar to bruschino Aggiolis: toggles Albus/a: white or undyed Aluptae, pario aluptarum/aluctarum: boots, pair of boots Azuro, azurino: deep bright blue colour Baldacchino, baudekyn: elaborately woven patterned silk cloth Baldaghino refisso, baldacchino rifesso: a baldacchino woven in one piece that was later to be divided lengthwise, and would then have selvedge on only one side Baracano: a rough cloth of camel or goat hair Barbuta: helmet Berettinus: grey colour Bigio/a: beige or natural wool colour Biodus, biodettus, blodus: pale blue colour Bona moneta: Lucchese money of account in denari, solidi, and lire at a fixed value of 58s. or £2 18s. to the florin Braccio (pl.) braccia: linear measure, equal to 59 centimetres Bruschino: deep bright red, equated with acolleus Camicia: shirt usually of linen or cotton, worn by both men and women Camuca: camacas, silk cloth of several varieties Canna: linear measure, 4 braccia or 2.36 metres Cappatella: a little cape Cassadicelo: probably a variant of “cappa di cielo” (“vault of heaven”), a fanciful term for blue Cavessum: term applied to cloth which fell too short of standard length to be sold as a piece, but could be sold by the braccio or canna; see also scampolo Celeste: blue colour Cimato/a: of woollen cloth, sheared after teaseling Clamide: cloak Concigiatus/a: decorated or transformed Cordella: cords, braid 126

Clothing Distrained for Debt Cordoni: selvedges Corettum: corselet, a piece of armour of steel or boiled leather Cottardita: cotehardie, an overgarment, often elaborate Dimidiatus/a: particoloured, used to describe a garment that was one colour on one side and another colour on the other Dividiatus/a: cloth that was itself of more than one colour Dossis variorum: fur from the backs of squirrels, less valuable than panciis variorum Drappum: cloth, usually used only of silk cloth Farsa: cover for items such as quilts Fecta de seta: a silk girdle Floram scepe, fior di scopa: heather blossom, as a colour pale blue Fodera, foderato/a: lining, lined Fregium, fregetto: trimming, decoration Gamurra: a woman’s long and wide overgarment, often open at the front Garofanatus/a: carnation pink colour Giambellotto, ciambellotto: camlet, a highly prized cloth usually made of camel or goat hair Giubone, jubone: doublet Gonnella: gown, a basic everyday garment for men or women Guarnacchia, guarnacca: a long and voluminous overgarment Guarnello: lightweight cloth of cotton or linen, used for linings or modest garments Lacciarolo: a boy or man who assisted the weaver of complex silks on a draw loom by pulling the lashes which controlled the pattern Leoninus/a: lion-coloured, tawny Libbra: unit of weight, equal to 334 grammes and containing 12 oncie Lontora, lontorato/a: edging, edged Mantellum: cloak or mantle Maspilli: buttons, which might be functional or decorative, usually silver or gilded silver, but occasionally brass or cloth Mischium: mixture or melange, woollen cloth woven from yarn dyed different shades, which together produced a particular colour Monachino: dark brown cloth, worn as mourning Niffis variorum: heads or snouts of squirrels, used for edging garments Oncia: unit of weight, equal to 28 grammes Palandra: voluminous overgarment for men or women Panciis variorum: fur from the bellies of squirrels, more valuable than dossis variorum Panno agnellino: woollen cloth of modest quality, similar to panno albagio Panno albagio: locally made woollen cloth of modest quality, similar to panno agnellino Panno romagnuolo: cloth of modest quality made in the Romagna, likely to be brown or grey Pannum: woollen, linen or cotton cloth Paonasso, paonazzo: apparently derived from the Italian word for peacock, but ­denotes a purplish colour 127

Christine Meek Pellicione: a fur garment Persus/a: dark blue colour Picc., piccioli: Lucchese silver coinage in denari, solidi, and lire, at a value that varied from around £5 2s. to £5 3s. to the florin in the 1370s and 1380s Raccamato/a: embroidered Roba: a matching set of clothing, consisting of a tunic, an overgown, and a cloak Rossetto: russet, a type of woollen cloth of good quality Sargia: woollen cloth with a marked diagonal weave Scampolo: term applied to cloth which fell too short of standard length to be sold as a piece, but could be sold by the braccio or canna; see also cavessum Schaccato/a: checkered Scherlacto, scherlattino: a type of woollen cloth, which might be but was not necessarily scarlet in colour Sciagalla: a belt Sendado: silk cloth Soccholi, zoccoli: clogs, pattens Spuola: weaver’s shuttle Stivalli, pario stivallorum: boots, pair of boots Tasca: bag, pocket Tomarie, tomaie: the upper of a shoe Tovalliolino: a small towel or kerchief Trepignana: a type of cloth whose nature is unclear, but was presumably made in the Lucchese village of Treppignana Tristis: sad, shabby Tunica: tunic, a basic garment for men or women Turchinus/a: turquoise colour Valiscio: cloth of linen or cotton Varium, vario: vaio, vair, gris; a fur commonly used for linings and trimmings, probably from the squirrel Velliutum, vellutum: velvet Vergat: of a colour, tending towards a particular colour

128

Sacred or Profane? The Horned Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Priory Valija Evalds

They make themselves horned with worked hemp, or flax, and counterfeit dumb beasts; who will be known for worthy ladies … . There is great talk about their horns; people mock them … . Such a foolish whim is too vile in the sight of God … . I believe well that the devil intends to seat them at his table.1

The sentiment expressed in this fourteenth-century poem, “Des Cornetes,” is typical of that found in many songs and sermons of the late Middle Ages lambasting ornamental female headgear.2 A favorite target for censure, headdresses resembling horns—whether simple plaits coiled at the temples or the more elaborate structures that sometimes topped them—were especially offensive in the eyes of critics.3 Moralists regularly compared them to the horns of rams, cows, and devils, and predicted hellfire for the women who wore them. Given this common religious response, it is surprising to find sculpted heads with horned headdresses adorning the vaulting shafts of the cloister of St. Frideswide’s Priory, a foundation for Augustinian canons, now Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford. The author wishes to thank Julian Munby for his overwhelming generosity in sharing his thoughts and his work; Katie Hambrook for her contributions and helpful feedback; and Gale-Owen Crocker, Robin Netherton, Margaret Scott, and the anonymous referees of this article for their careful editing and invaluable suggestions. The author also thanks Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, for permitting the use of the photographs in this article. A version of this paper was presented in July 2012 at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds.   1 Translated in Frederick W. Fairholt, ed., Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume from the 13th to the 19th Century, Early English Poetry, Ballads and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages 27, no. 2 (London: Printed for the Percy Society by Richards, 1849), 35–36. Fairholt (at p. 29) cites the French poem to “Jubinal’s work, entitled Jongleurs et Trouvères, ou choix de Saluts, Epitres, Rêveries, et autres pièces légères, des xiii et xiv siècles. Paris, 1835,” and asserts that it comes from a manuscript at the Bibliothèque Royale, Paris, that dates from the first decade of the fourteenth century.   2 Joan Young Gregg, Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 110–14.   3 G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period c. 1350–1450 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 123.

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.1: Vaulting over the southeast walk of the cloister of St. Frideswide’s Priory, now Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford. Photo: Valija Evalds.

At first glance this may look like nothing more than late medieval monastic decadence. In company with other carvings in this cloister—heraldic devices, fanciful animals, and the Green Man—it would be easy to conclude that these vaulting bosses represent secular incursion, godless ostentation, or entertainment for bored canons with false vocations. But they may have more significance than meets the eye. Like marginalia in medieval manuscripts, marginal sculpture in medieval buildings often rewards careful consideration. It is frequently multifaceted and can evoke more serious meaning than may be evident initially. In addition to embodying a medieval approach to sacred space generally, the ornamental female heads of the St. Frideswide cloister also evoke the priory’s prestige, its ancient and royal past, and the strength and breadth of the cult of the founding saint. St. Frideswide’s priory, now the cathedral of Oxford and part of Christ Church College, was founded, according to tradition, in the eighth century by an Anglo-Saxon princess. In the twelfth century it was refounded as a house for Augustinian canons

130

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s

Fig. 6.2: Vaulting over the south cloister walk. Photo: Valija Evalds.

and given a standard medieval monastic plan, with a church and cloister.4 The cloister walks were said to have been rebuilt in 1499, at least partly, and seven bays of this late medieval structure remain. The current north and northeast walks date from a   4 The complexities of this site are discussed by John Blair in “St. Frideswide’s Monastery: Problems and Possibilities,” in Saint Frideswide’s Monastery at Oxford: Archaeological and Architectural Studies, ed. John Blair (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1990), 221–58.

131

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.3: Boss of St. Frideswide and four nuns from the southeast corner of the cloister. Photo: Valija Evalds.

nineteenth-century restoration. The west cloister walk was destroyed when the priory was again refounded, first as a college by Cardinal Wolsey in 1524, and then after the dissolution as a joint college and cathedral.5 The south and southeast walks alone  5 S. A. Warner, Oxford Cathedral (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1924); Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the

132

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s survive from the campaign of the 1490s (figs. 6.1 and 6.2). Here, among dense and varied ornament, the heads of five religious and six secular women are carved into the vaulting bosses, four of them wearing some form of horned headgear (figs. 6.3 to 6.9). The structure and the imagery of these seven bays are in keeping with those in many other English cloisters of the Gothic period, including Lincoln, Norwich (Norfolk), Lacock (Wiltshire), Canterbury (Kent), and Worcester. As in all of these cloisters, the imagery is concentrated in the carved bosses that appear at the meetings of the vaulting shafts. As vaults became more complex in the fourteenth century and the number of vaulting shafts increased, the number of bosses also increased, and with them the opportunity for decoration. Bosses in late medieval English cloisters frequently depicted monsters, sirens, heraldic devices, the Green Man, and the heads of secular people, along with religious subjects. Although male heads normally outnumber female heads, most of these cloisters include one or two ladies’ heads with stylish headgear. In some ways, then, the horned headdresses at St. Frideswide’s are unremarkable; or, at least, they are perfectly in keeping with the decoration of cloisters at peer institutions. They are just the latest in a series of elegantly coiffed women’s heads. The initial question, then, is what the heads of fashionable, secular ladies are doing in any of these cloisters. It might be germane to start with a reminder that ornament was not a crime in the late Gothic period, and that less was not more. Elaboration was a way to honor the saints and sacred places and could be understood as a sign of God’s triumph over demons.6 Additionally, late medieval visual culture quite commonly blurred or combined the sacred and the secular.7 In other words, imagery like this might have required less justification than modern observers imagine, the decoration of the sacred being its primary function. Bosses like these might also share some of the same penchant for visual puns evident in marginalia and misericords. In these contexts jokes appear to have been acceptable, and unlikely subjects were often vehicles for multiple meanings. A joke can be discerned in bosses decorated with horned ladies’ heads in that the word “bosu,” or boss, was used not only for the sculpted nodules at the meeting points of vaulting shafts, but also for coils of plaited hair worn at the temples.8 Attuned as they

City of Oxford (London: HMSO, 1939); P. Dearmer, The Cathedral Church of Oxford: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See (London: G. Bell, 1897); Blair, St. Frideswide’s Monastery at Oxford.   6 John Van Engen, “The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150,” Speculum 61/2 (1986): 290.  7 Nigel Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 136.   8 See “Against the Pride of the Ladies,” a song from the reign of Edward II (London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, 61v), in Thomas Wright’s Political Songs of England: From the Reign of John to that of Edward II, ed. Peter Coss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 153–54: “Furmest in boure were bosses y-broht, / Levedis to honoure ichot he were wroht.”

133

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.4: Boss with a woman in a reticulated headdress. Photo: Valija Evalds.

were to illustrated wordplay in the margins of texts, medieval religious would surely have appreciated this. But the bosses at St. Frideswide’s seem to have been intended to do more than just decorate or make clever jokes, for they are more emphatic and noticeable than those in other cloisters. For one thing, there are more of them. In addition to an oversized boss representing St. Frideswide with four nuns at the meeting of the south and east walks (fig. 6.3), six secular female heads appear in the seven surviving bays of the cloister (figs 6.4 to 6.9). While this may not strike the reader as a large number, and while the male figures still outnumber the female, it is a larger proportion of feminine

134

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s

Fig. 6.5: Boss with a woman in a reticulated headdress. Photo: Valija Evalds.

faces than in comparable cloisters made for male religious.9 At Lincoln, for instance, there are only four female figures, aside from the Virgin Mary, in the three surviving walks. At Norwich there are four in four walks; at Worcester there are no female figures in the cloister at all except for one image of the Virgin. At Canterbury there are over a dozen in the south walk, but given the overwhelming density of the bosses in that cloister (which include 825 heraldic devices, among other themes) it might be said that there are exceptional numbers of every subject.10 Not only are there more female heads at at St. Frideswide’s, but they are also given preferential placement. As Roberta Gilchrist notes, the thematic placement of cloister   9 Interestingly, in the fourteenth-century cloister of Lacock nunnery, there are at least half a dozen apparently female faces. 10 Nikolaus Pevsner and Priscilla Metcalf, The Cathedrals of England: Southern England (New York: Viking, 1985), 79.

135

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.6: Boss with a woman in a plain wimple and veil, from the east cloister walk. Photo: Valija Evalds.

sculpture was often guided by the activities performed in the cloister’s various zones, and the nature of the passage through them.11 While at Canterbury the women’s heads, accompanied by grotesques and many versions of the Green Man, appear in the south walk and then disappear as the walkway turns the corner toward the chapter house, at St. Frideswide’s they are found in what would have been an important stretch of 11 Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1997), 159.

136

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s

Fig. 6.7: Boss with a widow wearing a pleated wimple and veil, from the east cloister walk. Photo: Valija Evalds.

cloister walkway. The large boss depicting St. Frideswide with her nuns is positioned at the meeting of the south and east walks, at the entry into the cloister from the south court. The heads of the six secular women are grouped loosely around this boss and stretch down the east walk to where the vaulting stops just shy of the chapter house. The east walk was the most prestigious walkway in most cloisters, and the vaulting bays outside of the chapter house were often the most lavishly decorated. Depending upon the disposition of the monastery, the southeast walk might have been a path by which affiliated secular people entered the cloister and proceeded to the chapter 137

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.8: Boss with a woman wearing relatively simple veiled horns. Photo: Valija Evalds.

house. It was certainly the path taken by the canons coming down the staircase from the dormitory and moving to either church or chapter house.12 Another notable feature of the St. Frideswide ladies is the outdated character of their headdresses. By the 1490s, when this cloister was reputedly built, horizontal horned headdresses were out of fashion. The Bedford Hours, dating from 1425–35, and the Salisbury Breviary, by the same workshop, illustrate this type of headdress at its widest. The Hours of Sir William Oldhall and his wife Margaret Willoughby, dating from 1435, show Lady Margaret in a headdress of nearly the same breadth. The Bedford Master as well as the Master of the Oldhall Hours are understood to have

12 Julian Munby, “Christ Church, Priory House: Discoveries in St. Frideswide’s Dormitory,” in Blair, Saint Frideswide’s Monastery at Oxford, 185–93.

138

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s

Fig. 6.9: Boss showing higher, more elegant veiled horns. Photo: Valija Evalds.

been French artists working for English patrons,13 but examples of emphatically horizontal headdresses can be found on the work of English craftsmen as well. The tomb of Thomas de Camoys (d. 1421) and his wife Elizabeth in the church of St. George in Trotton, West Sussex (fig. 6.10) demonstrates the English proclivity toward extreme breadth in the teens and twenties. 13 Eberhard Bernard König, The Bedford Hours: The Making of a Medieval Masterpiece (London: The British Library, 2007); see page 60 for an illustration of horned headdress in the Salisbury Breviary. On the Oldhall Hours, see Janet Backhouse, Illuminations from Books of Hours (London: British Library, 2000), 34.

139

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.10: Detail of tomb of Thomas de Camoys and his wife, Elizabeth, in the Church of St. George, Trotton, West Sussex, ca. 1421. Photo: Valija Evalds.

Horns began to reach upward rather than outward in the 1440s, as illustrated in the painting of the Jouvenal family by the Master of the Legenda Aurea in the Cluny Museum dating from this decade. A Book of Hours in the British Library (MS Harley 2915), the work of a French artist in England, dating from 1450, also shows this tendency. On English tombs, too, the horns pull upward and toward one another, as on the brasses of Sir William Echyngham and his wife Joan from 1444 (Etchingham Church, East Sussex) and of merchant John Lethenard and his wife Joanna from the late 1440s (Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire).14 These are not unlike the St. Frideswide’s headdresses, with their softened, reticulated cauls projecting in semicircles from the ears. By 1460, however, the horns appear far more vertical, like two steeples nearly touching on the tomb of Jane Keriell in Ash-Next-Sandwich, Kent.15 During the second half of the fifteenth century an even more vertical look was favored, featuring single cones or truncated cones resembling inverted flowerpots. The Hours of Mary of Burgundy, from the 1470s, depicts a famously towering steeple on the head of its owner, echoed in the paintings of Hans Memling and Hugo van der 14 Herbert Druitt, A Manual of Costume As Illustrated By Monumental Brasses (London: A. Moring, De le More Press, 1906), illustration between pages 258 and 259; Margaret Scott, A Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London: B. T. Batsford, 1986), 84. 15 Druitt, Manual of Costume, illustration before page 269.

140

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Goes from the same decade. In the Wharncliffe Hours, the work of a Parisian master dating from 1475–80, all of the contemporary headdresses are single cones, truncated cones, or the newest coneless hoods.16 In England, cone-shaped styles, or what Margaret Scott calls “pillbox caps,” were prevalent, with boxy “butterfly veils” often arranged on top, projecting toward the back.17 This style can be seen on the tombs of Sir John and Lady Joan Curzon from 1472 (All Saints Church, Kedleston, Derbyshire), of Sir Thomas Peyton and his two wives from 1484 (St. Andrew, Isleham, Cambridgeshire), and on the Clopton family tomb from 1480 (Long Melford, Suffolk).18 By the 1470s horizontal horned headdresses appear on English tombs primarily when they represent older women and predeceased wives, and even these are far more vertical than the headdresses in the St. Frideswide cloister.19 Horns do not appear on tombs of the English upper classes after about 1480, and even the “butterfly” headdresses disappear after 1490, giving way to closer, flatter styles of headdress often referred to as kennel or gable bonnets.20 It may be that the horned headdresses here were intended to evoke the English middle classes, noted for their slow acceptance of fashion changes.21 Yet the particulars of these depictions do not suggest conservative, middle-class propriety. At least two of the four horned headdresses in the St. Frideswide’s cloister are clearly meant to be reticulated: that is, the hair beneath the horned headdress is gathered at the ears and covered with a jeweled net or caul (figs. 6.4 and 6.5). This iteration of the horned headdress is not bourgeois but aristocratic. It is always possible that the appearance of an unfashionable garment in a medieval image is simply the result of an artist or artisan using a pattern book or copying an old depiction. It may also be that the shape of the horned headdress was simply attractive to sculptors, given the centralized contour of most vaulting bosses.22 Heads decorated with looped plaits massed at the ears or with horns can be fit into a projecting, circular shape much more easily than an attenuated, vertical arrangement could be. This may be one reason why vertical arrangements with single cones or pillboxes are virtually nonexistent on bosses. But an unfashionable garment can also elicit associations and in this way add meaning to an image. The archaic horned headdresses of St. Frideswide’s cloister had much more power to evoke iconic associations than the currently fashionable hood would have had. Though not seen on ladies at court or in church by 1499, the horned 16 Margaret Manion, The Wharncliffe Hours: A fifteenth-century illuminated prayerbook in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981). 17 Scott, Visual History, 105. 18 Scott, Visual History, 104, 115; Druitt, Manual of Costume, illustration before page 272. 19 Scott, Visual History, 105. 20 Druitt, Manual of Costume, 275–78; Saul, English Church Monuments, 300. See also Melanie Schuessler, “French Hoods: Development of a Sixteenth-Century Court Fashion,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 5 (2009): 129–60, at 133–35. 21 Scott, Visual History, 137. 22 I am grateful to Margaret Scott for her insight on this point, offered in an e-mail communication with Gale Owen-Crocker, March 2, 2013.

141

Valija Evalds headdress was part of a robust visual tradition still evident on tombs and wall paintings and in manuscripts. As with many sartorial markers in the Middle Ages, however, the horned headdress could evoke different ideas according to the context. These need to be teased out to understand what the style might have meant at St. Frideswide’s. On the one hand, many images of horned headdresses seem to embody the same criticism found in moralists’ texts and sermons. On a siren, such as the one in the cloister at Lincoln Cathedral, a horned headdress would be associated with evil, sin, lust, and feminine pride. This is most explicit in Genesis imagery, where the snake tempting Eve was sometimes given a human face, most often feminine, and frequently finished off with hair arranged in horns at the temples or a full, horned headdress, as in the east window at Malvern Priory. A bishop-headed snake with such a female head on its tail decorates a stained-glass window in the church of St. Frideswide itself. Pride, too, was often given horned headgear, as was a figure on the Apocalypse tapestry, who may represent Vanity or the Whore of Babylon. Christa Grössinger has called horned headdress “the most potent symbol of vanity” in medieval art.23 A negative or sinful connotation is especially evident when a woman of low status wears the headdress. Three false alewives, naked but for their horned headdresses, are roped together among the damned in the Doom painted above the chancel arch at Holy Trinity, Coventry.24 A demon slings another horned alewife over his shoulder on a misericord at Ludlow, Shropshire. The headdresses here emphasize the sin of the women’s dishonesty. Like their ale, they are not the quality that they claim to be. The suggestion of unjustified pride probably contributed to the entertainment value of comic renditions of the headdress. In the misericords at Ludlow, a female “grimacer” is depicted wearing a horned headdress. Grimacing formed part of the performances of jongleurs and acrobats, and their antics often appear in bosses and misericords.25 The image would have been amusing because of the contrast between the elegant, courtly headdress and the ugly, distorted face of the woman wearing it. Yet the horned headdress conveys a very different tone in other images. On a woman of high status it was a symbol of rank second only to a crown. So, for instance, the well-known frontispiece from an early-fifteenth-century manuscript of Christine de Pizan’s work (London, British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 3) carefully delineates the rank of each woman depicted by means of her headdress: The largest and most ornamented of the horned headdresses belongs to Queen Isabeau; the more modest

23 Christa Grössinger, Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 99. See also Kusue Kurokawa, “The Headdress Motif in Medieval English Misericords and Literature,” Profane Arts of the Middle Ages 8, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 75–89. 24 Roger Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2008), 74–76. 25 Juanita Wood, Wooden Images: Misericords and Medieval England (London: Associated University Press, 1999), 86. Other scholars have interpreted this figure as being bridled rather than grimacing; see Kurokawa, “Headdress Motif,” 77, and Peter Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 1000–1500 (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1998), 84.

142

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s veil-over-horns structures belong to those of lesser status.26 A conventional ­connection between status and horns seems to have been just as strong in England. To give only one example, an English genealogical roll from the early fifteenth century in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, depicts a nobleman and his wife, both in extravagant houppelandes. The lady, whose noble birth is of the greatest significance in such a context, is shown with emphatically large, reticulated cauls.27 Nigel Saul observes that the horned headdress appears on English tombs of the highest status and was most likely to be depicted where a family feared loss of position.28 Horned headdresses also appear in manuscript illuminations illustrating allegorical, Biblical, and semi-divine figures in England as elsewhere.29 This is particularly noticeable in illustrations of the fourteenth-century French poem Le Pèlerinage de vie humaine, in which a soul is helped by Virtues and attacked by Vices. Illuminators frequently envisioned the Vices, with the exception of Pride, as ugly, old women with plain wimples, while giving the Virtues bosses, cauls, horns, and crowns.30 By 1499 the horned headdress had passed from fashionable use, but this long-­ established association with status would have remained, perhaps even more so than in the fashion’s heyday, when its appearance would have been more quotidian. While rarely seen on living women, horned headdresses were visible in abundance on effigies and brasses. In this context they may well have looked timeless, as archaic styles sometimes do. This association may have been deliberate. Both in manuscripts and on tombs, horned headdresses were often paired with sideless surcotes. Like the sideless surcote, the horned headdress was a strong statement of nobility. Robin Netherton has described a process by which the sideless surcote continued to be used in images long after its

26 Laura Rinaldi Dufresne, “A Woman of Excellent Character: A Case Study of Dress, Reputation and the Changing Costume of Christine de Pizan in the Fifteenth Century,” Dress 17 (1990): 105– 15; Laura Rinaldi Dufresne, “Christine de Pizan’s Treasure of the City of Ladies: A Study of Dress and Social Hierarchy,” Woman’s Art Journal 16, no. 2 (Autumn 1995): 29–34. The Bedford Hours (London, British Library, MS Add. 18850) illustrates a scene with similarly ranked headdresses on fol. 288v, and fol. 257v depicts Anne of Bedford praying in extremely large horns. Janet Backhouse, The Bedford Hours (London: British Library, 1990), figs. 47 and 51. 27 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. Rolls 6. See also London, British Library, MS Harley 2900, 19r; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 733, 22v. 28 Saul, English Church Monuments, 301; Nigel Saul, “Bold as Brass: Secular Display in English Medieval Brasses,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002), 169–94, at 191. 29 To name just a few instances: London, British Library, MS Royal I.B.x, 26v, an English manuscript, shows Judith holding the head of Holofernes and wearing cauls with a crescent-shaped headdress. The Virgin Mary wears horns in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gough Liturg. 15, 43v; MS Bodley 120, 37v (Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady), and MS Bodley 596, 96r. Philosophia visits Boethius in his study wearing a sideless surcote and a reticulated headdress with horns in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 352, 18r, 30r, and 48v. 30 For example, in the following manuscripts of Le Pèlerinage de vie humaine and Le Pèlerinage de l’âme: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 770, 65r (illustrating the “Horn of Doctrine”), and MS Laud Misc. 740; London, British Library, MS Add. 25594, MS Add. 22937, MS Add. 38120, and MS Harley 4399, with many depictions of the character of Grace-Dieu and her assistants in bosses, cauls, horns, etc.

143

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.11: Effigy of Elizabeth Courtenay, wife of the fourth Baron Harington, Church of St. Dubricius, Porlock, Somerset, after 1471. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

decline in actual dress, retaining its symbolic meaning in representations of queenly figures.31 The same tendency may be seen in some images of horned headdresses. 31 Robin Netherton, “The Medieval Sideless Surcote: Real and Unreal” (paper presentation, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 1994); Robin Netherton, “Will the Real Sideless Surcote Please Stand Up?” (lecture, Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, Feb. 28, 2004).

144

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Perhaps most interesting in this regard are the late examples of horned headdresses on English tombs. The effigy of Elizabeth Courtenay with her husband, the fourth Baron Harrington, in the church of St. Dubricius, Porlock, Somerset is an example (fig. 6.11). Dating from soon after 1471, Courtenay’s horned headdress appears abstracted, exaggerated, and almost nonsensical. One wonders if the artist had ever seen an actual headdress of this kind. Like the painters and illuminators depicting the sideless surcote at the end of the fifteenth century, who, Netherton argues, were likely working from images rather than real-life examples, these sculptors may not have understood the construction of the garment they aimed to depict. Perhaps horned, reticulated headdresses such at these still existed in royal, ceremonial contexts. Scott identifies one in a painting of Queen Margaret of Scotland by Hugo Van der Goes from 1473–78, calling it a “frozen” form of the horned and netted headdress.32 But perhaps, like the sideless surcote, its function in imagery was increasingly symbolic and referred to a physical prototype from the past. If it was already “frozen” in the 1470s, it surely would have been even more so in 1489, when the cloister of St. Frideswide’s was probably begun. Certainly, the horned headdresses of St. Frideswide’s cloister fit into this second category, indicating nobility, rather than that of the comic or the sinful. There is no obvious indication of caricature here; no devils or demons are present. Rather, the horned images are set close to heraldic bosses. The elaborate headdresses in this context would most likely have been associated with status, venerable antiquity, and tombs. And these things, in turn, might well have brought to mind the tomb of the monastery’s eponymous saint (figs 6.12 and 6.13). The tomb of St. Frideswide was destroyed during the Reformation, but its fragments were gathered in the late nineteenth century and reassembled in 2001. It was carved ca. 1269–89, during the reign of Henry III, who was an avid supporter of Anglo-Saxon saints, especially royal ones.33 Several images of female faces surrounded by leaves adorn the upper level of the tomb, usually interpreted as St. Frideswide hiding in the forest from her unwanted kingly suitor. They follow the pattern used to depict the Green Man, but with the face of a royal female saint as the central motif. The base of the tomb is decorated with crowned heads set into quatrefoils. Although some of the heads currently on the base are reconstructed from fragments, at least some of them seem to have been female. These queenly heads surround the saint’s remains, just as the noble, horned heads surround her image in the east walk of the cloister, adding luster to the lineage of the cult. It may also be relevant to note the extreme density of carvings of the Green Man in the south range. Perhaps these would have called to mind the foliage-wreathed Frideswide faces on the tomb. Virginia Blanton-Whetsell has documented the way in which the shrine of St. Æthelthryth at the Benedictine monastery at Ely was invoked in the Liber Eliensis as “the organizing symbol for the community’s identity”: 32 Scott, Visual History, 107. 33 Henry III’s reign left a particularly rich legacy of tombs of Anglo-Saxon saints, St. Frideswide’s among them. Nicola Coldstream, “English Decorated Shrine Bases,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 129 (1976): 17.

145

Valija Evalds

Fig. 6.12: The tomb of St. Frideswide, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Photo: Valija Evalds.

In describing the shrine as an enclosure, one that protects the incorrupted body of the saint and one over which the monks swear oaths of allegiance (and thus form a collective body), the chronicle indirectly associated the shrine with the architectural space of the monastery, even as it suggests the imagery of enclosure for the spiritual body represented by the group of monks.34

34 Virginia Blanton-Whetsell, “Tota integra, tota incorrupta: The Shrine of St. Æthelthryth as Symbol of Monastic Autonomy,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 227–68, at 227–28.

146

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s

Fig. 6.13: Detail from the base of the tomb of St. Frideswide, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Photo: Valija Evalds.

There are many parallels between St. Æthelthryth and St. Frideswide: According to their legends, both were royal, chaste, and vowed to God, and both fled from the pursuit of powerful kings. Both also founded communities of nuns that would later be refounded for monks. There would have been nothing unusual about a monastery featuring some aspect of its main cult in its cloister. Claustral imagery frequently expressed the identity of an order or of the particular house, and the lives of St. Benedict, St. Francis, and St. Dominic, as well as of in-house saints, were often depicted there.35 Roberta Gilchrist has suggested that monasteries of male religious re-founded on the sites of Anglo-Saxon royal nunneries in England may have placed their cloisters in such a way as to emphasize the association with their prestigious roots.36 It is no surprise, then, to find the image of St. Frideswide and her nuns on the largest boss in the cloister, nor would it be strange to celebrate her cult along the walkways. Reference to the cult of St. Frideswide in this context seems especially likely given that, as Julian Munby demonstrates, the patron of this cloister was especially devoted to St. Frideswide. Robert Sherborne, a fellow at New College, Warden of St. Cross Hospital in Winchester, and later Bishop of Chichester, paid for the late-fifteenth-century

35 William Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 123–45; Léon Pressouyre, “St. Bernard to St. Francis: Monastic Ideals and Iconographic Programs in the Cloister,” Gesta 12, no. 1/2 (1973): 71–92; Heidrun Stein-Kecks, “Claustrum and Capitulum: Some Remarks on the Façade and Interior of the Chapter House,” in Der mittelalterliche Kreuzgang: Architektur, Funktion und Programm, ed. Peter K. Klein (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2004), 157–89. 36 Gilchrist (Gender and Material Culture, 136–38) suggests that this may explain a pattern of north cloisters at monasteries fitting this description.

147

Valija Evalds rebuilding of the priory’s cloister in the years before 1499.37 The question of Sherborne’s connection to St. Frideswide’s, and his motivation for patronage of its cloister, which had long puzzled scholars, has been neatly answered by Munby’s discovery that the patron may have been born on Saint Frideswide’s feast day, since he established his own memorial service in Chichester to be on her feast day.38 Sherborne would surely have approved of imagery that referred to or enhanced the cult of his patron saint. Sherborne was by no means the only supporter of this saint’s cult. Many women, local and otherwise, seem to have been devoted to the saint and her priory, and Sherborne joined a long line of female patrons.39 A thirteenth-century inscribed slab in the chapter house, where vaulting bosses depict the Virgin and St. Frideswide, is attributed to Ella, the Countess of Warwick.40 In the following century Lady Elizabeth Montacute, whose family crest appears among the heraldry of Sherborne’s cloister, endowed a chantry and left land to the priory.41 Her effigy in the cathedral is surrounded by images of her noble offspring, whose likenesses encircle the base as the royal heads encircle the saint’s. Her complex “nebulé” headdress suggests that had she been born in the following century she would have worn horns. Such illustrious patronage continued up to the eve of the reformation, when Catherine of Aragon visited the shrine hoping for the saint’s help in producing a living heir.42 This tradition of noble female patrons may have found resonance in the horned heads of the cloister. Interestingly, St. Frideswide’s following was not limited to noble women. Indeed, the records suggest vigorous support of St. Frideswide’s cult among local women of the merchant and artisan classes and the upper peasantry.43 According to the Oxford historian Katie Hambrook, a local variant of the saint’s name—Frise—appears in records naming Oxford townswomen engaged in business of various kinds, suggesting a local, middle-class following.44 Munby proposes the presence of a local guild of St. Frideswide, a confraternity of women typical of that in many parish churches in England accommodating a diverse range of female members.45

37 Correspondence from Prior Thomas Warre dated March 4, 1499, establishing a commemorative mass in gratitude for Sherborne’s building works; Warner, Oxford Cathedral, 196, quoting M. E. C. Walcot, “The Bishops of Chichester from Stigand to Sherborne,” Sussex Archaeological Collections Relating to the History and Antiquities of the County 29 (1879): 25, from a manuscript of Sherborne’s “Donations,” West Sussex Record Office, Cap. I/14/5, fols. 40v–41. See Julian Munby, “The Bishop, the Shopkeeper, and the Cloister: Robert Sherborne and St. Frideswide’s,” forthcoming. 38 Munby, “The Bishop.” 39 Henry Mayr-Harting, “Functions of a Twelfth-Century Shrine: The Miracles of St. Frideswide,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London: Hambledon, 1985), 193–206. 40 Warner, Oxford Cathedral, 173. 41 Anne McGee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries, and England (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 107–14. 42 J. R. L. Highfield, “Catherine of Aragon’s Visit to the Shrine of St. Frideswide,” in Blair, Saint Frideswide’s Monastery at Oxford, 274–75. 43 Mayr-Harting, “Functions of a Twelfth-Century Shrine,” 193–206. 44 Katie Hambrook, pers. comm., July 6, 2012. 45 Munby, “The Bishop.”

148

Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Though not perhaps evident at first glance, the cloister sculpture may have been intended to reflect not only the cult’s noble patrons, but also this diverse range of local supporters. While the female heads with horned headdresses are the most eye-catching of those in the cloister, with their ostentatious nobility, there are others suggesting less exalted lineage. A woman in a plain wimple and veil seems to represent a modest, elderly matron (fig. 6.6). A lady in a pleated wimple is surely meant to be a pious widow (fig. 6.7). The association of this type of headdress with widows is evident in tombs46 as well as in wall painting, as in the depiction of the Seven Acts of Mercy in the church of Moulton St. Mary in Norfolk, in which a charitable widow clothes the naked.47 Meanwhile, the simplest of the horn-shaped headdresses could well be taken for a middle-class adaptation of the noble fashion (fig. 6.8). It seems likely that far more of the cult’s supporters would have worn headgear resembling these figures’ veils and wimples than would have worn horned headdresses. The proportion displayed in the cloister is probably inversely representative. Middle-class supporters, like the canons and the patron, would probably have preferred to emphasize the nobility of their saint’s ancestry and cult. But the interest of the noble horned headdresses increases greatly when considered in the context of their less noticeable neighbors. In particular, one cannot help but note the pride of place given to the figure with the pleated wimple (fig. 6.7). This face is set in a boss along the ridge rib, while all the other secular figures are on the sides, at the springing of the vaults or just above. Not only that, but she appears between the image of Saint Frideswide and an image of Christ, which is followed by that of a bishop, on the way to the chapter house. Intriguingly, Munby has identified a clear connection between a local widowed businesswoman and the cloister’s patron in the late fifteenth century.48 It appears that in the year the cloister was completed, Robert Sherborne set up a Mass in honor of one Mrs. Halman, a widow running a shop on abbey property, who apparently supplied the college with candles and bread for many years. The temptation to interpret the wimpled face as Mrs. Halman and the mitred one as the cloister’s patron lessens with the knowledge that Sherborne was not yet a bishop, nor even ordained, at the time the cloister was built. Yet if the wimpled face is not that of the pious, widowed Mrs. Halman, it is certainly her type, and the placement, so pointedly one of honor, is significant. It suggests a cult made strong by local women of all levels and their acceptance and accommodation within the priory. It may also serve to remind us of another legitimate role for secular imagery in a monastic setting: that of supporting intercession. Like Lady Elizabeth, who founded a chantry for herself, Mrs. Halman would also have been commemorated in the

46 Druitt, Manual of Costume, 246–47. 47 Miriam Gill, “Female Piety and Impiety: Selected Images of Women in Wall Paintings in England after 1300,” in Gender and Holiness: Men, Women, and Saints in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Samantha J. E. Riches and Sarah Salih (London: Routledge, 2002), 110. A similar headdress also appears on the figure of Mercy from the façade of London’s Guildhall, now at the Museum of London, dating from the 1430s, again suggesting the charitable widow. 48 Munby, “The Bishop.”

149

Valija Evalds church with a Mass. Unlike Lady Elizabeth, she did not have a tomb to act as a visual “aide-mémoire for prayer,” inciting the inhabitants to pray for her soul.49 As with the heraldic devices, the laypeople’s heads carved into the cloister of St. Frideswide’s may have functioned partly as a reminder to the monks to pray for the community, in this case noble and modest alike. The horned headdresses of the cloister of St. Frideswide were one powerful means of glorifying the saint and her following, but an examination of them side by side with their more humble neighbors reveals that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The imagery emphasizes the noble end of St. Frideswide’s cult past and present, but it also honors pious women of lesser status. Taken together, these six bosses form a graded cross-section of society, evoking the breadth of the saint’s local following. Considering the placement of the bosses, leading from an entrance into the cloister from the outside to the chapter house, it suggests that the intended audience may have included locals actively involved in the priory and the saint’s cult, and that they were meant to see themselves commemorated here. Late medieval monasticism has traditionally had a reputation for moral and spiritual decay. But in recent decades an increasingly complex picture has emerged. Many late medieval monasteries cultivated a vibrant spiritual and intellectual life as well as strong ties to their communities.50 Secular incursion in the imagery of a monastery might take on new meaning in this context. It might represent not an invasion but an invitation on the part of the religious community; not a decline in devotion and practice but an extension of these things to the secular world. Far from being signs of monastic decay, the ornamented female heads of St. Frideswide’s priory supported the monastic functions of intercession, the creation of sacred space, the curating of saints’ cults, and the affirmation of the particular identity of the house and its founders. Perhaps most remarkably, they form part of a strikingly feminine visual presence that was apparently accommodated and even welcomed by at least one ecclesiastical patron and a house of male religious.

49 Andrew Martindale, “Patrons and Minders: The Intrusion of the Secular into Sacred Spaces in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992), 169. 50 James G. Clark, ed., The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002); James G. Clark, ed., The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2007).

150

“Translating” a Queen: Material Culture and the Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots Michelle L. Beer

In October 1504, the tailor of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, was paid 20s. Scots to “translate” a gown of cloth of gold of tissue for the queen.1 Translating a gown, in this case, meant altering the outside cut of the gown and giving it a new lining of taffeta.2 The translated cloth-of-gold gown was likely one of a handful of rich gowns that her father Henry VII gave her before she left England in 1503 to marry James IV, King of Scots. Cloth of gold of tissue was the most expensive form of cloth of gold, incorporating gold and silver thread woven on a ground of fine fabric.3 The cloth itself was imported—probably from Italy—at great expense and was thus well worth saving and “translating” into a new gown for the queen. This type of cloth of gold was reserved only for royalty and the highest aristocracy in England, and its extravagance meant

A version of this paper was originally presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, K ­ alamazoo, Michigan, in May 2010. I would like to thank my advisor Caroline Hibbard, Gale ­Owen-Crocker and Robin Netherton for their assistance in editing this article, and the University of ­Illinois Pre-Modern World Reading Group for their comments and suggestions on various stages of this work.     1 Currency will be given in English sterling unless otherwise noted in the text. In the early sixteenth century 1 pound sterling was equal to 3 pounds Scots. Alexander Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (London: Edward Arnold, 1984), 240.  2 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Thomas Dickson et al., 13 vols. (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1877–1978), 2:461. The bulk of Margaret’s wardrobe was probably paid for through the Lord Treasurer’s accounts, which record the expenditures of the king’s household. These accounts include consistent, yearly entries for items of clothing for Margaret, liveries distributed by the king to her servants, and small items of clothing for her gentlewomen and other household officials. There are not, however, enough entries in these accounts to entirely cover all the queen’s needs, as there are no entries for smaller items such as the lace, ribbons, or pins which were necessary components of a sixteenth-century lady’s apparel. It is likely that Margaret’s Wardrobe staff kept their own account books, now lost. For Margaret’s reign, accounts exist from 1503–7 and 1511–13 at Edinburgh, Scottish National Archives, MS E21/6–12. I will refer to the manuscript only if it differs from the published material.   3 Lisa Monnas, “Cloth of Gold,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 132.

Michelle L. Beer that it was used in major royal ceremonies such as coronations and weddings.4 The gown was thus a symbol of Margaret’s royal dignity, and it conveyed political and cultural meanings about the queen and her status, including her dual identity as an English Queen of Scots. Margaret’s gown and the rest of her wardrobe imported the English court to Scotland, creating a space in the queen’s household and chambers that proclaimed her status as a member of the Tudor dynasty while also establishing and maintaining her dignity as Queen of Scots. Catherine Richardson has argued that clothing is particularly important in the creation of identity because of its interaction with the body. By both covering and articulating the human body, clothing can “make ‘body’ into ‘person.’”5 For Margaret, clothing publicly proclaimed her identity at both her father’s court in England and her husband’s court in Scotland. Clothing had greater political significance for the queen than for any other woman in the kingdom. The clothing of queens was a political statement because the queen’s body, like the king’s, was part of the late medieval political discourse of dynastic alliances, succession, inheritance, and childbirth. The body of the queen, and hence the clothing of the queen, carried multiple meanings in the early sixteenth century. Foreign queens consort especially could be seen as transitional figures, whose purpose, to cement an alliance and perpetuate a dynasty, made their bodies sites of contrast and change for themselves and their marital kingdoms.6 Clothing marked these changes in visible and public ways. For instance, Margaret’s wedding and coronation robes emphasized her virginity and purity through the use of expensive white fabrics like white cloth of gold and white damask.7 Throughout her queenship, the clothing that Margaret wore reflected her body’s importance at different events in her life and demonstrated the pre-modern concept of clothing as a creator of both memory and identity.8 After the queen’s wedding and coronation, the next most significant queenly ritual was churching, a ritual of purification and thanksgiving that celebrated a woman’s re-entry to public life after childbirth.9 For royal churching rituals, clothing and material   4 Henry VIII’s 1510 sumptuary law forbade anyone below the rank of duke from wearing cloth of gold of tissue. Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 89.   5 Catherine Richardson, “Introduction,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 8–9.  6 Louise Olga Fradenburg, “Rethinking Queenship,” in Women and Sovereignty, ed. Louise Olga Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 5–7.   7 Maria Hayward, ed., Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (Leeds: Maney, 2007), 44.   8 Following Bourdieu, historians of material culture have begun to argue that objects (like clothing) are crucial to the expression and creation of personal and group identities in the medieval and early modern periods. Roberta Gilchrist, “Medieval Bodies in the Material World: Gender, Stigma and the Body,” in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 44; Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2; Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).   9 Churching was a ritual that had multiple meanings in the sixteenth century for both the Church and women who participated in it; J. L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 115–18.

152

Material Culture and Margaret Tudor goods were used to signify the return of the queen to court life and thus the recovery of her body from childbirth. Two months after giving birth to her first son, Margaret received fourteen ells Scots of cloth of gold and seven ells Scots of velvet to be turned into a gown, probably for her churching ceremony.10 This sumptuous gown emphasized the importance of the queen’s body and her successful fertility before the whole court. The ceremony of the queen’s churching also displayed to the court the splendid material surroundings of the queen’s chamber, which had been out of view for several weeks during her lying-in. During the churching of Margaret’s mother, Elizabeth of York, the queen laid back in her bed of state behind the rich curtains that the king had furnished for her a few months before.11 Two high-ranking noblewomen approached the bed and drew back the curtains, revealing the queen in her material splendor. The court then processed to hear Mass in the Royal Chapel, followed by feasting in the queen’s chamber.12 Throughout this process, the material surroundings of the queen— the bed, the curtains, and her cloth of estate—were used within the ceremony itself to indicate the emergence of the queen from her chambers, while also highlighting both her body and its dynastic significance with the wealth and material splendors of those chambers. Thus, at different stages in Margaret’s life, clothing visibly and physically marked her translation from princess to queen or from wife to mother. Margaret’s wedding and coronation in 1503 in particular allow us to see how the queen’s wardrobe was used to proclaim her new status as Queen of Scots. Her magnificent trousseau was assembled by her father in London and then displayed to the people of England and Scotland throughout her wedding journey. Magnificence and generosity were royal virtues that Renaissance monarchs were expected to exhibit, and Margaret’s wedding trousseau was not unique for royal brides.13 For example, her sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, had arrived in England in 1501 with a bridal wardrobe reputedly worth half her dowry, or £10,000.14 Henry VII, Margaret’s father, understood the value of 10 Dickson, Lord High Treasurer, 3:269. A Scottish ell was 37 1/5 inches, and an English ell was approximately 45 inches; Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Ell,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 189. Measurements given are in English ells unless otherwise specified in the text. 11 English and Scottish royal childbirth rituals were closely related to each other and to traditions in Burgundy and France, and it is therefore likely that Margaret would have followed a very similar ritual to her mother’s confinement and churching. Queens usually retired to their chambers about a month to six weeks before the anticipated birth in a highly ritualized process dominated by the women of the court. Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 112; Kay Staniland, “Royal Entry into the World,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1987), 297–313. 12 Staniland, “Royal Entry,” 308. 13 Christian and classical ideals of good government and princely virtue encouraged princes to be liberal in their generosity and display their status through material goods, including clothing. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 127; Stephen Rigby, “Political Thought,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 422–26. 14 G. A. Bergenroth, ed., Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives of Simancas and Elsewhere, vol. 1, Henry VII, 1485–1509 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862), 307.

153

Michelle L. Beer material magnificence and its role in furthering his political goals. He used his court and household as centers for the display of Tudor power and authority, projecting images of strength, wealth, and security.15 The first Tudor king, he had won his throne by force of arms, and the marriage between his daughter and James IV was a triumph in establishing the legitimacy of his rule and dynasty. Moreover, Margaret’s marriage was an indication of the return to stability and prestige of England as a kingdom; England had not seen a royal princess marry into the dynasty of another realm since the marriages of Henry IV’s daughters in 1401 and 1406.16 Margaret’s wedding journey was an opportunity for the king to display the resources of his household, wardrobe, and patronage not only to equip his daughter for marriage but also to reaffirm his own dignity and power. The young Queen of Scots, accompanied by her retinue of household servants and noble attendants, traveled from London to Edinburgh in July 1503, stopping in major towns along the way. Her journey culminated in a lavish ceremonial entry into Edinburgh, which has been one of the most studied aspects of her life.17 While historians have discussed the political and artistic significance of Margaret’s wedding, little attention has been paid to the role that material culture played in Margaret’s translation from princess to queen.18 Here, I will argue that the changes to Margaret’s status were first indicated by changes to her wardrobe in England, which was used to present Margaret as a queen, first to her father’s northern subjects and then to her new Scottish people.

15 Sean Cunningham, Henry VII (London: Routledge, 2007), 201–8; D. M. Loades, The Tudor Court (London: Batsford, 1986), 25–26; S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), 305–7. 16 Princess Blanche married Ludwig, son of Rupert, the count palatine of the Rhine, and Princess Philippa married Erik VII, king of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; A. L. Brown and Henry Summerson, “Henry IV (1367–1413),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online ed., http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/12951 (accessed Oct. 14, 2013). Edward IV’s sister, Margaret of York, technically not a princess, married the duke of Burgundy in 1468, with much pomp and fanfare; Rosemary Horrox, “Edward IV (1442–1483),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8520 (accessed Oct. 14, 2013). 17 Margaret’s wedding and royal entry into Edinburgh (the first recorded Scottish royal entry) has been studied by a number of scholars: Douglas Gray, “The Royal Entry in Sixteenth-Century Scotland,” in The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, ed. Sally Mapstone and Juliette Wood (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1998), 10–37; Katie Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland, 1424–1513 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2006), 53–54, 91–93; Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 91–122; E. Patricia Dennison and Michael Lynch, “Crown, Capital, and Metropolis: Edinburgh and Canongate: The Rise of a Capital and an Urban Court,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 1 (2005): 22–43, at 37–39; Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 263–64; Lorna G. Barrow, “‘the Kynge Sent to the Qwene, by a Gentylman, a grett tame Hart’: Marriage, Gift Exchange, and Politics: Margaret Tudor and James IV 1502–13,” Parergon, Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 21, no. 1 (2004): 65–84. 18 The exception is Sarah Carpenter, “‘To Thexaltacyon of Noblesse’: A Herald’s Account of the Marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV,” Medieval English Theatre 29 (2007): 104–20.

154

Material Culture and Margaret Tudor When Margaret left her grandmother’s residence of Collyweston to begin her journey in the summer of 1503, John Young, Somerset Herald and an eyewitness, described her thus in his narrative account of the journey and wedding ceremony: “The queen was richly dressed, mounted upon a fair Palfrey.”19 At the tender age of thirteen, Margaret was dressed as befitted a queen because her father and the staff of his Wardrobe had spent the better part of a year outfitting her and her household for this occasion. John Young certainly understood the power of clothing to make an impression, and historian Sarah Carpenter noted that “Young attempts to convey the sensory impression of performance by his marked emphasis on clothing. Sensitive to the crucial importance of costume in the performance of magnificence, he provides detailed assessments of fabrics, cut, jewels, and accoutrements.” Throughout his narrative, Carpenter argues, Young constructs costume and clothing as an outward sign of honor or noblesse.20 Young was reflecting the importance that the English and Scottish courts placed on costume in their own right, through the use of costly fabrics and colors, liveries and luxury goods by Henry VII and James IV to proclaim their status and power. Indeed, Margaret’s marriage has been seen as the catalyst for an expansion of the material extravagance of the Scottish court that lasted for the rest of James’s reign.21 The power of Margaret’s physical appearance during this wedding journey, the resources and skill that went into it, and its intended effect on the people the young queen encountered in Scotland and England are all crucial to understanding the importance and utility of royal wardrobes in the sixteenth century. Before her official betrothal and the signing of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace between Scotland and England, Margaret was simply Lady Margaret, the king’s eldest daughter. Usually alongside her younger sister Mary, she received clothing from the king in suitably rich materials, and the sisters were often dressed in a similar fashion. In February 1499, for example, a warrant from the king’s Wardrobe in the National Archives shows a number of clothes were made for Henry VII’s younger children, including clothes for Lady Margaret and Lady Mary. According to the warrant, which was a written order to the king’s Wardrobe staff, both sisters were to be given gowns made of green velvet edged with purple, kirtles of tawny damask edged with black velvet, and kirtles of black satin.22 At the time, Margaret would have been ten and her sister three.

19 John Young, “The Fyancells of Margaret, Eldest Daughter of King Henry VIIth to James King of Scotland: Together with her departure from England, Journey into Scotland, her Reception and Marriage there, and the great Feasts held on that account; Written by John Younge [sic],” in Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. John Leland (London: William and John Richardson, 1770), 4:267; online edition available at Eighteenth Century Collections Online, http:// www.galegroup.com (accessed Oct. 14, 2013). I have modernized Young’s spelling for clarity. 20 Carpenter, “To Thexaltacyon of Noblesse,” 108. 21 Louise Olga Fradenburg, “Sovereign Love: The Wedding of Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland,” in Fradenburg, Women and Sovereignty, 89–90. 22 Kirtles were long garments similar to gowns, usually worn under gowns and in this period consisting of a fitted bodice, sleeves, and a skirt, much of which would have been hidden under the gown itself. Hayward, Dress at the Court, 434; London, National Archives, MS E 101/412/15.

155

Michelle L. Beer Margaret’s wardrobe began to change in November 1501, when Henry VII again ordered his Wardrobe staff to provide clothing for Margaret and her sister Mary. In contrast to previous orders, the clothing that Margaret received in 1501 was markedly different from that of her sister. Now, Margaret was given a gown of tawny cloth of gold of tissue, furred with ermine; a gown of purple velvet with tabard sleeves; and two kirtles, one of tawny satin and one of russet satin. She was given “an ell of black velvet for a hood of the French fashion,” one of the first instances of the “French hood” to be known in England, and a garment that would have been the cutting edge of fashion and sophistication in the early sixteenth century. Margaret also received another hood, “of the same fashion,” in crimson velvet; indeed, she appears to have brought the fashion to Scotland, as several of her ladies in later years were given French hoods at the Scottish court.23 In the same warrant, Margaret’s sister Mary received a gown of russet velvet furred with ermine and miniver and a gown of crimson velvet with tabard sleeves. These gowns indicate, very subtly, Margaret’s change in status: She received gowns of cloth of gold and purple velvet, while her sister received the slightly less regal russet and crimson velvet gowns. Margaret’s purple gown had associations with royalty and was a color usually worn on specific feast days and for coronations.24 Mary’s gowns, still fashionable and regal in shades of red and costly fabrics and furs, befit a young princess but show the differences that were beginning to emerge in the two sisters’ positions. Of course, these distinctions are by no means clear-cut, and certainly in the case of Margaret and Mary, the seven-year age difference could also be a factor, as the differences in clothing could also indicate Margaret’s approaching maturity and, hence, marriageability. Significantly, in the same month that Margaret was given a gown of cloth of gold, Henry VII issued a commission to members of his council to treat with James IV regarding Margaret’s betrothal and her journey to Scotland and to obtain the necessary papal bulls for the marriage.25 This commission indicates that the king, whose negotiations with James IV over the treaty and the marriage had stretched on for years, felt that the marriage was certain to go forward and that Margaret’s status would change accordingly, hence the new clothes. Margaret’s status changed officially with much pomp and fanfare in January 1502 in a lengthy series of betrothal ceremonies. For several days, the twelve-yearold princess was at the center of events at the English court that began with a proxy 23 London, National Archives, MS E 101/415/7, no. 51; Melanie Schuessler, “French Hoods: Development of a Sixteenth-Century Court Fashion,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 5 (2005): 136. Margaret had numerous hoods made for her in Scotland that also fit the style of French hoods, although they are never called French hoods specifically; Dickson, Lord High Treasurer, 4:210. 24 Ermine was also a material associated with royalty, and it was used to line coronation robes; Hayward, Dress at the Court, 121 (purple), 46 (ermine). 25 Joseph Bain, ed., Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland Preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, London, vol. 4, A.D. 1357–1509 (Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1888), 1678. James and Margaret were related within prohibited degrees and thus required a papal dispensation to marry; Patricia Hill Buchanan, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 10.

156

Material Culture and Margaret Tudor wedding ceremony, in which the young princess swore to take the King of Scots as her husband.26 After the elaborate betrothal, which took place in the chamber of her mother Elizabeth of York, Margaret was officially the Queen of Scots and was treated as such by the English court. The earliest and most visible markers of her translation would have been the changes in her relationship with the material culture of the court: As Queen of Scots, Margaret dined with her mother under a rich cloth of estate. She also immediately began to fulfill queenly ideals of generosity, when she distributed prizes to winners of the jousts in her honor.27 From that point, work began in earnest to assemble the new queen’s trousseau. Both her father and her mother provided items of clothing and material goods for her wardrobe, which accompanied her to Scotland in July and August of 1503. In the account book published as her Privy Purse Expenses, we see that Elizabeth of York paid for two pairs of costly sleeves for Margaret in June 1502, one pair in black velvet and another in white sarcenet.28 During this time, Henry VII was also providing rich garments for his daughter, in accordance with her new status as Queen of Scots. In November 1502, Henry paid for a gown of black velvet furred with minks as well as a kirtle of black satin hemmed with crimson velvet.29 After the death of her mother in February 1503, Margaret’s clothing became a combination of wedding and mourning clothes, as Henry VII continued to pay for gowns and kirtles for her in black, as well as sleeves in a variety of colors and fabrics. Henry also provided numerous other types of gowns made of rich materials and lined with expensive furs, including gowns of black satin, cloth of gold, and crimson satin, and at least three of purple velvet.30 These clothes were paid for through royal warrants, and the orders are almost always for the young queen alone, unlike those of previous years, in which they also included her sister.31 Margaret’s clothes during this period were listed in “bulk” warrants that contain a host of items for the young queen, from gowns and kirtles to hats and pins. One warrant from June 1503 gives us a particularly detailed idea of the wardrobe required by Margaret shortly before she left for Scotland. In this warrant, she received three gowns, made of black satin, black velvet, and crimson satin respectively. Each gown required around twelve ells of fabric, which for the black satin gown cost 100s.32 In addition to the gowns, Margaret was given three kirtles, of black satin, tawny damask, and cloth of gold. Kirtles needed around seven ells of fabric, roughly half the amount as for a gown.33 The true variety of her clothing came from her sleeves, however. In 26 Young, “Fyancells,” 262. 27 Ibid. 28 Nicholas Harris Nicholas, ed., Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth (1830; repr. facsimile, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972), 23. 29 Bain, Calendar of Documents, 1689. 30 Hayward, Dress at the Court, 56. 31 The wardrobe accounts for Henry VII show that some of Margaret’s and Mary’s linens and shoes continued to be ordered together after January 1502, although not, it appears, their clothing; Bain, Calendar of Documents, Appendix 1, no. 36, pp. 422–24. 32 Ibid., 430. 33 Ibid., 431.

157

Michelle L. Beer this warrant alone, nine pairs of sleeves were ordered for the young queen, in colors of black, green, gold, tawny, and crimson, and fabrics of satin and sarcenet.34 Sleeves, of course, used significantly less fabric, usually less than an ell, and could cost as little as 4s. 8d. for a pair of green satin sleeves.35 All of these items—gowns, kirtles, and sleeves—were then lined with linen, wool, or silk, and decorated with edgings of velvet, fur, or ribbon. In addition to major items of clothing, this warrant also included smaller items that can give us a more detailed picture of the queen’s wardrobe and the kinds of necessities and luxuries she brought with her into Scotland. Margaret was given two hats, one of crimson and one of scarlet, as well as three yards of black velvet for hoods, “orlettes,” and frontlets “of the French fashion.”36 She was provided with two dozen pairs of gloves, six pairs of double-soled shoes “of divers colors,” as well as three ells of sarcenet for tippets and girdles.37 In an acknowledgement, perhaps, of the cold Scottish winters to come, the young queen was given a nightgown of black velvet with wide sleeves and two night bonnets of ermine, one with a border of crimson velvet. Trussing coffers, cloth sacks, and brushes were ordered for the transport and care of all of these items. Finally, the warrant called for pins, ribbon, and thread, all necessary items for piecing together the Tudor fashions, in which sleeves, gowns, kirtles, as well as partlets and bodices could be combined in different ways. In total, this single warrant cost £60 19s. 10d., with £59 6s. 2d. of that amount paid to sixteen different merchants, suppliers, or artisans.38 These items and many others like them would form the basis for the new queen’s wardrobe, which would be used and displayed in Scotland during the wedding and for months, if not years, afterward. Beginning in May 1503, the king’s Wardrobe began to outfit Margaret’s household attendants and make the beds, chairs, and carriages that the queen would take with her into Scotland. The new queen was accompanied into Scotland with a retinue of nobility, gentry, and household servants. Her household members were given liveries that proclaimed their status and linked them intimately not only with the queen but with the Tudor dynasty as a whole. Margaret was waited on by at least two footmen and two littermen. Her father ordered livery for the four men in May 1503. The footmen were given two sets of livery, one with doublets of black velvet with jackets of green cloth of gold and white cloth of gold, and another with black velvet jackets, embroidered with the Tudor portcullis badge and doublets of green damask.39 This would have been the livery that John Young was describing when he wrote that “Three footmen were always near her very honestly appointed, and had in their Jackets embroidered Portcullises 34 Ibid., 431. 35 Bain, Calendar of Documents, Appendix 1, no. 36, p. 431. 36 “Orlettes” most likely refers to oreillettes, crescent-shaped front borders of French hoods, which were usually stiffened and covered the ears; Schuessler, “French Hoods,” 151–54. 37 Tippets (at this period) were short shoulder capes worn over a gown, and girdles were bands of fabric worn around the waist used to hang objects. Hayward, Dress at the Court, 434–35. 38 Bain, Calendar of Documents, Appendix 1, no. 36, p. 435. 39 Ibid., 1705, and London, National Archives, MS E 101/415/7, no. 122. Her littermen were given similar black velvet jackets with the Tudor portcullis embroidered on the front and back.

158

Material Culture and Margaret Tudor … Next after was conveyed by two Footman arrayed as the others, one very rich Litter born by two fair Coursers very nobly dressed.”40 Margaret’s heralds and trumpeters were also outfitted with royal arms and badges on their tabards and banners, celebrating not only the magnificence of the English court but also the power and prestige of the Tudor dynasty associated with the display of wealth and pomp.41 Her ladies were issued livery gowns of designs relatively similar to one another, which included a variation on a tawny-colored gown edged with black velvet. Often it is only through the issuance of livery gowns that we know which of the ladies who waited on Margaret in England were to accompany her to Scotland. Mistresses Frances Baptiste and Elizabeth Barlow each received the same type of livery gowns of tawny chamlet edged with black velvet and a black worsted kirtle. Mistress Zouche, one of Margaret’s distant cousins from her grandmother’s side of the family, received a higher-status livery gown of tawny damask with a black chamlet kirtle, and a second gown of tawny medley.42 The material furnishings of Margaret’s household and chambers also changed with her betrothal and marriage. These furnishings not only reflected her new status as Queen of Scots, but also, through the use of the Tudor arms, proclaimed her royal heritage and, by extension, the success and legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty as a whole. The most lavish items would grace her public spaces, including her presence chamber, bedchamber, and chapel. These furnishings would all play a part in the daily ritual and ceremony at the Scottish court and thus would be visible to James IV and his courtiers on a regular basis. Henry provided Margaret with a bed of state, with cloth-of-gold coverings, yellow damask for the valance, fringed with silk and gold, and curtains of crimson satin.43 The bed of state was set with the English arms, supported by two of the king’s heraldic beasts. Margaret’s cloth of state, which would hang over her chair of state in her presence chamber, had a similar device of the king’s arms supported by the king’s beasts, and it too was lined with yellow damask and fringed with gold. Margaret’s priests were outfitted with vestments bearing a crucifix and the English arms crowned. Henry also provided two altar cloths for her private chapel embellished with a needlework crucifix, escutcheons of the royal arms, embroidered portcullises and roses, and an image of Our Lady of Pity.44 Finally, Henry ordered a wooden chair for Margaret that was decorated with four copper and gilt bosses displaying the king’s arms and provided with three long and three short cushions of fustian.45 These goods, which proclaimed her family loyalty and the generosity of her father, would probably remain in use at the court for years to come: A 1505 Inventory of the Royal Chapel at Stirling lists three gilt candlesticks with the arms of England, brought by Margaret 40 Young, “Fyancells,” 267. Young may have conflated the footmen and littermen, as both were given portcullis badges and would have attended on Margaret during her journey. Alternatively, Margaret could have acquired another footman between the time the warrant was issued and her departure. 41 Bain, Calendar of Documents, 1727. 42 Ibid., 1720, 1724. 43 London, National Archives, MS E 101/415/7, no. 120; Bain, Calendar of Documents, 1725. 44 Bain, Calendar of Documents, Appendix 1, no. 36, p. 427. 45 London, National Archives, MS E 101/415/7, no. 120. Bosses were raised areas covered in precious metal.

159

Michelle L. Beer into Scotland, in addition to a number of newer vestments featuring the joined arms of England and Scotland.46 As Margaret headed north to her new home, her elaborate retinue and progress served several purposes. Henry VII used Margaret’s wedding journey as an opportunity for an intensive round of royal propaganda and magnificence, celebrating and emphasizing his dynasty’s success in securing a royal marriage for his eldest daughter and his own wealth and magnificence. This was an especially important and delicate task in the north of England, which had been a Yorkist stronghold against the Tudors.47 When Margaret and her noble retinue left Collyweston, they brought with them the material goods produced by Henry VII’s Wardrobe, conveyed in carriages the coverings of which were a visual statement of the foreign marriage and alliance that the young queen represented. Margaret’s carriages were encased with “Covering white and green, and the Arms of Scotland and of England half-parted with red Roses and Portcullis crowned. And those of other Lords covered in likewise, and upon the Covering their Arms. The which Thing was a fair Sight, for very noble was the Conveying.”48 Roses and portcullises, symbols of the Tudor dynasty that were taken from their Lancastrian and Beaufort ancestors, were a political statement in the former Yorkist territories of northern England. The arms of England and Scotland were half-parted to indicate Margaret’s marriage and thus dual identity as English royal and Scottish queen. The train was certainly lengthy; in Scotland, it took twenty-two carts to bring the queen’s gear from Dalkeith to Edinburgh.49 As the party made its way slowly north, accompanied by not only many richly dressed lords and ladies, but also carriages and wagons covered in the royal arms, it must have seemed to onlookers as if Margaret was bringing half the wealth of England with her into Scotland. Margaret’s journey north gradually introduced the young queen to the arts of queenship through the medium of material culture. John Young recounts how, at every major town along her route, Margaret made an official entry richly dressed, often stopping to prepare herself, and likely change clothes, before entering the town.50 Margaret would then be greeted by the local officials of the town, usually the mayor, alderman, and local clergy. Her visit would be marked by the presentation of relics for her to kiss and a Mass. During these ceremonies, Margaret’s wardrobe was on display for all to see. For example, when she attended Mass at York Minster, Margaret wore a gown of cloth of gold with a collar of precious stones and “a girdle wrought of fine Gold hanging down to the Earth.”51 Young’s account shows that Margaret’s entrances into a town were witnessed by both her own entourage and local audiences and thus were public performances of her queenship. Moreover, her veneration of relics and 46 F. C. Eeles, “The Inventory of the Chapel Royal at Stirling, 1505,” Transactions of the Scottish Ecclesiological Society 3 (1911): 315, 321, 322. 47 Neil Murphy, “Receiving Royals in Later Medieval York: Civic Ceremony and the Municipal Elite, 1478–1503,” Northern History 43, no. 2 (September 2006): 241–55, at 244. 48 Young, “Fyancells,” 268. 49 Dickson, Lord High Treasurer, 2:386. 50 Young, “Fyancells,” 276. 51 Ibid., 274.

160

Material Culture and Margaret Tudor publicly expressed piety were part of her responsibility, as Queen of Scotland and an English princess, to display her religious devotion as a moral leader of her people. Before Margaret left a town, civic officials usually presented her with a gift. At the city of York, the mayor and aldermen gave her a gilt vessel filled with coins. Margaret received the gift standing under a cloth of state and responded to the civic officials by thanking them and claiming that the gift would “ever endeavor me to love you and this Citie all the days of my life.”52 She also promised to “show to the king’s grace my father the great kindness that you have done to me at this time.”53 Margaret acknowledged that the gift was symbolic of the relationship between her and the city, a relationship in which the young queen was positioned as both a patron and a mediator.54 Queens often fulfilled these roles because they had access to both their own material resources and the favor of the king. Margaret’s response suggests she saw herself as a patron in her own right, who would “love” the city for the rest of her life, while also recommending the city to her father in her role as a mediator or broker of patronage.55 This instance was a transitional moment for Margaret as she looked toward her own queenship and her responsibilities as a patron and mediator, although her primary patronage relationship was still with her father Henry VII. Once Margaret crossed the border and was greeted by her future subjects in Scotland, her translation began to pick up speed, and material culture became the medium through which she established relationships with her subjects, courtiers, and of course, her husband. Certainly, the populace was eager to see the English procession, as Young described the press of people who turned out to see the queen: “And through the Country in some Places were made by Force, Ways for the Carriage and the great Quantity of People assembled for to see the said Queen, bringing with them Plenty of Drink, for each one that would have of it, in paying therefore.”56 In addition to the crowds, Margaret was now meeting Scottish ladies who were to become her subjects and members of her court. The Scottish noblewomen Margaret met on the journey were potential members of her household, and their welcome of the young queen reflected the desire to impress and please a potential new patron. They greeted Margaret richly dressed in their own distinctly Scottish style, which earlier observers such as Spanish

52 York, York City Archives, MS B9, 7r. 53 Ibid. 54 Gifts served to act as material reminders or symbols of patron-client relationships and were part of a self-consciously constructed performance of patronage that established reciprocal bonds between monarchs and their subjects. See Linda Levy Peck, “‘For a King Not to Be Bountiful Were a Fault’: Perspectives on Court Patronage in Early Stuart England,” Journal of British Studies 25, no. 1 (January 1986): 31–61, at 34–36; Linda Levy Peck, “Benefits, Brokers and Beneficiaries: The Culture of Exchange in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Court, Country, and Culture: Essays on Early Modern British History in Honor of Perez Zagorin, ed. Bonnelyn Young Kunze and Dwight D. Brautigam (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1992), 109–27, at 112–13. 55 Murphy, “Receiving Royals,” 251. 56 Young, “Fyancells,” 282.

161

Michelle L. Beer envoy Don Pedro de Ayala had noted included elaborate ­headdresses.57 For instance, when Margaret attended chapel at the castle of Dalkeith, she was accompanied by her hostess the Countess of Morton and “her gentlewomen arrayed after the Guise of the Country.” Margaret was careful not to be outdone, and she left Dalkeith on a litter of cloth of gold, like a saint’s relic, adorned with cloth of gold, pearls, and jewels, conveyed by a procession of noble supporters.58 Margaret’s translation from princess to queen culminated in her wedding and coronation in Edinburgh. This spectacular event celebrated the marriage and proclaimed the importance and magnificence of the new queen through her wardrobe. James IV had ordered matching wedding clothes for himself and his queen, made of white damask woven with gold flowers, lined with taffeta. The king’s gown was decorated with silk cord, while Margaret’s gown was bordered with three Scottish ells of crimson velvet.59 Wearing matching clothing was a sign of love and respect, and would have emphasized the union of Margaret and James visually to anyone who saw them together on their wedding day.60 The effect was not lost on the audience, as Young observed that Margaret wore a rich Robe, like Himself [the king], bordered of crimson velvet, and lined of the same. She had a very rich Collar of Gold, of Pyerrery and Pearls, around her Neck, and the Crown upon her Head: Her Hair Hanging. Betwix the said Crown and the Hairs was a very rich Coife hanging down behind the whole Length of the Body.61

Margaret’s robe was clearly designed to make an impression on its audience as well as signify to the court the unity of the king and queen, Margaret’s own virginal purity, and the wealth and status of the marriage. White was symbolic of purity and virginity, and while it was somewhat unusual for grooms to wear white before the mid-sixteenth century in England, it was possibly more common in Scotland. In 1496 James IV had provided the pretender Perkin Warbeck with a white damask “spousing” gown.62 The queen’s wedding dress became part of the festivities themselves when, a few days after the wedding, Margaret and James gave their wedding clothes to the Scottish and English officers of arms, respectively. While ordinarily these officers might have expected to sell the clothing on, in fact Margaret wanted to keep her wedding gown, and later she bought it back for 40 nobles (20 pounds Sterling).63 The exchange of clothing and later its return to the queen’s wardrobe reveal not only the value of the clothes themselves, but also how the wardrobes of the king and queen were a mechanism through which courtiers and servants were rewarded for their service and loyalty. 57 Bergenroth, Calendar of Letters, 1:174. Don Pedro noted that Scottish women “dress much better than here [England] and especially as regards the head-dress, which is, I think, the handsomest in the world.” Margaret Scott, “A Burgundian Visit to Scotland in 1449,” Costume 21 (1987): 16. 58 Young, “Fyancells,” 285, 286. 59 Dickson, Lord High Treasurer, 2:209. The damask cloth alone cost £157 18s. 9d. Scots. 60 Hayward, Dress at the Court, 121. 61 Young, “Fyancells,” 293. 62 Hayward, Dress at the Court, 52. 63 Young, “Fyancells,” 292.

162

Material Culture and Margaret Tudor It is not only Margaret’s clothing that Young described in order to evoke the pageantry of the day. Margaret, he noted, was accompanied by ladies richly arrayed, some in Gowns of Cloth of Gold, and others of Crimson velvet and black. Others of satin and of tinsel, of damask, and of chamlet of many colors, hoods, chains and collars upon their Necks accompanied of their Gentlewomen arrayed honestly after their Guise.64

The women of the court, richly dressed, were as much a part of the ceremony as the officers of state or church officials. Their glittering presence, which indicated the power and wealth of both British courts, also enhanced Margaret’s own status as the women of the court came, in the words of John Young, “for to hold Company with the Said Queen.”65 Margaret’s wedding celebration continued for several more days before most of her English escort left to return home, their bags laden with gifts from the Scottish king, but this was only the beginning of Margaret’s life as Queen of Scotland. The preparations for her wedding, as seen through the material culture of the early-sixteenth-century court, established the young girl in her new life as queen and wife. These material objects would remain with her at the Scottish court well into her queenship, acting as signifiers of her identity and status as queen. Margaret would continue to use and reuse items from her wedding trousseau, such as her altar cloth or bed of state, within her queenly household. She would also continue to have her gowns altered for her queenly wardrobe. From March 1504 to October 1506, Margaret had at least nine gowns “translated” by her tailors. These gowns ranged from a relatively inexpensive russet chamlet, which cost 20s. Scots for the “making of it new,” to a gown of crimson velvet, which was given a new edge of black velvet and a new bodice.66 Gowns could be remade if parts of them wore out from normal use. If the fabric was particularly fine, some effort would be made to reuse it. For instance, in 1511 Robert Spittel, the queen’s tailor, was paid for “translating” a gown of white satin into a kirtle for the queen, which included lining the kirtle with Scots black at 14s. Scots per Scottish ell.67 Married in 1503 at thirteen, Margaret was probably still a growing girl, and thus her gowns may have had to be altered to accommodate adolescent growth spurts in the early years of her marriage. There is also some evidence from 1506 onward that Margaret’s gowns were altered during periods that the queen was pregnant: For instance, in October 1506, when Margaret was probably six or seven months pregnant with her first child (Prince James, who lived for only one year), William Welsch, tailor, was paid for “translating” several dresses for the queen, including a gown of purple

64 Ibid., 291. 65 Ibid., 291. 66 Dickson, Lord High Treasurer, 3:40. 67 Ibid., 4:208.

163

Michelle L. Beer velvet and an embroidered gown.68 The queen might also have had her gowns remade before giving them away to her ladies or household staff, in a mundane repetition of the grand distribution of her wedding gown to the king’s heralds.69 The clothing and material goods Margaret brought with her to Scotland, ordered by her father as part of a deliberate policy of promoting his dynasty through the display of his magnificence, physically manifested the change in status the thirteen-year-old princess went through in the summer of 1503. Her progress from her grandmother’s house of Collyweston to Edinburgh allowed Margaret to assume her new role in public, accepting gifts from townspeople and displaying her person, richly dressed, to her father’s subjects and her new Scottish people. Throughout this journey, Margaret’s wardrobe was used to emphasize her status and to impress those she came in contact with. Additionally, the clothing and household goods she brought with her, including bedding, hangings, chairs, and chapel goods emblazoned with the English royal arms, would be put into daily use in her wardrobe and chambers. Margaret’s translation from princess to queen, while celebrated for a few short weeks in pageant and song, would remain manifest through her wardrobe for years to come.70

68 Ibid., 3:265. Other entries of gowns that were translated that roughly correspond to Margaret’s known pregnancies include gowns translated in January and March 1512 by her tailor Robert Spittel, possibly because of the pregnancy that resulted in the birth of the future James V in April 1512; ibid., 4:211, 212. 69 Although we have no specific sources that show Margaret engaged in this type of exchange, both Margaret’s brother Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon distributed their clothes as gifts; London, National Archives, MS E 101/418/6, 9v, 11r. The recipients of the gowns would probably not actually have worn the gowns themselves, and often gifts of clothing would be pulled apart for the material to make other items or would be sold. Occasionally, gowns might be kept as mementos of the giver. Maria Hayward, “Fashion, Finance, Foreign Politics and the Wardrobe of Henry VIII,” in Richardson, Clothing Culture, 177; Catherine L. Howey, “Fashioning Monarchy: Women, Dress, and Power at the Court of Elizabeth I, 1558–1603,” in The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 142–56, at 146. 70 Margaret was married to James IV for ten years, and she bore one surviving son, who later became James V. After James IV’s death at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513, she was married twice more, to Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, and Henry Stewart, Lord Methven. By Angus she had a daughter, Margaret Douglas. Margaret Tudor died in Scotland in 1541. She was the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the great-grandmother, twice over through both her children, to James VI (the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Darnley, Margaret Douglas’s son). James VI claimed the English throne after the death of Elizabeth based on his descent through Margaret Tudor and became the first king of Great Britain in 1603 as James VI and I. Margaret Tudor is an ancestor of the current monarch, Elizabeth II.

164

“A formidable undertaking”: Mrs. A. G. I. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery Elizabeth Coatsworth

A. F. Kendrick began his review of A. G. I. Christie’s English Medieval Embroidery1 by congratulating her on her “formidable undertaking” involving “no less than visiting, examining and (where necessary) photographing every known example of opus ­anglicanum in Europe. With an exemplary thoroughness and experience in stitchery few can rival, and, it seems, regardless of expense, she has laid all students of the beautiful art under a lasting debt.”2 This judgment, written in the year the book came out, surely still stands. There was a major exhibition of opus anglicanum in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1963, with a helpful but brief catalogue,3 but this in no way replaced Mrs. Christie’s 1938 volume, with, as Kendrick also said, its “admirable illustrations, careful descriptions, and arguments on both sides.” The recently proposed project to create a new exhibition of thirteenth-century to fifteenth-century opus anglicanum and a new catalogue of English medieval embroideries from 700 to the middle of the fifteenth century cannot but build on the earlier work, and is in fact a testament to the thoroughness of the original project in establishing a true field of study.4 I would like to thank the following for their advice and encouragement at various points in the writing of this paper: John Davies, Peter Lester, Beth Matney, Frances Pritchard, and Philip Sykas.   1 A. G. I. Christie, English Medieval Embroidery: A brief survey of English embroidery dating from the beginning of the tenth century until the end of the fourteenth / together with a descriptive catalogue of the surviving examples: illustrated with one hundred and sixty plates and numerous drawings in the text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938). References to catalogue entries throughout this article appear in the text as “Christie cat.” followed by the number.   2 A. F. Kendrick, review of English Medieval Embroidery, by A. G. I. Christie, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 73 (July–December 1938): 39–40, at 39. An equally admiring review is to be found in Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 22 (1938): 28–31. The anonymous author notes with pride that Mrs. Christie was a member of the Needle and Bobbin Club.   3 Donald King, Opus Anglicanum: English Medieval Embroidery: An exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum 26 September to 24 November 1963 [exhibition catalogue] (London: Arts Council, 1963).  4 Opus Angicanum Symposium Day, Victoria and Albert Museum, Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. This included an overview of the proposed Opus Anglicanum Project by Professor Michael Michael (Christie’s Education / University of Glasgow) and a series of presentations on aspects of study in the area in two

Elizabeth Coatsworth Not all reviews of Christie’s earlier work had been as sympathetic to her approach as Kendrick’s. One, on her book Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, while generally positive, considered she spent too much time on “unimportant stitches” at the expense of those the reviewer thought more significant,5 a view unlikely to be upheld by modern researchers on the development of stitch.6 In this respect, Christie was ahead of the game, though she was not alone, nor the first, to attempt a study of stitch. It seems useful to see where she reflected, or differed from, the intellectual background which informed her education as an embroiderer and teacher, and influenced her working life. WHO WAS MRS. A. G. I. CHRISTIE?

In view of the interest in her work, which seems never to have wavered until the present, one might expect a great deal to be known about Mrs. Christie. Published details of her life are, however, surprisingly sparse, given her fame among students and specialists of early medieval embroidery. There is a brief biographical note in the first volume of Constance Howard’s study of twentieth-century embroidery in Britain, but this, while appreciative of Christie’s contribution and informative in a number of ways, has the wrong dates for her appointment to the Royal College of Art and her death, errors repeated in later publications.7 She published under several variations of her married name and her own or her husband’s name and initials, which has caused occasional problems in constructing her biography. It is, however, interesting that she moved from calling herself by her husband’s name and initials to using her own initials—and in her last and major work, to using her own initials without the preceding “Mrs.” In the research for this paper, I have used published histories of textiles, as well as census and other public records available online, such as Registers of Birth, Marriage, and Death Indexes for England and Wales and the England and Wales National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1966. I have not attempted to

5

6

7

sessions, “Iconography, Documents, Manufacture and Trade” and “Cataloguing and Digitisation,” by Glyn Davies, Julian Gardner, Kate Heard, Colum Hourihane, Lisa Monnas, Nigel Morgan, Evelyn Thomas, Evelin Wetter, and Catherine Yvard. “M. M.,” review of Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, by Mrs. A. H. Christie, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 10 (October 1906–March 1907): 194–95. “M. M.” is not impossibly May Morris, who was in charge of embroidery at the Central School of Art and Design when Christie was there (see p. 169). Whoever its writer was, it belonged to that class of review which damns with faint praise an author who does not write the book the reviewer would have written. Irene Emery, The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification (1980; repr., Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1994), esp. 229–57; Anne Butler Morrell, The Migration of Stitches and the Practice of Stitch as Movement (Ahmedabad, India: D. S. Mehta on behalf of Sarabhai Foundation, 2007). Constance Howard, Twentieth Century Embroidery in Great Britain to 1939 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1981), 42, 171. See also Linda Parry, Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1988; repr. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 121, and Gail Marsh, Early Twentieth Century Embroidery Techniques (Lewes, UK: Guild of Master Craftsman Publications, 2011), 90.

166

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery research other records, make no claim to be a professional biographer, and will be happy to hear of any further attributable information. Family Ada Grace Ida Chadburn was born in 1872, in Poplar (Middlesex), a suburb of London, and died in 1953, at age 80, in Northampton. Her father was the Rev. James Chadburn, described in the 1881 census as an Independent minister (of religion) and in the 1891 census as a Congregational minister. He was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of a wholesale provision merchant; his first post as a minister was in Middlesbrough, from 1866. He published a number of poems in various Blackburn journals under a nom de plume.8 His wife, Grace Tetley, whom he married in 1867, was from Bradford, Yorkshire, and their two elder children were both born in Middlesbrough (then Yorkshire): Maud Mary (Maud) in 1868 and George Haworth (or Haworthe) in 1871. Also in 1871, Rev. Chadburn moved to Trinity Chapel, Poplar, an important Nonconformist church, and soon after this his second daughter, Grace, was born. There was a younger daughter, Alice, age five at the time of the 1901 census. She was not in the household at the time of the 1911 census (possibly away at school at that time, as her older sisters had been). She died in 1915, and is therefore not mentioned in a legal notice of James Chadburn’s death (1916) in the London Gazette, Feb. 9, 1917, which requested claims on his estate to be directed to the solicitors acting for the executors, naming the three elder children. The estate was a considerable fortune for the period, at £121,538 6s. 10d.9 The inheritance, however, must have allowed his children to pursue their interests without fear of want, and might explain, for example, why the Christies were able to retire to Norfolk in their early fifties. Grace left the largest estate of the siblings on her death in 1953, suggesting that the inheritance was more than sufficient to enable her to pursue her researches, and also possibly that her publications were profitable. The older brother and sister, however, left only modest estates at their deaths. In the case of Maud, almost certainly her wealth went into the hospitals which she did so much to establish and for which she spent much of her time fund-raising, and also in bringing up her adopted children. The careers of Grace’s elder brother and sister are of some interest, in showing something of her background. Her brother’s early life was in many ways parallel to Grace’s. George Haworthe Chadburn (d. 1950), a landscape and portrait painter, trained 8

9

George Hull, The Poets and Poetry of Blackburn, 1793–1902 (Blackburn, UK: J. and G. Toulmin, 1902), 214–40. Hull also reported that James Chadburn “for eighteen years was in the forefront of Metropolitan Nonconformity,” from his appointment to Trinity Chapel, Poplar, in 1871 until his retirement to Sutton, Surrey, because of his wife’s failing health. I have not been able as yet to ascertain the source of this fortune, nor the origins of a granddaughter, Eileen Deane, acknowledged in his will, except that she cannot be either a legitimate descendant of his own or an unacknowledged child of any of his surviving children. The money most likely came from the Tetley family. Grace Tetley’s father, George Greenwood Tetley, J.P., Stuff Merchant (d. 1879), left a fortune of “under £180,000” to be administered by his widow. She died in 1901, leaving £45,000, which suggests that the bulk of the fortune had been settled elsewhere earlier.

167

Elizabeth Coatsworth at St. John’s Wood School of Art, Westminster School of Art, the Slade School, and the Royal Academy Schools. From 1914, he was a member of the Art Workers’ Guild, an organisation founded in 1884 by leading members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which will figure in further discussion below. Records of the Guild describe him as a painter who exhibited work at the Royal Academy between 1909 and 1919, and at the Royal Society of British Artists between 1901 and 1908.10 Two of his paintings can be seen on the Christie’s saleroom Web site.11 In 1899 he married Mabel Harwood, who as Mabel Chadburn became a book illustrator, whose work still seems collectible.12 The Chadburns had three children, two sons and a daughter. Their daughter, Joan, married the minor Georgian poet Cecil Lay. The older sister, Maud (d. 1957), is arguably more famous than Grace now (and probably was, in her lifetime). She was educated at Milton Mount College, in Gravesend, Kent, a school for the daughters of Congregational ministers. She went to University College, London, and later to the London School of Medicine, earning the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine (1894), Doctor of Medicine (1898), and Bachelor of Surgery (1899). From 1903 to 1922 she was surgeon at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, and in 1912 she co-founded the South London Hospital for Women and Children.13 She merited an obituary in The Times, which noted that she had been awarded the CBE in 1934.14 Follow-up letters, from two of the several children she adopted, provide a more detailed appreciation of her life and also indicated that she had a “deeply unhappy” childhood and had persevered in her chosen profession against the “strongly expressed disapproval” of her father, though he later recognised her “brilliance.”15 A photographic portrait of her by Karl Pollak is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.16 There is evidence, however, that the siblings remained in touch throughout their lives (see page 181), so the unhappiness experienced by Maud does not seem to have derived from her own generation. Early life and education Grace’s life followed a different path from that of her elder sister, although she too was sent away to school—in the 1881 census, at age 9, she was a boarder at a school in Northamptonshire: Hatton Hall, Broad Green, Wellingborough, about which I can find 10 http://www.artworkersguild.org/about-us/past-members (accessed March 22, 2013). 11 http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=2097616 (accessed May 15, 2013). 12 Notably Mabel Chadburn, The Fairy Bird and Piggy Wig, With Other Stories, Written and Illustrated by M. Chadburn (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1905); Chadburn, Mother Goose and Other Nursery Rhymes, with coloured illustrations by Mabel Chadburn, Tales for Children from Many Lands (1903; repr., London: J. M. Dent, 1926). 13 M. A. Elston, “Run by Women, (Mainly) for Women: Medical Women’s Hospitals in Britain, 1866– 1948,” in Women and Modern Medicine, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad and Anne Hardy, Clio Medica / The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine 61 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), 73–107. 14 Times (London), April 26, 1957. 15 “M. L.,” Times (London), May 1, 1957, and a second, from Michael Forbes, May 8, 1957. 16 National Portrait Gallery, London, museum no. NPG x15009.

168

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery no further information. There were 75 residents at the address, including five servants. The “Mistress of the Ladies Boarding School” was Catherine Tetley, age 50. Her eldest daughter, Gertrude, age 21, was a governess in the school; her youngest, Maude, 18, like Grace was described as a “Scholar.” Since Grace’s mother, also named Grace, was a Tetley, and there is some coincidence of family names and places of residence, it seems possible that the husband of the headmistress was a relative. When the 1891 census was taken, Grace, age 19, was back in the family home, with her sister Maud, described as a medical student, and brother George, an art student and painter. No occupation or educational status was recorded for Grace at this time, but Constance Howard recorded (without giving any dates) that she, like her brother, studied at the Slade School of Fine Art as a painter, and that this preceded her turn to embroidery as her major interest.17 When she first comes to public notice, however, it is as a student of embroidery at the Regent Street Central School of Arts and Crafts (also the London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts, now subsumed under Central Saint Martins), in a 1900 review of an exhibition of student work, in which she is singled out for rare praise, though with a twist rather surprising in view of her lifelong interest in medieval embroidery: The embroidery section was not strong. The samplers were decidedly poor. Miss Grace Chadburn, however, showed some very good work. Perhaps the most attractive was the box illustrated here. In addition, a bag with steel fittings and a kettle-holder were distinctly effective. They are not mere adaptations of old work; indeed they owe less to the past than is the case with most modern needlework with any pretension to art.18

The college in which she studied had been founded in 1896 in temporary premises in Regent Street, then moved to Southampton Row in 1908. Its students were described as “chiefly professional … but although the school is primarily intended for the training and improvement of art and trade workers, the amateur element is to be found in many of the classes.”19 It is likely that Grace was among the “amateur element.” Mary Schoeser has given a picture of the school at the time Grace attended, noting the complexity of its textile programmes—day schools, evening classes, trade school, special lectures, and the incorporation of the Female School of Art (founded 1842–43) in 1908—which makes it difficult to trace the careers of most of its students, particularly from the earlier years. But she also showed that between 1897 and 1915, the emphasis of the textiles section was on embroidery. May [Mary] Morris, the younger daughter of the artist and designer William Morris, herself an influential embroiderer and designer, directed and then “visited” the school’s classes from 1897 to 1919, thus bringing to bear on its students the influence of the artistic traditions of 17 Howard, Twentieth Century Embroidery, 42, 171. 18 “C. H.” in “Studio-Talk,” in Studio International, i.e., The Studio, vol. 17 (1900): 266–310. The Regent Street Central School of Arts and Crafts in London is discussed at 266–71; the mention of Grace Chadburn is at 270–1. 19 Charles Holme, Arts and Crafts: A Review of the Work Executed by Students in the Leading Art Schools of Great Britain and Ireland (London: The Studio Ltd., 1916). “The London County Council Central School of Art and Crafts” is at 7–10, with illustrations of work at 44–50.

169

Elizabeth Coatsworth the Arts and Crafts Movement. It was in line with that movement’s aspirations that the school provided access to the demands of clients, the commissioning process, and other practical aspects such as costing. Its students were also encouraged to select from other courses offered—especially, in 1897, the drawing class which included aspects of wallpaper and textile design. At the time Grace Chadburn was there, the study of design was in the hands of Archibald H. Christie, who designed silks for the English Silk Weaving Company, Ipswich.20 Grace was probably taught by Archibald Christie, whom she married in Marylebone, London, in 1900. She is not mentioned in Schoeser’s study, however, except in the section “Manuals and technical handbooks: A selection by former staff and students of the Central School,” pages 156–57, under Fashion and Embroidery: “Mrs. Archibald H. Christie, Embroidery and tapestry weaving (The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks), John Hogg, 1906.” This is followed in the same section by “Archibald H. Christie, Traditional methods of pattern designing, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1929.”21 Marriage Before looking at Grace’s working life and career, it is necessary to say something of her husband, since his work and connections certainly influenced her. Archibald Haswell Christie was born in 1871, the son of Robert Christie, cabinet maker. In the 1891 census, at age 20, he is already mentioned as an artist and designer. In the 1901 census, after his marriage to Grace, his occupation is given as architect; in 1911, as Inspector of Art Schools for London County Council. He is mentioned in 1916, at Westminster School of Art, where “At present the position of head master is held temporarily by Mr. A. H. Christie, one of the London County Council inspectors.”22 A brief bibliography shows that he wrote until the early 1930s, in at least two instances in collaboration with W. R. Lethaby, and that at least one of his books was regarded highly enough to be reprinted long after his death, in 1969.23 W. R. Lethaby was an architect, designer, and an important member of the circle around William Morris and Philip Webb (the leading lights of the Arts and Crafts Movement); co-founder 20 Mary Schoeser, “Following the Thread: Textiles,” in Making Their Mark: Art, Craft and Design at the Central School, 1896–1966, ed. Sylvia Backemeyer (London: Herbert Press, 2000), 46–57. Parry, Arts and Crafts Movement, 123–24. 21 Backemeyer, Making Their Mark, 156–57. 22 Holme, Arts and Crafts, 24. 23 Archibald H. Christie, “The Development of Ornament from Arabic Script,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 40 (January–June 1922): 287–88, 291–92, figs. 1–6; Archibald H. Christie, “The Development of Ornament from Arabic Script,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 41 (July– December 1922): 34, 37–38, 41, figs. 7–12; Archibald H. Christie, “Fatimid Wood-Carvings in the Victoria and Albert Museum,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 46 (January–June 1925): 184, 187, and plates A, B, facing p. 184; Archibald H. Christie, “Islamic Minor Arts and Their Influence upon European Work,” in The Legacy of Islam, ed. Sir Thomas Arnold and A. Guillaume (London: Clarendon Press, 1931), 108–51; Archibald H. Christie, Pattern Design: An Introduction to the Study of Formal Ornament, 2nd ed. (1929; repr. facs., New York: Dover, 1969); W. R. Lethaby and A. H. Christie, The Artistic Crafts Series: School Copies and Examples (London: John Hogg, 1904).

170

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery of the Art Workers’ Guild (to which George Haworthe Chadburn belonged); and a significant figure in early-twentieth-century art education. He became Art Inspector to the Technical Education Board of the recently formed London County Council in 1894 (and therefore Archibald Christie’s superior), and was the founder of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1896, at which Archibald Christie worked and Grace Christie studied. In 1901, he became the first Professor of Design at the Royal College of Art. The importance of Lethaby to Grace’s career hardly needs underlining. Archibald and Grace Christie had one son, Robert Noel, born in December 1903. He is described as a chartered accountant in the probate register of both parents. After his mother’s death, he donated a panel embroidered by her in 1914 to the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as other pieces (see Appendix 8.1). Working life It is possible that Grace Christie taught at the Central School, but there is no trace of this in the records: The embroidery course was led by Miss Ellen Wright, at first under May Morris and then on her own, both before and after Grace transferred to the Royal College of Art (RCA).24 In 1911, a published report on the RCA, which recorded every staff member appointed between 1837 and 1909, noted that in 1901 “Mrs. Christie” had been appointed as “Instructor, Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving.” No date of leaving was recorded—the earliest prospectus with a staff list at the college is from 1926, and she was not being employed then.25 Constance Howard, however, reports that Grace Christie retired from the RCA in 1921, and this is probably right, as that is the year that role was taken over by Kathleen Harris.26 Grace is mentioned in Charles Holme’s report on the college, published in 1916, where “the teaching staff for individual subjects includes … Mrs. A. H. Christie for tapestry weaving and embroidery” for the Design and Crafts Course at the RCA under W. R. Lethaby.27 Christopher Frayling, in his 1987 history of the RCA, mentions her among people brought there by W. R. Lethaby, noting that teaching facilities in her areas improved after their arrival, so that “By 1905, the College was in a position to offer demonstrations and facilities for students in … embroidery and tapestry weaving.”28 One of Lethaby’s achievements in art education took place during his tenure here, in that he set up a series of illustrated books promulgating the Arts and Crafts philosophy to which he adhered—the Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks. These were mainly written by members of the RCA Design staff, and the series included Grace Christie’s Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, published in 1906. Frayling says of this series that its books 24 Judy Lindsay, head of the Museum and Study Collection, University of the Arts, London, Central Saint Martins, e-mail message to author, July 30, 2012. 25 Neil Parkinson, archivist, Royal College of Art, London, pers. comm., 2012. The instructor in embroidery in 1926 was Mrs. K. M. Harris. 26 Howard, Twentieth Century Embroidery, 69. 27 Holme, Arts and Crafts, 19–21. 28 Christopher Frayling, The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1987), 4, 69.

171

Elizabeth Coatsworth together represent the most sustained attempt to articulate the “Arts and Crafts” philosophy of education—firmly rooted in workshop practice, and derived from the experience of teaching in the Design School of the Royal College, as well as in the Craft Department of the Central School. Lethaby’s introductions made clear that the purpose of the series was to “treat design itself as an essential part of good workmanship,” to demonstrate that design and workmanship were so closely allied that “One hardly knows where one ends and the other begins”; and to convince teachers that “the true (?) method of design is always growth, not rootless egoism.”29

However, while noting the apparent popularity of the Embroidery courses (quoting the Everywoman’s Encyclopaedia for 1911, which observed that there was an “Embroidery class every Thursday afternoon … [taught by] Mrs. Archibald Christie … attended by almost every woman student in the school”), Frayling casts doubt on the success of the course (and indeed other courses in the RCA) in creating sustainable careers for its female students, though he produces no statistics for this.30 The implication may be that many of those attending were not necessarily interested in a career in embroidery, or the arts in general, as a means of earning a living. The RCA itself at this time employed only two women teachers—Constance Pott (printmaker), and Grace Christie. In a later book, which in theory covers the early part of the twentieth century, Frayling attributes the success of the RCA’s textiles department to the appointment of Reco Capey in 1924; no textile design before 1950 is included, and embroidery is not mentioned at all.31 While Grace Christie was working at the RCA, both she and her husband were active, between 1903 and 1916, in exhibiting their own work at the Arts and Crafts Movement’s exhibitions. In 1903, for example, Grace showed embroideries and handwoven tapestries; in 1916 she and her husband, with F. W. Troup (architect of the Art Workers’ Guild), combined to exhibit “a bedroom for a small country house with white embroidered hangings.”32 After her retirement she remained active in the world of embroidery training, as examiner for embroidery for the City and Guilds of London Institute from 1923 to 1927. Howard also reports, doubtless from personal reminiscence of those who knew her or were taught by her, that Grace had a reputation as a martinet, who insisted that all work not done directly under supervision had to be unpicked.33 However, it is clear from other comments of contemporaries that she was regarded both as an inspiring teacher and a most highly skilled embroiderer.34 There are a few other public references to and by Mrs. Christie in the 1920s. There is a letter from her (calling her Miss Grace Christie), in The Times, Jan. 25, 1923, re29 Ibid., 71–72. 30 Ibid., 74. 31 Christopher Frayling, Art and Design: 100 Years at the Royal College of Art (London: Collins & Brown, 1999). 32 Parry, Arts and Crafts Movement, 78, 121. 33 Howard, Twentieth Century Embroidery, 42. 34 Parry, Arts and Crafts Movement, 121, reports that W. G. Pulson Townsend described her as “perhaps the most skilled embroideress of her generation.”

172

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery ferring to the importance of English artists as draughtsmen of figural compositions in the embroidery of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The address of the correspondent is Ingleborough House, East Runton, Norfolk, which is where she and her husband lived from 1921 if not earlier. In 1922, her work and that of her pupils was shown at an exhibition, “British Craftsmanship,” in the Victoria and Albert Museum, organised by the British Institute of Industrial Art (founded in 1920). An account of this exhibition in the Illustrated London News of February 1922 reported on a piece, “The Blue Bird,” by Doris Taylor, one of Christie’s students, concluding: “Mrs. Christie and her pupils illustrate the beauty of stitching stories and fancies in delicate colours into samplers, needlebooks, mats and even brooches, working in a single colour with a restrained and pleasing design. Mrs. Christie’s animal samplers are particularly beautiful examples.”35 Christie also exhibited her own work in 1923 at the first exhibition of the Embroiderers’ Guild (founded in 1920). I have so far found nothing of the Norfolk life of either Mrs. Christie or her husband, apart from their publications, after the early 1920s. However, in 1925, a review of an exhibition notes an antique stall held by Mrs. Christie, specialising in early and middle Victorian needlework, part of the stock held by her at a shop at 345, Fulham Road, London, S.W., which indicated a continuance of London connections, and an otherwise unreported aspect of her work.36 Archibald Christie died in Norfolk in 1945; Grace, according to the probate record of her will, was resident in Surrey at the time of her death (Feb. 1, 1953), which suggests that at some stage she moved to live with or near her son. She died, however, in a hospital in Northampton. WORK BEFORE ENGLISH MEDIEVAL EMBROIDERY

Embroidery Grace Christie’s writings were all directed at promoting the study of embroidery, whether to modern practitioners, both professional and lay, or to historians of the development of the craft. Her interest and understanding of design of both present and past was supported by her own proficiency as a designer, a draughtswoman, and a needleworker. Her work can be appreciated in the photographs, mainly in black and white, of her own work reproduced in some of the books and articles discussed below, and in some works preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, with which, as we will also see from her writings, she had a long and fruitful connection. These include the panel donated by her son, a number of samplers, and a curtain decorated with silk and braid on linen (see Appendix 8.1). Her influence lived on to some extent in the work of students, some of whom became teachers and practitioners, such as Doris Taylor, mentioned above, or Isabel Walton, who taught at Blackburn School of Art and Design—though it is notable that both produced work which showed them 35 Howard, Twentieth Century Embroidery, 91. 36 E. R[olleston], “The Fourteenth Englishwoman Exhibition of Arts and Crafts,” The Embroideress 13 (1925): vii.

173

Elizabeth Coatsworth r­ esponsive to changing fashions of the 1920s and 1930s, while all of Christie’s work that has survived seems to date from her period at the RCA.37 Some of Taylor’s student work, preserved in the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, for example, shows the initial strong influence of Christie’s interest in medieval stitch types, the use of lettering as ornament, and designs incorporating creatures and plants from nature, as in a study of Jeanne d’Arc (1913–18) using underside couching and embroidered inscription, a sampler (1916–18) with two scenes from Aesop’s fables, and a drawstring bag with a formal flower arrangement (1915).38 Taylor’s later works show experimentation with new methods, such as machine embroidery, and new styles as the 1920s and ’30s progressed, though it is interesting that they show a continued interest in the use of lettering in design. Doris Taylor’s career illustrates the small world of teacher/embroiderers at the time: She studied first under Kathleen Harris at Manchester Municipal School of Art, before studying under Grace Christie at the RCA, and later succeeded Kathleen Harris (in the year the latter succeeded Grace Christie at the RCA), as head of department in charge of dress and embroidery at Manchester Municipal School of Art (later subsumed into Manchester Polytechnic, now Manchester Metropolitan University).39 Writings and edited works A detailed study of Christie’s writing before 1938 (see Appendix 8.2) shows how early themes relevant to her magnum opus began to appear, as well as demonstrating her commitment to the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement, though this was already beginning to have less influence on artists/designers and art schools by the time she retired from the Royal College of Art in 1921. Some of her early writings, in the form of periodicals or part-works wholly or partly written as well as edited by her, seem to have been short-lived. The most impressive of these periodicals, and the earliest, Embroidery, ran to six parts during 1908 and 1909, which were collected in one volume by James Pearsall publishers in 1909, keeping to the original format. It, like her book Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, shows how long her later and most famous book was in the preparation: In the introduction to the collected periodical, she talked of the thirteenth century as the high point of the art of embroidery in England and the early nineteenth century as its lowest point, and of her hopes for the future, as “there has been an evident movement in the direction of its revival, and there is every reason to hope that the movement will prove persistent.” She continued with an account of the fame of opus anglicanum, and was clearly already familiar with some survivals, in France, Spain, and Italy, attesting to its international importance. She also underscored the value of studying it; examination of these examples, she wrote, “will afford sufficient evidence of the grandeur of the 37 See Marsh, Embroidery Techniques, for Christie-inspired work by Annie Eastwood, 90, and information on Isabel Walton, 95–96. 38 http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/collection/advsearch/: search term Doris Taylor. 39 Howard, Twentieth Century Embroidery, 70, 186.

174

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery work done in past centuries, but the skills and labour involved in embroidering them is not so generally realised.” These skills she demonstrated by an analysis of the Cope of the Passion of St. Bertrand de Comminges (Christie cat. 66), suggesting that ten years could be an underestimate of the time required to carry out its design, with 100 figures, sixty quadrupeds, about thirty birds, and more, including the background, couched in gold thread in a pattern, which she considered a work of art in itself. She concluded, “Every line and detail of the whole work exhibits the most consummate draughtsmanship of both pen and needle.” Good design and drawing were always linked in her mind, and the importance of design and draughtsmanship to this process were clearly emphasised here, but she also made it plain, as she did elsewhere, that (for purposes of modern embroidery) while it is useful and even necessary to study the design and methods of the past, she was not talking about simple copying in new work. Nor was she interested in attempts at realism, her discussion of design always emphasising that embroidery was a decorative art which should not emulate painting. Embroidery is impressive in its scope: Each part has a frontispiece illustrating some example of a historic work, which is subsequently discussed, and each includes discussion of stitches, working methods, designing, and draughtsmanship (with a view to providing practical help “to those who wish to plan their own designs”), plus notes on the history of embroidery, its materials, and traditional methods of work. There are also coloured reproductions taken from actual examples, for those less adept at designing for themselves, to use. “G. C,” i.e., Grace Christie, was the most prolific single contributor (an examination of her titles, Appendix 8.2, shows many themes subsequently taken up in English Medieval Embroidery), but there were many others, including her husband, Archibald H. Christie, who contributed four pieces on design, and some very well-known writers of the time, mainly associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement: A. F. Kendrick, Walter Crane,40 W. R. Lethaby, W. St. John Hope.41 There are also two articles on opus anglicanum, in translation, by Louis de Farcy,42 an important influence on Christie. Of these writers for her journal, the influence and patronage of W. R. Lethaby in connection with Mrs. Christie’s working life has already been discussed, but A[lbert] F[rank] Kendrick (d. 1954) deserves further mention, as he too must have been a major influence. He was Keeper of the Department of Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which he joined in 1897. Christie would certainly have been aware of his knowledge of medieval English embroidery. He wrote English Embroidery (chapters 40 Walter Crane (1845–1915) was a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and very influential within it; a noted writer and educator; and one of the founder members (with Lewis F. Day) of the Art Workers’ Guild. He was also a painter, book illustrator, and producer of other decorative arts, such as ceramics, wallpaper, and textiles. He was briefly principal of the Royal College of Art immediately prior to W. R. Lethaby. 41 W. St. John Hope (1854–1919) was an archaeologist, architectural historian, speaker to the Art Workers’ Guild, etc. 42 Louis de Farcy (1841–1921) is noted for his monograph La broderie du XIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours d’après des spécimens authentiques et les anciens inventaires (Angers: Belhomme, Libraire-Éditeur, 1890) and its two supplements (1900 and 1919).

175

Elizabeth Coatsworth II to V cover from the Anglo-Saxon period to 1530), which appeared in 1904,43 and English Needlework.44 He was Keeper throughout the time Christie wrote several articles on items of opus anglicanum in the Victoria and Albert collection as well as her 1938 book. She must in particular have been profoundly influenced by the major exhibition of English embroidery up to the sixteenth century put on at the museum in 1905, by Kendrick, who also wrote the introduction and notes for the handsome folio catalogue produced for the event by the Burlington Fine Arts Club.45 This exhibition and volume covered a longer time scale than Christie allowed in English Medieval Embroidery, but it would seem that they opened her eyes to the subject: The introduction alerts us to many of the figures associated with embroidery from contemporary sources, particularly to the apparent preponderance of pre-Conquest sources as compared to known pre-Conquest surviving embroideries; to the Tree of Jesse as an apparently favourite theme; and to the idea of the Great Period centred around ca. 1300, and of subsequent decline, which Kendrick wrote about also in his English Embroidery of 1904—all themes taken up and developed in Christie’s later work. A later periodical (entirely her work), The Sampler Series, a set of six coloured cards published from 1911 to 1913, had instructions and illustrations for sampler designs, all but one a plant design; other publications show that plant designs were a constant theme of her work. The journal Needle and Thread seems to have run to only four numbers, all published in 1914 (it was discontinued at the outbreak of the 1914–18 war). Its expanded title, “A magazine devoted to the study of fine needlework, treating of stitches, of pattern making, of embroidery in the past and all other subjects of interest to those who would ply daintily needle and thread,” sounds as if aimed at a popular rather than a scholarly market, but included, for example, her first publication on the iconography of the Tree of Jesse, represented on several examples of opus anglicanum. Her two books prior to English Medieval Embroidery (Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving and Samplers and Stitches) were both intended for serious practitioners of the arts, though not all readers and users would have been professionals. W. R. Lethaby’s introduction to Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving suggested that in Christie’s text “historical development [is] only incidentally touched upon,” although the drawings used were taken mainly from actual embroideries and tapestries, or failing that from photographic reproductions, for example from the work of Louis de Farcy. Like the journal Embroidery discussed above, which it only shortly preceded, it is notable for its many drawings, of stitch types for example, which reappeared in her later major book, and also for how many motifs and figure subjects from medieval copes, in both drawings and plates, were the examples chosen to illustrate a particular technique. Again as in the journal, topics are aired which later reappear in English Medieval Embroidery. Opus consutum, identified as appliqué, for example, is discussed on pages 172–80 and illustrated (fig. 95) by an example from a sealbag, ca. 1248–69, made from 43 A. F. Kendrick, English Embroidery (London: G. Newnes, 1904). 44 A. F. Kendrick, English Needlework (London: A. & C. Black, 1933). 45 A. F. Kendrick, Exhibition of English Embroidery Executed Prior to the Middle of the XVI Century (London: Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1905).

176

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery a cut-down horse trapper or possibly surcoat.46 Thus, throughout, the importance of the history of embroidery is stressed, though, as in the pattern set in the introduction to the journal Embroidery, not for the purposes of blind copying, but rather, for learning by examining the treatments used in the past, as well as building up a personal notebook of motif and technique. Design and draughtsmanship, the use of different tools and materials, as well as stitch types and techniques, are covered thoroughly. Samplers and Stitches is a more detailed look at embroidery alone, filled with her characteristic drawings of stitches and designs (239 in all) and 34 plates, mainly of her own work or that of her students, and therefore to be much valued. It would be instructive, in assessing the contribution of Grace Christie, to see how this book fits in with other earlier and contemporary writings on stitch, especially those of Lady Marian Alford, Louisa Pesel, and Lewis F. Day (the last two her contemporaries with connections to the Royal College of Art), but this is beyond the remit of the present paper. Suffice it to say here that such a study would be concerned with the major art movements of the nineteenth into the earlier twentieth century—the Gothic Revival and the Arts and Crafts Movement, in the latter of which Grace Christie was intimately involved—and that Christie’s approach was very different from that of Pesel, and in some ways more in tune with the ideas of Lewis F. Day.47 Samplers and Stitches, first published in 1920, was the first book to classify stitches into recognisable groups based on the movement of needle and thread. Her chapters II to V covered the main categories of Flat, Looped, Chained, and Knotted Stitches (and the first paragraph of chapter I provides a clear explanation of the classification system), but later chapters extend these categories and also expand on variations on these themes: Composite Stitches; Canvas Stitches; Drawn Fabric Stitches; Black Work—Lace Stitch Fillings— Darning; Cut and Drawn Work and Insertion Stitches; Couching and Laid Work. The third edition added a chapter on inlaid work and quilting, and all editions after the first increased the number of illustrations. In addition to the plates, every chapter is enlivened by drawings of details from past work and with her characteristically elegant and clearly explanatory drawings of stitches, often repeated but never bettered, since they are clear to both non-embroiderers and amateurs, as well as to practitioners. The 46 British Museum, London, museum no. 1856,0819.1. 47 For discussion of the importance of textiles in the Arts and Crafts Movement, see Parry, Arts and Crafts Movement. For a discussion of the interest in stitches, see Marsh, Embroidery Techniques, 84–109; and for the importance of Pesel’s work, see Ann French, “But What Can the Museum Do To Encourage Embroidery? Museums, Collectors and Embroidery,” in Hand Stitch: Perspectives, ed. Alice Kettle and Jane McKeating (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 164–75. For individual works of Alford, Pesel, and Day, see Letitia Higgin and Lady Marian Alford, Handbook of Embroidery (London: Sampson Low, 1880); Lady Marian Alford, Needlework as Art (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1886); Louisa Pesel, “Cretan Embroidery.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 10 (October–March 1907): 155–61; Louisa Pesel, “The Embroideries of the Aegean,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 10 (October–March 1907): 230–9; Louisa Pesel, “The So-called ‘Janina’ Embroideries,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 11 (April–September 1907): 32–39; W. G. Paulson Townsend, assisted by Louisa F. Pesel, Embroidery, or the Craft of the Needle, 2nd ed. (London: Truslove and Hanson, 1907); Lewis Foreman Day and Mary Buckle, Art in Needlework (London: Batsford, 1900).

177

Elizabeth Coatsworth desire to clarify and educate, an important strand of the Arts and Crafts Movement, is evident in the amount of detail provided and the clear verbal explanations of stitch movements. It should be no surprise that Samplers and Stitches ran to five editions, some revised, the last reprint published in 1985. It received favourable reviews throughout its publishing history, and there are online sites devoted to admiration of this work, and particularly to its drawn representations of stitches, attesting to its continuing influence.48 Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving also went through four editions, including some revision, between 1906 and 1924; its last reprint was in 1979. It is a testament to the quality of the writing and the illustration of these texts that secondhand copies still appear to sell well; both are also available online.49 Even more relevant to the present study, however, is a series of articles by Christie which appeared in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs between 1913 and 1936, all on opus anglicanum pieces, one in conjunction with G. Baldwin Brown, most famous as the historian of The Arts in Early England, a six-volume study of the art and architecture of the Anglo-Saxon period from the pagan period to the eleventh century. This study is noteworthy for looking at social conditions and evidence for technique and craftsmanship, as well as style, an approach which Christie would have perceived as sympathetic. Unsurprisingly, their collaboration was on an article about two of the three embroideries from the tomb of St. Cuthbert at Durham. She also published one article on opus anglicanum in Needle and Thread, as noted above. Christie was also clearly deeply involved in the publication The Embroideress: A periodical treating of the practice and history of all kinds of decorative needlework, edited by Mrs. J. D. Rolleston (and from 1933 by Mrs. J. D. Rolleston and Mrs. Kathleen M. Harris) and published by James Pearsall & Co. and The Old Bleach Linen Company in quarterly instalments from 1922 to 1939. I have not had access to a complete run of this journal, but it is noticeable that some illustrations appear to be by her, and for occasional photos of items she owned, she is referred to as Mrs. Christie and her antiques shop and its address are given (see above, page 173). Some articles are on subjects of interest to her but appear to be by others; when signed, it is usually by an editor; she is also acknowledged in its pages as, for example, a competition judge. Some possibilities, and reviews of her work from this journal, are included in Appendix 8.2.50

48 See for example http://www.needlenthread.com/2010/08/samplers-stitches-christie.html (accessed May 15, 2013). See Marsh, Embroidery Techniques, 90–91, 96–97, for an appreciation of her work and its inspiration on her students and near contemporaries. 49 Samplers and Stitches at Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/cu31924014066249; Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving at Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/embroiderytapest00chri (accessed Feb. 20, 2013). 50 I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Helen Conrad-O’Briain of Trinity College, Dublin, in tracking down these entries. There are certainly others in this periodical, but it takes an eye for Mrs. Christie’s written and drawing style to pick them out!

178

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery GRACE CHRISTIE AND ENGLISH MEDIEVAL EMBROIDERY

The interest in medieval textiles, including embroidery, certainly predated Mrs. Christie—beginning with at least the Gothic Revival. However, before the exhibition of English medieval embroidery put on by Kendrick in 1905, surveys of needlework tended to cover a longer period of history, and sometimes also ranged over a wide geographical area.51 The 1905 exhibition, however, pinpointed an area of interest which became more focused in several of the writers of the Arts and Crafts Movement.52 It is not to denigrate these writings to say that while giving quite a large amount of detail, the approach emphasised the aesthetic qualities of the designs, styles, and colouring; when stitches were noted, it was to point out their use in enhancing the viewer’s aesthetic appreciation. The effect is inspiring, making one want to see the object described, but might leave one disappointed with more incomplete or damaged works, or those which might be deemed of poorer quality. A more scholarly approach, as one would expect, can be found in the work of W. R. Lethaby, who would certainly have influenced Christie. He wrote two articles for the Burlington Magazine, one on the Ascoli Cope, relating it to thirteenth-century English wall paintings and floor tiles and making useful comparisons with other opus anglicanum pieces; and one on some evidence for the possible role of the Broderers of London in the making of the embroideries, recognising the importance of guild and contractual records in the study of the subject.53 However, if only the works of these writers and Kendrick had survived, and Christie had not written, the work that defined English medieval embroidery as a field of study in its own right would still be awaited. The break with the approach in her earlier books should also be noted. English Medieval Embroidery was not written primarily to inspire modern practice, but to investigate the practice of a past era, including its social and artistic milieu: In modern terms, the book’s interdisciplinary approach makes it history of material culture as well as of art and design. However, the importance of practical considerations and the skills necessary to good design inculcated through the Arts and Crafts Movement were the underpinning of this new approach. Christie’s research method can be established through a close study of the structure and scholarly apparatus of the book. There is a surprising amount to be learned about this, its strengths and its occasional weaknesses, from both its front and back matter. 51 For example: Mary Margaret Egerton, Countess of Wilton, ed., The Art of Needle-work: From the Earliest Ages, Including Some Notices of the Ancient Historical Tapestries (London: Henry Colburn, 1840); Alford, Needlework as Art. 52 For example, May Morris wrote four articles in two volumes of the Burlington Magazine, one of them a review of the exhibition. May Morris, “The Syon Cope,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 6 (October 1904–March 1905): 278–85; May Morris, “Opus Anglicanum II—The Ascoli Cope,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 6 (October 1904–March 1905): 440–48; May Morris, “Opus Anglicanum III—The Pienza Cope,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 7 (April–September 1905): 54–65; May Morris, “Opus Anglicanum at the Burlington Fine Arts Club,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 7 (April–September 1905): 302–9. 53 W. R. Lethaby, “English Primitives: The Ascoli Cope and London Artists,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 54 (January–June 1929): 303, 307–8; W. R. Lethaby, “The Broderers of London and Opus Anglicanum,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 29 (April–December 1916): 74.

179

Elizabeth Coatsworth Even its subtitle—A brief survey of English embroidery dating from the beginning of the tenth century until the end of the fourteenth / together with a descriptive catalogue of the surviving examples: illustrated with one hundred and sixty plates and numerous drawings in the text—is indicative of the painstaking approach. At the front, apart from the lists of contents, plates, and text drawings, the most important parts are (1) the choice of frontispiece, a detail from the Melk chasuble (Christie cat. 69, 130–33), which she regarded as English, but also as, in many ways, an exceptional, even unique work, and therefore an interesting choice for such a prominent position; (2) the title page, which names the author as A. G. I. Christie, without either a preceding “Mrs.” or a female name; and (3) the preface, pages v–vi. This last is signed A. G. I. C. and is written from East Runton, her Norfolk home, certainly until some time after her husband’s death. The preface sums up with admirable brevity her aims, her approach to her subject, and appropriate acknowledgments to individuals and institutions which had helped her in various ways. Her main aim was precisely to fulfil the lack of a monograph “approaching a complete body of material for study [which] has seriously hindered research in the sole art in which our country was pre-eminent amongst European nations in the Middle Ages.” Later in the piece she acknowledged that it is not always easy to be certain of country of origin for a specific piece, though preferring to include even doubtful examples rather than, in her own words, “play for safety.” She aimed to use all available sources: the surviving examples, “scattered references to the work in contemporary documents,” the “very considerable literature dealing directly or indirectly with ancient embroideries … accumulated during the hundred or more years since they began to attract attention,” as well as incidental references to embroideries made in the course of studies of other contemporary arts. She made clear what many would consider her most impressive contribution—all examples described “have been minutely examined, often more than once.” All are illustrated, and in most cases, she tells us, the photographs reproduced in the plates, which she recognises as an important part of the record, were made specially for the book; and in a further touch modern investigators will appreciate, she attempted reconstruction drawings of mutilated garments wherever possible. The list of those thanked is also instructive, although it leaves some questions; for example, both individuals and institutions are named for specific illustrations, and there is as well a more blanket thanks to all which helped in this way, but in fact this leaves unclear how many, or if any, of the photographs taken especially for the book were her own. She acknowledged earlier publishers of her work for allowing her to reuse what would have been her own writings, drawings, and photographs. She thanked those who helped her with medieval Latin and abbreviated inscriptions (does this imply that much of this work was her own?); on the other hand, she acknowledged without qualification a Mr. A. Van de Put for deciphering coats of arms. Other thanks went to figures of considerable significance in the fields of art and embroidery: A. F. Kendrick; W. R. Lethaby (whom at this stage she had known for more than 40 years); and distinguished historians of embroideries or church treasuries, such as M. le Chanoine

180

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery E. Chartraire and M. Louis de Farcy, clearly implying personal acquaintance rather than just a reading knowledge of their work. The back matter is equally instructive, again in revealing both her methods of working and her range of contacts. Tables I and II (which immediately follow the catalogue, pages 198–99) sum up the distribution of scenes and figures on the embroideries described in the text. Her minute description of the iconographic and decorative content of the works is an important underpinning of her analysis, and this type of tabular presentation, sometimes in purely print form, but now often in the form of computer databases, is still used today in works in which identification of elements, or as here, of iconography, is important, but may have been less familiar in 1938. I do not know if it originated with her, but it is typical of her methodical approach. This is followed by indexes of (1) persons named in the text, so some writers, medieval and modern, are mentioned here as well as makers, users, and sellers of embroidery recorded in medieval documents; (2) museums, libraries, treasuries, and collections with medieval embroideries; and (3) a general index, which includes places (e.g., where embroideries had been found), familiar names by which embroideries are known (Syon Cope, Melk Chasuble), garment and furnishing names, materials, techniques including stitch types, and iconographic figures and elements. There is, however, no bibliography—in the preface she stated that a bibliography would be redundant, as full references appear in footnotes and at the end of each catalogue entry—but many modern users will regret the lack of a bibliography assembled in one place, divided between original and secondary sources, with full page references to sections or articles in old publications now often difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, the author fulfils her promise made in the preface to use all the available modern literature on medieval embroidery, and to lay out all the contemporary documentary sources of which she knew. One of the most interesting parts of the back matter is the list of subscribers on page 205—important for an expensive book—I understand that £12 12s. (12 guineas) in 1938 would equate to several hundred pounds today! So it is instructive to see both the long list of libraries—in Egypt, Hawaii, and Palestine as well as the United States and Europe—which ordered a copy, and the individuals (and companies), which included Bernard Berenson;54 owners and former owners of embroideries such as Colonel Raleigh Chichester-Constable; embroidery historians such as Dr. Marie Schuette and A. F. Kendrick; founders of major collections such as Sir William Burrell and Signor Werner Abegg; and her brother and sister, G. H. Chadburn and Miss Chadburn, M.D., B.S. Between these two sections, the book proper begins with a lengthy introduction, partly justifying the necessity of the study (“Importance of Embroidery in the Middle Ages,” 1–2; “Fame of ‘opus Anglicanum’ abroad,” 2–4). This approach allowed her to display her reading in contemporary sources, which is impressive—although the modern reader needs to be aware that there are now available better and more up-to-

54 Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) was a famous American art historian, especially of the Renaissance.

181

Elizabeth Coatsworth date editions of many of the sources referred to,55 and that among other matters, the names of some writers and some referenced embroiderers (for example) would now be presented in a different form, or were actually mistaken in some way.56 Christie included all references known to her, consistent with her desire to be as comprehensive in her coverage of the evidence as possible even if mistaken, but there is no critical discussion of the quality of the sources, so no note of the fact, for example, that some are later than the information recorded, and while this does not invalidate them (as Dodwell showed in use of an even wider range of such sources),57 their use certainly requires some qualification. Many of her references are also clearly quoted from secondary sources, such as an article by Prior Conway or even a letter to The Times, rather than from her own firsthand knowledge.58 Apart from a lone quotation from the Anglo-Saxon abbot Aldhelm (taken from the Conway article) and knowledge of the later medieval Golden Legend (as a source of iconography), she showed little awareness of literary as opposed to documentary sources for evidence of textiles or dress. Nevertheless, whether drawn from her own reading or from the secondary literature, this introduction is undoubtedly the first to have revealed, and opened up to further scrutiny, the wide range and richness of available material in contemporary writings, including chronicles, saints’ lives, and inventories, from both British and continental sources. She laid out her sources in Appendix II to the Introduction (38–41). Her discussion of “Characteristics of ‘opus Anglicanum’” (4–6) includes some account of the use of the term in medieval documents, and it is clear from this and much of the subsequent discussion that her main interest lay in what she considered the high point of English embroidery to which this term is applied, centred on the 55 For example, there are two more up-to-date sources for Liber Eliensis: E. O. Blake, ed., Liber Eliensis (London: Royal Historical Society, 1962); and the modern translation, Janet Fairweather, Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2005). For Liber Pontificalis, see translations in R. Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, Translated Texts for Historians 5 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989); R. Davis, The Lives of the Eighth Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of Nine Popes from AD 715 to AD 817, rev. ed., Translated Texts for Historians 13 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007); R. Davis, The Lives of the Ninth Century Popes: The Ancient Biographies of Ten Popes from AD 817–891, Translated Texts for Historians 20 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995). For Domesday Book, see volumes in the series Domesday Book: History from the Sources, ed. John Morris (Chichester, UK: Phillimore, 1975–). 56 The author of the life of St. Margaret of Scotland seems not to be Theodoric—see instead Turgot (d. 1115), Life of Saint Margaret, Queen of Scotland, trans. W. Forbes-Leith (Edinburgh: 1884). Christie (English Medieval Embroidery, 31) makes Æthelswitha the daughter of Elgiva, which could be taken to imply (and has been taken to mean)  she was a daughter of King Cnut’s second wife, Ælfgiva/ Emma, from the entry above, whereas Æthelswith,  the embroidery worker named in the  Liber Eliensis, is clearly named there as the daughter of Leofflæd; Alexandra Lester Makin, pers. comm. 57 C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 129–87. 58 A translation of a quotation from Aldhelm (Christie, English Medieval Embroidery, 1) is taken from an article by Prior Conway, “Early English Church Needlework,” The Harvest 26 (March 1913): 58; a reference to the gold embroiderer Gregory of London (Christie, English Medieval Embroidery, 35) is from a mention in a letter to The Times (London), Aug. 30, 1904, signed “J. M.”

182

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery thirteenth century (and she does not in fact include any material later than the fourteenth century). However, she titled her book English Medieval Embroidery, clearly aware of the need to document the rise toward its later fame, and this allowed her to talk about the embroidery she knew of from before this high point. An oddity of her subsequent discussion is that some sections concentrate on features no earlier than the very late twelfth century (as in this section), while others, such those on technique or workers, range over the whole chronological field (which may be indicative of the patchy nature of the sources, of which she was aware though she did not fully discuss the implications). Nevertheless this section is a reasoned attempt to define features which might be held to distinguish English embroideries from those made in other areas, from the late twelfth century to the fourteenth. Those she picked out include broad differences in national styles (in which she followed de Farcy) and the use of some specific ornaments and themes—the figural style (which she characterised as not idealised, but nevertheless dramatic and emotional in gesture, and as decorative rather than pictorial); the interest in the depiction of the orders of angels; the naturalism of bird and beast representations; the use of oak, ivy, and vine foliage; sexfoil rosettes; small quatrefoils as a decorative element in borders and columns; barbed quatrefoils, circles, and arcading, particularly fantastic foliated arcading, as framing devices (and the relative lack of plain frames); the use of intricately patterned gold grounds (though she admitted these are sometimes found elsewhere); and the use of specifically English saints and early kings (but excluding those with some connection with England like St. George, or even Thomas Becket, who had or acquired a more international dimension). The next two sections, “Nature of Surviving Examples” and “Causes of Destruction” (6–7), are straightforward accounts of the predominantly ecclesiastical nature of the survivals, with a brief nod to the disjunction between this and quantities of secular work referred to in contemporary sources, and a commonsensical note that destruction (for gold content) and thorough remodelling (to modernise garments) was an ongoing process from the beginning, though accelerated by deliberate destruction, as after the Reformation, or in the Napoleonic era in France. The most important sections, however, are those from pages 7 to 30. The section on “Design” (7–17) is in fact a mixture of design and description of iconographic and decorative elements. To the subject of design proper belongs her analysis of the overall structure of the design layout of copes, which relates solely to the approaches specifically developed for copes and chasubles from the twelfth century forward. Her perceptions are of some interest and merit discussion, though one cannot argue with her statement that the various schemes were devised as framing devices to enclose figures, scenes, and accessory elements “to give unity to the composition by gathering up the diverse subjects into an organised whole.” These schemes in chronological order of development were (1) an overall design based on scrollwork; (2) a repeating pattern of geometric shapes—which she surmised, from the way the shapes are “cut off ” around the semicircular edge of the cope, was inspired by woven fabrics of a similar design layout; and (3) a layout based on architectural forms, which she suggested 183

Elizabeth Coatsworth was influenced by that of the contemporary rose window, but which then progressed from a realistic type to a more fantastic, foliated one. The remainder of the section is an analysis of the sources of iconographic elements; secondary figures—angels, birds, beasts, heraldic devices, lettering (as a decorative as well as an informative element); and the background patterns. There is some discussion of the sources for some scenes (the Bible; the Golden Legend); frequency of use of various scenes; and models (although her brief suggestion of an unvarying “tradition” as the reason why scenes were always presented “in the same way” rather slides over the fact of some regional and period variants, and does not do justice to her own analyses of connections in the catalogue entries). She accepted the probable use of model books, for which she cited the Pepysian Sketchbook, still referenced in recent discussions of this area.59 She made some interesting comparisons with other contemporary medieval arts for the designs of the gold-embroidered backgrounds. A note on evidence for traced designs underlying stitchery appears in the section on workers, but properly belongs here, as being relevant to the design process. She concluded, however, with an important point that the developing use of orphreys, morses, and borders which could be richer than the rest of the vestment (and the reference in some inventories to these as separate items) implies that the whole vestment need not have been made in one workshop, which leads into the next section. This, “Designers, Workers, and Work Centres” (17–19) is expanded by the listing of named workers in Appendix I to the introduction (31–37—but see discussion on use of sources above). This section covers the period from the tenth century. There is some discussion of who the designers may have been—St. Dunstan being, as she believed, the only named designer—but she did suggest that some may have worked in other arts (see above, on the similarity with other arts of the background designs in gold work), and cautioned that the preponderance of later male names may imply the role of masters rather than necessarily of embroiderers.60 Grace Christie’s most important contributions, however, are those within her expertise as an embroiderer: those on “Materials” and “Technique” (19–27). She shines as an historian of the use of these, based on close visual examination, supported in the case of stitches by detailed analytical drawings; only detailed observation using modern conservation techniques will tell us more. In one brief section here, she demonstrated but did not enlarge on a very modern preoccupation (which turns out on examination to be also a very nineteenth-century preoccupation) with the meaning of contemporary medieval words for embroidery and embroidered work, when she defined terms describing embroidered items which she found in the St. Paul’s inventories of 1295, though with only limited success.61

59 Cambridge, Magdalen College, Pepys MS 1916. 60 This was a point taken up and given some substance in a talk by Glyn Davies of the Victoria and Albert Museum at the recent Symposium; see note 4, above. 61 This, which in part relates to the discussion of stitch types that preoccupied many early and contemporary writers, needs further analysis, which I propose to pursue in a further article.

184

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery The final section, “Scope of Inquiry” (27–30), tells us little more than the preface did more succinctly—that she has attempted to cover all the surviving work over 450 years, from the tenth century to the fourteenth, in chronological order, and to define the characteristics of the “great period.” She acknowledged again the difficulties of dating—very few pieces can be dated by contemporary records, by coats of arms, or by association with historical names—but beyond this she acknowledged honestly that her only means of dating was to group the remainder on the basis of materials, technique, and design (in which she would include iconography) by comparison with those so dated. The heart of the book, however, is the catalogue of embroideries itself, and its accompanying plates and drawings. The value of the plates needs no comment, but the quality of the drawings should be remarked. They include simple but elegant outline drawings of objects and figures (sometimes relieved against a black background); internal design structures; and analyses of stitches, making plain how they work. Shading is used sparingly, but with great impact when illuminating the effect of particular techniques, as in drawings of gold-patterned backgrounds. The frequency with which many of these drawings have been reproduced is testimony both to their quality and to their usefulness in clarifying structural and technical detail. The fact that she had used some of these drawings in her earlier publications has been noted above. The detail given in each entry is exemplary—a considerable advance on the catalogue for the 1905 exhibition, which though sumptuous as a production provided minimum data, little technical information, and no bibliography at all.62 Each entry follows the same format. There is a general introduction which covers, for the object(s) described, and where appropriate or available: (1) present location, known history (including documentary sources such as inventories), evidence from comparative material (other embroideries and/or contemporary art works), and based on these, a date or dates; and (2) observations on design layout and elements, detailed analysis of materials and technique, and notes on condition (including colour and evidence for fading; damage; and evidence of remodelling). Patterns on the ground fabric, including gold embroidery, are covered here. This is followed by what is often the lengthiest section, in smaller type, giving a detailed panel-by-panel or element-by-element account of subject matter and ornament. Here Christie notes variations in iconography, mentioning other examples of the same variant where they exist, or their uniqueness. The approach enhances understanding of the underlying design structure. This is followed by measurements of the whole or of separate fragments, parts of a whole (e.g., the morse in Christie cat. 66), design and pattern elements, and some figures. Finally there is a bibliography of previous work on the piece. There is evidence that she revised her earlier work and made some changes. For example, the term point retiré from some of her earlier journal publications is replaced by the English (and more readily understandable) term “underside couching” in the 1938 book. She sometimes revisited dating—in Christie cat. 73, none of the fragments 62 See note 44.

185

Elizabeth Coatsworth is dated as late as the early fourteenth century, as they were in her Burlington Magazine article of 1913. In Christie cat. 1 and 2, she showed her awareness of new work on the tenth-century Durham embroideries from the shrine of St. Cuthbert, overturning her earlier view (as published in her 1913 article with Baldwin Brown)63 on the nature of the underlying foundation of the stitchery.64 She is also generous in her acknowledgment of the contribution on the historical background and contemporary visual sources made by Baldwin Brown. In turn, Elizabeth Plenderleith in the 1953 publication on the embroideries (incorporating much pre–World War II work) acknowledged Christie’s development in understanding of the foundation fabric, while also noting that none of the linen had been identified by the date of publication of the 1913 article.65 Only a few of the pieces Christie catalogued and described have been subjected to the more detailed examination made possible through modern techniques, especially those undertaken through conservation projects. Yet only a minority of these modern analyses—such as the new work on the St. Cuthbert embroideries (Christie cat. 1 and 2), an admirable study of the Pienza Cope (Christie cat. 95), and one on the Ascoli Cope (Christie cat. 50)—might be said to supersede her entries,66 and in all these instances a team of people covered the various aspects which on the whole Christie had tackled herself. And while it is true that all such more recent projects have brought to light details of materials and technique impossible to achieve by visual inspection alone, it should be noted that Christie was herself not averse to the use of scientific methods of examination when available—as in both studies of the Durham embroideries—and in this as in her careful descriptions, her use of tabular methods for recording some data, and her detail drawings illuminating stitches and technique, she was ahead of other studies in her day, not only in textiles but in related fields of art and design history. 63 G. Baldwin Brown and Mrs. Archibald Christie, “S. Cuthbert’s Stole and Maniple at Durham,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 23 (April–September 1913): 3–17, 67–72. 64 Christie (English Medieval Embroidery, 47 nn. 1, 3) notes the use of microscopic and chemical tests carried out on the threads “to determine their nature.” 65 Elizabeth Plenderleith, “The Stole and Maniples: The Technique,” in The Relics of St. Cuthbert, ed. C. F. Battiscombe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 375–96. 66 For the major study of the Cuthbert embroideries, see the following chapters in Battiscombe, Relics of St. Cuthbert: Plenderleith, “The Technique”; C. Hohler, “The Stole and Maniples: The Iconography,” 396–408; R. Freyhan, “The Stole and Maniples: The Place of the Stole and Maniple in Anglo-Saxon Art of the Tenth Century,” 409–32; as well as Battiscombe’s own historical introduction. For the Pienza cope: Laura Martini, ed., Il Piviale di Pio II (Milan: Silvana, 2001), particularly the chapter by M. Giorgi and G. Palei, “La tecnica di esecuzione il ricamo,” 77–83. For the Ascoli Cope: Rosalia Bonito Fanelli, Il Piviale duecentesco di Ascoli Piceno: Storia de Restauro (Ascoli Piceno: Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno, 1990). There are, however, more papers which deal with one aspect, such as conservation or iconography, both revealing more detail than Christie could have known and advancing study of the material on a particular front: for example, Marion Kite, “The Conservation of the Jesse Cope,” Textile History 20 (1989): 235–43; Linda Woolley, “Two Panels from an Orphrey Showing Scenes from the Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury,” Textile History 20 (1989): 265–73. See also Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Becket, St Thomas: Life and Textile Relics,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 64–67.

186

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery Though unlike her earlier books, English Medieval Embroidery was never reissued after its initial printing, original copies are continually offered for sale, at increasingly high prices—and not all buyers, or would-be buyers, are bibliophiles rather than admirers of her work. It is, however, the accumulation of meticulously observed detail obtained over a lifetime of study and informed by her knowledge and practice of technique that makes both the introduction and particularly the catalogue of continuing value to the historian of medieval embroidery today. While it is clear that an updating of Christie’s work would be highly desirable—to include newly identified pieces, to suggest possibly the rejection of others, to add more colour images, and to present the results of more recent studies and conservation work—we can nevertheless endorse A. F. Kendrick’s conclusion that “she has laid all students of the beautiful art under a lasting debt.” Her study is so thorough and so monumental in its scope, it provides the starting point of so many possible approaches—into materials, techniques, ecclesiastical dress, embroidery workers, workshops, iconography, to name only some—that any future study of opus anglicanum will, for at least some considerable time, have to look back over its shoulder at her “formidable achievement.”

187

Elizabeth Coatsworth

Appendix 8.1 Surviving Embroideries Worked by Grace Christie

All embroideries known to me are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are not easy to access on the museum’s Web site by using Grace Christie’s name or its variations, but they can be found by using the object numbers given below. Not all those listed are accompanied by an image. Though only one panel is said to have been donated by her son in 1953, I am assured that the whole collection was donated by Robert Noel Christie in that year, and that it will be available for viewing by appointment from autumn 2013.1 All are in storage at the time of this writing. The two items in italic are represented on one image; the two items in bold are represented on one image; the eight items in bold and italic are all on one image. Note that the CIRC prefix denotes that originally all these samplers were in the Museum Circulation Department, which from 1864 until government cuts closed it in 1977 “was responsible for loan shows that travelled to two categories of venue—to regional museums, art galleries and public libraries, and to art schools and education colleges; thus disseminating art and design across the UK.”2 Their place in this context shows that they were of recognised educational value. CIRC.466-1953: Panel embroidered with butterflies and flowers; linen embroidered with coloured silks; L. 52.5 cm, W. 172 cm; ca. 1914; donated R. N. Christie. CIRC.467-1953: Curtain, embroidered, silk and braid on linen, ca. 1900-1925. CIRC.468-1953: Sampler, “A Persian Flower Garden”; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.469-1953: Sampler, embroidered linen, ca. 1914. CIRC.470-1953: Panel, silk embroidered linen, ca. 1920. CIRC.471-1953: Panel, silk embroidered linen, ca. 1920. CIRC. 472-1953: Sampler, “The flowering tree”; embroidered linen; ca. 1920. CIRC.473-1953: Embroidered (no other details), showing leaves, 1920 (below CIRC.489-1953 in image). 1

Elizabeth Bisley, assistant curator, Victoria and Albert Museum, e-mail message to author, April 4, 2013. 2 http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/research-journal/issue-no.-4-summer-2012/room-38aand-beyond-post-war-british-design-and-the-circulation-department (accessed May 15, 2013).

188

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery CIRC.474-1953: Sampler, “Wild Roses”; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.475-1953. Sampler, line stitches; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.476-1953: Sampler, line stitches; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.477-1953: Sampler, “Knots and Chains”; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.478-1953: Sampler, “The Wayside”; embroidered linen; ca. 1920. CIRC.479-1953: Sampler, “The Meadow”; embroidered linen; ca. 1920. CIRC.480-1953: Sampler, embroidered, 1920. CIRC.481-1953: Sampler, embroidered linen, ca. 1920. CIRC.482-1953: Sampler, embroidered linen, ca. 1920 (one of two pieces, with CIRC.492-1953). CIRC.483-1953: Sampler, a repeating pattern; embroidered; ca. 1920 (said to be the work of Mrs. A. Newall). CIRC.484-1953: Sampler, pattern darning; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.485-1953: Sampler, embroidered linen, ca. 1920. CIRC.486-1953: Sampler, embroidered linen, ca. 1920. CIRC.487-1953: Sampler, drawn thread squares; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.488-1953: Sampler, embroidered, 1920. CIRC.489-1953: Sampler, interlacing knotwork; 1920 (above CIRC.473-1953 in image). CIRC.490-1953: Sampler, a collection of patterns; embroidered; 1920. CIRC.491-1953: Sampler, “The Harvest Field”; embroidered linen; ca. 1920. CIRC.492-1953: Sampler, lace stitch filling; embroidered; 1920 (one of two pieces, with CIRC.482-1953). CIRC.493-1953: Panel, embroidered, 1920. CIRC.494-1953: Panel, embroidered, ca. 1920. CIRC.495-1953: Sampler, drawn thread and cutwork; embroidered; 1920.

189

Elizabeth Coatsworth

Appendix 8.2 Published Works of Mrs. Anna Grace Ida Christie

Items are presented chronologically within each section below. Books Christie, Mrs. Archibald H. Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving: A practical text-book of design and workmanship . . . With drawings by the author and other illustrations. Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks. London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1906 [also Embroidery and tapestry weaving: A practical text-book of design and workmanship by Mrs. Archibald H. Christie. Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks. London: John Hogg, 1906]. 2nd rev. ed., London: John Hogg, 1911. 3rd rev. ed., London: John Hogg, 1912. 4th ed., London: John Hogg, 1915; also Pitman, 1920, 1924. Facsimile reprint of the 1915 4th ed., London: Pitman; New York: Taplinger, 1979. Christie, Mrs. Archibald H. Samplers and Stitches: A handbook of the embroiderer’s art. London: B. T. Batsford, 1921. 2nd rev. and enl. ed., London: B. T. Batsford; New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1929. 3rd rev. ed., London: B. T. Batsford; New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1934. 4th ed., London: Batsford, 1948. 5th ed., London: Batsford, 1950. 5th ed. reprint, London: Batsford, 1959. 5th ed. reprint (series: A Batsford Embroidery Paperback), London: Batsford, 1985. Christie, A. G. I. English Medieval Embroidery: A brief survey of English embroidery dating from the beginning of the tenth century until the end of the fourteenth / together with a descriptive catalogue of the surviving examples: illustrated with one hundred and sixty plates and numerous drawings in the text. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938. Edited periodicals Christie, Mrs. Archibald H., ed. Embroidery: A periodical containing articles upon stitches, methods of work, design, and other subjects connected with the study of fine needlework, with coloured plates and other illustrations. London: James Pearsall, 1909. 190

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery “G. C.” [Grace Christie]. The Sampler Series. London: J. Pearsall & Co., 1911–13. Christie, Mrs. Archibald H., ed. Needle and Thread: A magazine devoted to the study of fine needle work. London, 1914. Articles in journals “G. C.” “A Letter-Case with a Design of a Flowering Tree.” Embroidery (1908–9): 4–6 and plate I. “G. C.” “Stitches—I.” Embroidery (1908–9): 6–11. “G. C.” “An Oblong Table-Centre Decorated with Michaelmas Daisies.” Embroidery (1908–9): 11–13 and plate II. “G. C.” “A Sixteenth-Century Embroidered Jacket.” Embroidery (1908–9): 17–22. “G. C.” “A Vest and Cuffs Decorated with Trailing Campanula.” Embroidery (1908–9): 23–24 and plate IV. “G. C.” “Some Examples of the Use of Chain Stitch.” Embroidery (1908–9): 29–33. “G. C.” “A Bag with a Design of Flowers and Scrolling Stems.” Embroidery (1908–9): 33–36 and plate V. “G. C.” “Stitches—II.” Embroidery (1908–9): 37–41. “G. C.” “A D’Oyley Embroidered with Sprigs of Eschscholtzen.” Embroidery (1908–9): 46–47 and plate VII. “G. C.” “The Use of Precious Stones in Embroidery.” Embroidery (1908–9): 47–51. “G. C.” “A Blotter with a Spray of Yellow Flowers.” Embroidery (1908–9): 51–53 and plate VIII. “G. C.” “A Child’s Frock.” Embroidery (1908–9): 57–58. “G. C.” “Stitches—III.” Embroidery (1908–9): 58–61. “G. C.” “A Conventional Floral Spray.” Embroidery (1908–9): 61–63 and plate IX. “G. C.” “‘A Scholehouse for the Needle’ and Other Pattern Books.” Embroidery (1908–9): 64–69. “G. C.” “A Cosy-Cover with a Blue Cornflower Design.” Embroidery (1908–9): 77–78 and plate XII. “G. C.” “Notes on the Technique and Making Up of Embroideries.” Embroidery (1908–9): 81–84. “G. C.” “A Wall Panel in Canvas Embroidery.” Embroidery (1908–9): 85–86. “G. C.” “Embroidery for Children.” Embroidery (1908–9): 86–90. “G. C.” “A Canvas Bag.” Embroidery (1908–9): 90–2 and plate XIII. “G. C.” “Three Border Designs.” Embroidery (1908–9): 95–98 and plate XIV. “G. C.” “Lettering in Embroidery.” Embroidery (1908–9): 99–103. “G. C.” “Stitches—IV.” Embroidery (1908–9): 106–10. “G. C.” An Embroidered Handkerchief Case.” Embroidery (1908–9): 118–19 and plate XVII. “G. C.” “A Pulpit Hanging.” Embroidery (1908–9): 126–27 and plate XVIII. “G. C.” “A Border Design.” Embroidery (1908–9): 134–36 and plate XX. “G. C.” “Couching and Laid Work.” Embroidery (1908–9): 138–40. “G. C.” “Two Afternoon Teacloths.” Embroidery (1908–9): 144–45. 191

Elizabeth Coatsworth “G. C.” “Backgrounds and their Treatment.” Embroidery (1908–9): 146–49. “G. C.” “A Note on the Preservation of Work.” Embroidery (1908–9): 149. “G. C.” “An Embroidered Vest, Collar and Cuffs.” Embroidery (1908–9): 150–1. “G. C.” “The Transfer of Patterns.” Embroidery (1908–9): 161–62. Baldwin Brown, G., and Mrs. Archibald Christie. “S. Cuthbert’s Stole and Maniple at Durham.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 23 (April–September 1913): 3–17, 67–72. Christie, Mrs. Archibald H. “Some Early English Embroideries.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 23 (April–September 1913): 291–92, 295; figs. 1–5; and plate 293. Christie, A. G. I. “The Tree of Jesse in Medieval Embroidery.” Needle and Thread 3 (July 1914): 77–80. Christie, Mrs. Archibald. “A New Early English Embroidery at the Victoria and Albert Museum.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 39 (July–December 1921): 9–10 and plate facing p. 9. Christie, Mrs. A. H. “The Uppsala Cope.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 45 (July–December 1924): 273–80 and plates I.A–B, II.C–F. Christie, Mrs. A. H. “A Reconstructed Embroidered Cope at Anagni.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 48 (January–June 1926): 65–66, 68–69, 71–73, 77; plates I, II, III.A–B; and figs. 1–3. Christie, Mrs. A. H. “An Unknown English Medieval Chasuble.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 51 (July–December 1927): 285–92 and plates I, II.A–C. [Mrs. Christie?] “November Embroideries.” Embroideress 20 (1927): 476–80 and fig. 635. [Mrs. Christie?] “Tailpiece.” Embroideress 20 (1927): 525. [Mrs. Christie?] “A Bedspread in Appliqué.” Embroideress 21 (1927): 496–500 and fig. 665 (photograph of item identified as from the collection of Mrs. Christie). [Mrs. Christie?] “Ships in Embroidery.” Embroideress 23 (1927): 542–44 and figs. 731 (possible), 734 (photograph of item identified as being from her collection). [Mrs. Christie?] “Headpiece” and “Tailpiece.” Embroideress 39 (1931): 919, 926. K. M. H[arris]. “More Christmas Presents.” Embroideress 39 (1931): illustrations probably by Christie, see 927, fig. 1246, and 929, figs. 1248 and 1252. Christie, Mrs. A. H. “Notes on the Syon Cope.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 61 (July–December 1932): 252, 257–58; plates I.A–B (facing p. 257); and figs. 1–2. Christie, A. G. I. “An Unknown English Medieval Orphrey.” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 69 (July–December 1936): 182, 187, and plates A, B, C (facing p. 182). Reviews of Christie’s work “M. M.” Review of Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, by Mrs. A. H. Christie. Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 10 (October 1906–March 1907): 194–95. “M. K.” Review of Samplers and Stitches, by Mrs. Archibald Christie. Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 39 (July–December 1921): 238. “E. R.” Review of Samplers and Stitches, 2nd ed., by Mrs. Archibald Christie. Embroideress 31 (1929): xi–xii. 192

Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery “M. E. R[olleston].” Review of Samplers and Stitches, 3rd ed., by Mrs. Archibald Christie. Embroideress 54 (1935): xi. Kendrick, A. F. Review of English Medieval Embroidery, by A. G. I. Christie. Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 73 (July–December 1938): 39–40. Unsigned review of English Medieval Embroidery, by A. G. I. Christie. Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 22 (1938): 28–31 (including two full-page illustrations from the book, one a plate and one of Christie’s own drawings).

193

Recent Books of Interest Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England, by Andrea Denny-Brown (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012). ISBN 9780814211908. 252 pages, 7 illustrations (3 in color). This erudite study takes as its starting point the figure of Fortune, her clothing, and the impermanence evoked by her turning wheel in the literature of England from Boethius (ca. 525) through the fifteenth century. Drawing on a broad spectrum of literary and other texts, Denny-Brown argues for regarding literary clothing as an indicator of societal attitudes toward historical changes, much as Fortune’s own clothing varies through the ages and as those on her wheel progress through different stages, reflected in vestimentary states. She situates her analysis in philosophical and moral discourses prescribing appropriate attire and condemning luxury, vanity, and pride, which are often at odds with the increasing opulence available to the upper classes from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and demonstrates how different representations of Fortune’s clothing elucidate social ambivalence toward material goods and conspicuous consumption. Throughout, she provides an impressive array of evidence to support her claim that medieval English authors’ sartorial choices for their characters provide a dialectic between the theological ideal of stability and the impermanence of the material world, symbolized by fashion. Denny-Brown carefully guides us through four centuries of literature that provide insight into cultural ambivalence concerning the need for permanence in an unpredictable material world versus the desire for agency via innovative self-fashioning. Using the trope of Boethius’ Fortune as a lens for discerning responses to sumptuary tension, she analyzes particular passages where attire figures prominently in texts by Jean de Meun, John Lydgate, Charles d’Orléans, William Durand, and especially Geoffrey Chaucer, as well as a number of galaunt poems from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, integrating each of them (and others) into a vast, detailed narrative that traces the evolving relationship of clothing signifiers to shifting discourses of materialism. In her argument, Fortune and her turning wheel are at the center of the constant transformation that is fashion.

Recent Books of Interest This study will be of most interest to scholars of medieval literature, especially English literature. However, the book’s broad scope and adept synthesis of diverse sources into a cogent, compelling argument will make it useful to scholars in other fields wishing to acquire solid grounding in the philosophical and theological perspectives of the period that affected both literary representations of clothing and the discourses that arose in conjunction with the changing material conditions such literary representations confirm. — Monica L. Wright, University of Louisiana at Lafayette In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion, by Anna Reynolds (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2013). ISBN 978-1905686445. 299 pages, 310 color illustrations. Designed to accompany an exhibition of the same name, In Fine Style is gorgeously and liberally illustrated, not only with paintings and other artwork (many with enlarged details), but also with photographs of extant clothing and accessories where possible. The survival of more art and artifacts from the Stuart era creates an inevitable bias toward the latter half of the period under discussion, but those interested in the sixteenth century will also find much to appreciate. Reynolds writes in an accessible style and covers the basics on her way to less familiar material, so even those new to the field will not feel lost. Readers who focus on art history will find a helpful overview of clothing layers and textiles common in this period, which, though it is necessarily brief and somewhat generalized, is for the most part accurate and accompanied by useful social context and commentary on how various aspects of fashion interrelate logistically (e.g., the broad lace collars popular in the 1630s often had plain linen at the back of the neck, where the wearer’s hair would otherwise soil the expensive lace). Reynolds is generally sensitive to ongoing controversies and complications of terminology, though occasionally she glosses over them. Clothing historians will enjoy the real strength of this book, which is the discussion of the processes painters used to depict clothing and textiles. Descriptions of techniques and layers of paint, in some cases examined under a microscope, will assist in interpretation of the details in portraits, and a broader discussion of the complexities of representation and the many factors that interceded between the real clothes of a sitter and those portrayed in a finished portrait highlights the dangers of taking portraits at face value. Reynolds also includes examples of pigment colors used to make paint that were also used in fabric dyeing, as well as colors that existed only on panel and canvas. Her scholarship is wide-ranging, drawing on both primary and secondary sources, including some that will be new to those outside the field of art history. Discussions of the details in hairstyles and clothing that assist in dating paintings and information about the histories of particular paintings will also be informative for clothing historians. Sections on armor, regional styles, and masques are interesting side dishes, but the main courses are delicious and beautifully presented, making this book a feast for all to savor. — Melanie Schuessler, Eastern Michigan University

196

Recent Books of Interest A Renaissance Wedding: The Celebrations at Pesaro for the Marriage of Costanzo Sforza & Camilla Marzano d’Aragona (26–30 May 1475), by Jane Bridgeman (­London: Harvey Miller, 2013). ISBN: 978-1905375936. 198 pages, 62 color illustrations. This lavishly illustrated book (with many plates at full-page size) is perhaps best suited to and intended for a very specific audience; but for those targeted few, it is a gem. The marriage of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano must certainly have been the event of the season. The five-day event included the procession of the bride into Pesaro, the wedding ceremony and banquet, pageants, the presentation of wedding gifts, fireworks, jousts, and theatrical entertainment, all commemorated in a lavish manuscript illustrated with thirty-two images, presented here in their entirety with explanatory text. A Renaissance Wedding might be worth owning for these images alone; they are exceedingly charming. However, this is not just another pretty face. The text of the manuscript, titled The Joyous Nuptials Celebrated by the Illustrious Lord of Pesaro, is translated by Jane Bridgeman and succinctly but thoroughly annotated. (The Latin poems were edited and translated by Alan Griffiths.) Virtually every aspect of the festivities is described, including the actions and appearance of the participants; the music played and the instruments involved; the life-size animated artificial camel; the float (eighteen feet high) depicting the Triumph of Love; and more, down to such details as a description of the brooms used to sweep under the tables (made of “boxwood, with handles composed of three gold, silver and blue rods … each tied with silver cords”) and the Rheims linen napkins “perfumed with sweet Neapolitan scents.” Clothing, of course, plays a significant role in the spectacle, and Italian terms relating to dress and other objects are defined as they occur. For example, the groom’s garb on the fourth day consists of a turca (a formal gown) of cloth-of-gold, a gold necklace, and “a small grey French-style cap encircled by pearls … with a feather made entirely of pearls.” The descriptions extend to the costumes of the performers. Bridgeman also discusses the manuscript itself, the purpose it was thought to have served, and wedding books in general, and provides brief biographies of the bride and groom. The appendices include a list and discussion of the most important wedding guests, including their seating arrangements, and the menu of the twelvecourse wedding banquet. For those interested in ceremony and daily life in this period, A Renaissance Wedding is an important addition to the current scholarship. It is an elegant, thoughtful, beautifully conceived book. — Tawny Sherrill, California State University, Long Beach Setting the Scene: European Painted Cloths from the Fourteenth to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Nicola Costaras and Christina Young (London: Archetype, 2013). ISBN 978-1904982906. 122 pages, 70 illustrations (56 in color). A welcome addition to a growing body of literature the extent of which does not yet reflect the importance of its subject, Setting the Scene (published in association with London’s Courtauld Institute and the Victoria and Albert Museum) is the result of a conference on painted cloth held at the Courtauld in June 2012. Painted hanging cloths were arguably one of the most popular forms of both religious and domestic interior 197

Recent Books of Interest decoration in early modern Europe and were commonly employed in architectural installations for processions, pageants, and stage productions. The individual papers that constitute this collection investigate the European painted cloth as a decorative device in a variety of applications across nearly a millennium of use. The text is divided into four principal sections. The first section, “Religious and secular,” opens with Roland Krischel’s examination of Continental medieval cloths used as curtains or shutters to conceal and reveal sections of religious works. The remainder of this section and the one that follows it, “Domestic interior,” deal with different aspects of fourteenth- to eighteenth-century English painted cloths, including their use as pageant props (addressed by Nicola Coldstream), as domestic wall coverings (Nicholas Mander, Katherine L. French), and as imported objects (Nicola Costaras). Rebecca Olson analyzes Shakespeare’s use of painted cloth imagery in his plays, and Sylvia Houghteling diverges to discuss the importation of Indian chintzes into England in the eighteenth century. The third section, “Pageantry and ceremony,” includes three papers that discuss specific historic cloths or cloth cycles in Italy, Germany, and Spain, as well as Jo Kirby’s important work on the basics of personnel, cost, and distribution in the English import trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a study that would seem to belong more rightly to the second section. The final section, “Scenic art,” looks at nineteenth- and twentieth-century painted cloths in English collections originally created as theatrical scenery. The value of this book lies both in the specificity of detail within each study and in the scope with which it addresses the diversity of painted cloth as a genre. As Setting the Scene so ably demonstrates, few articles of decoration can boast such a varied history, stretching from thirteenth-century religious props to twentieth-century theatrical front cloths signed by Picasso. Readers from a variety of disciplines will find the material both useful and interesting. — Susan E. James, Los Angeles, California Viking Identities: Scandinavian Jewellery in England, by Jane F. Kershaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). ISBN: 978-0199639526. 308 pages, 170 illustrations (8 in color). Viking Identities is based on Kershaw’s doctoral research into Scandinavian metalwork in England. Concentrating on the later ninth- and tenth-century dress items— just over 500 brooches and pendants found in England as of 2005—Kershaw clarifies the distinguishing characteristics of artifacts of Scandinavian, Anglo-Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon styles. Over half the volume is dedicated to analysis of the physical distinctions between Scandinavian-produced items and those produced locally, either Anglo-Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon. Features such as pin attachments, metal content, and design detail allow her to draw conclusions regarding area of manufacture and, to a limited extent, clothing styles. Each style is meticulously illustrated with either clear archeological drawings or grayscale photographs of both front and back. Interestingly, while there appears to be a strong Scandinavian influence on England, the converse, Anglo-Saxon influence on Scandinavia, does not appear in the archeo198

Recent Books of Interest logical record. Stylistic analysis indicates that while there is some evidence of eastern and western Scandinavian influences on the artifacts, the majority of finds from the Danelaw regions reflect close ties with southern Scandinavia (Denmark and Skåne) not only during the period of independent Danish rule, but also continuing well into the period of West Saxon rule. The first chapter summarizes approaches and sources, including a discussion of the biases introduced by metal-detector finds. Kershaw extensively uses comparative examples from datable Scandinavian contexts as well as data on types and frequencies of other archeological finds, such as pottery, to elucidate any influences from favorable find sites or the mechanics of loss and deposition. She also analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the various dating schemes used in earlier studies. Much of the prior research regarding Scandinavian influence in the Danelaw concentrates on place names. At first glance, the locations of influence indicated by the dress items appear to conflict. The dress accessories show a greater concentration in areas of eastern England, Norfolk and northern Suffolk, than that evidenced by the linguistic legacy, in the northeastern areas around Yorkshire and the Midlands. Kershaw discusses the possible roles of differing topology as well as agricultural and settlement types across the Danelaw. The extensive use of maps and charts is very helpful in clarifying the text, although the greyscale charts are at times difficult to read. Kershaw emphasizes that while the distribution of Scandinavian-style jewelry cannot provide any more reliable guide to settlement locations than other evidence, such as place names and burial grounds, it does offer another significant factor for examination. — Anne Marie Decker, Aberdeen, Maryland

199

Contents of Previous Volumes

Vol. 1 (2005)

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

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

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

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

Heidi M. Sherman From Flax to Linen in the Medieval Rus Lands Anna Zanchi “Melius Abundare Quam Deficere”: Scarlet Clothing in   Laxdæla Saga and Njáls Saga Lucia Sinisi The Wandering Wimple Mark Chambers and From Head to Hand to Arm: The Lexicological History Gale R. Owen-Crocker   of “Cuff ” Lena Hammarlund, Visual Textiles: A Study of Appearance and Visual Heini Kirjavainen,   Impression in Archaeological Textiles Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen, and Marianne Vedeler 202

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 203

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

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

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

Antonietta Amati Canta Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari Lucia Sinisi The Marriage of the Year (1028) 204

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

205

10 •

•

Contents CHRISTOPHER J. MONK Behind the Curtains, Under the Covers, Inside the Tent: Textile Items and Narrative Strategies in Anglo-Saxon Old Testament Art LISA MONNAS

Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles

REBECCA WOODWARD WENDELKEN Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 MAUREEN C. MILLER The Liturgical Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia: Their Historical Significance and Current Condition CHRISTINE MEEK Clothing Distrained for Debt in the Court of Merchants of Lucca in the Late Fourteenth Century VALIJA EVALDS

Sacred or Profane? The Horned Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Priory

MICHELLE L. BEER “Translating” a Queen: Material Culture and the Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots ELIZABETH COATSWORTH “A formidable undertaking”: Mrs. A. G. I. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery

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.

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

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

Cover image: Boss with a woman in a reticulated headdress, from the cloister of St. Frideswide’s Priory, now Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford. Photo:Valija Evalds.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

•

10 •

Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker