Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Volume 8 [8] 1843837366, 9781843837367

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BRIGITTE HAAS-GEBHARD AND BRITT NOWAK-BÖCK The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials 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”

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 NY14620-2731 (US)

www.boydellandbrewer.com

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

Cover: Gold brooch inlaid with garnet, malachite, glass, and pearls, diameter 5.7 centimeters, from the Unterhaching burial ground in Bavaria, ca. 500. Photo: Britt Nowak-Böck.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8

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MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

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8•

Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker



Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 8

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 8

edited by

ROBIN NETHERTON GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2012 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 2012 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-84383-736-7

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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, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.

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Contents Illustrations



page vii

Tables



ix

Contributors



xi

Preface

xiii

1  The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials from    Sixth-Century Bavaria    Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck 2  Old Finds Rediscovered: Two Early Medieval Headdresses from    the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands    Chrystel Brandenburgh

1

25

3  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined Textiles    in Anglo-Saxon England    Maren Clegg Hyer

49

4  Mining for Gold: Investigating a Semantic Classification in the Lexis    of Cloth and Clothing Project    Louise Sylvester

63

5  Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion    Patricia Williams

83

6  Dressing for Success: How the Heroine’s Clothing (Un)Makes the    Man in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose    Kathryn Marie Talarico

115

7  Anomaly or Sole Survivor? The Impruneta Cushion and Early    Italian “Patchwork”    Lisa Evans

133

Recent Books of Interest

155

Contents of Previous Volumes







161

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

Illustrations Burials from Bavaria Fig. 1.1   Plan of the cemetery and burials Fig. 1.2   Graphic documentation of grave 5 Fig. 1.3   Graphic documentation of grave 3 Fig. 1.4   Bow brooches from grave 9 Fig. 1.5   Bird-shaped brooches from grave 10 Fig. 1.6   Disc brooch from grave 5, back and front Fig. 1.7   Disc brooch from grave 5, surviving materials and        placement on garment Fig. 1.8   Reconstructed tablet-woven braid from grave 5

page 3 5 6 8 9 10 11 15

Early Medieval Headdresses Fig. 2.1   Fig. 2.2   Fig. 2.3   Fig. 2.4   Fig. 2.5   Fig. 2.6   Fig. 2.7   Fig. 2.8   Fig. 2.9   Fig. 2.10  Fig. 2.11  Fig. 2.12  Fig. 2.13 

Pillbox cap from Leens, Netherlands, ca. 600–900 Reconstruction drawing of the Leens cap Seams and stitching used in the Leens cap Headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion, 568–651 Reconstruction drawing of the Dokkum–Berg Sion headdress Seams and stitching used in the Dokkum–Berg Sion headdress Ways to wear the Dokkum–Berg Sion headdress Roman-era sandstone head from Dumfries, Scotland Hat from Leens, Netherlands, ca. 600–900 Cap from Rasquert, Netherlands, ca. 800–900 Hat from Aalsum, Netherlands, ca. 700–900 Hat from Oostrum, Netherlands, ca. 700–900 Detail of decorative stitching on the Oostrum hat

28 29 30 33 34 35 37 39 40 41 42 43 44

Anglo-Saxon Textiles Fig. 3.1   Detail of Maniple II, tomb of St. Cuthbert, Durham        Cathedral, tenth century Fig. 3.2   Casula of St. Harlindis and St. Relindis, Maaseik, Belgium,        late eighth or early ninth century Fig. 3.3   Pieces from the Maaseik casula after dissassembly

vii

51 54 55

Illustrations Fig. 3.4   Textiles from the tomb of St. Cuthbert, Durham Cathedral,        tenth century Fig. 3.5   Embroidery attached to a dalmatic, Basilica Ambrosiana, Milan Fig. 3.6   Detail showing King Harold, Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century Fig. 3.7   Cnut and Ælfgifu-Emma, Liber Vitae, Winchester, 1031

56 57 58 61

Dress in the Mabinogion Fig. 5.1   Fragments of embroidered linen from Llan-gors Lake, Wales,        ninth to tenth century Fig. 5.2   Effigy of Princess Joan, Church of St. Mary, Beaumaris, Wales,        ca. 1237

90 105

Early Italian “Patchwork” Fig. 7.1   The front of the cushion from the tomb of Bishop Agli,        Impruneta, Italy, 1477 Fig. 7.2   The back of the cushion Fig. 7.3   Diagram of the front of the cushion Fig. 7.4   Diagram of the back of the cushion Fig. 7.5   Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, John the Baptist, and        Angels, Tuscany, thirteenth century Fig. 7.6   Diagram of the cloth of honor depicted in the Madonna Fig. 7.7   Diagram of wall frescoes, Palazzo Davanzati, Florence, late        fourteenth century Fig. 7.8   Diagram of the Anjou Textile from Budapest, Hungary,        fourteenth century

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138 139 140 141 145 147 150 153

Tables Semantic Classification of Gold Table 4.1  Terms excluded from the investigation of “gold” Table 4.2   A semantic classification of the GOLD data

page 74 78

Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose Table 6.1   References to clothing and accessories in Jean Renart’s       Roman de la Rose

ix

119

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. She is Director of a five-year project funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council on the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 and Co-Investigator of a three-year Leverhulme-sponsored project on Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources. She is also General Editor of An Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles ca. 450–1450 (forthcoming 2012). Recent books include Medieval Textiles of the British Isles AD 450–1100: An Annotated Bibliography (2007; with Elizabeth Coatsworth) and Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (2004). CHRYSTEL BRANDENBURGH is city archaeologist in Leiden, the Netherlands. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology at Leiden University, where she is working on a dissertation on early medieval textiles in the Netherlands. LISA EVANS is a quilt historian from Massachusetts. She is a member of the American Quilt Study Group, for whom she has presented workshops on pre-1700 European quilting. Her article on Henry VIII’s quilts appeared in Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008). BRIGITTE HAAS-GEBHARD has been curator of the medieval department at the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection, Munich, since 1989. Her research ­specialties are early medieval grave finds and monasteries of South Germany. In addition to her work on the finds from the Unterhaching cemetery, her current areas of research include the provenence of early medieval garnets, the small finds from the medieval monastery of Herrenchiemsee, and Bavarian bog bodies. MAREN CLEGG HYER is Assistant Professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia. Her research specialty is the material culture of the Anglo-Saxon period, in particular textiles and textile metaphors. She is co-editor (with Gale Owen-Crocker) of The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World (2011). xi

Contributors BRITT NOWAK-BÖCK has worked since 2004 as a restorer for archaeological objects at the Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites in Munich. Her specialty is organic archaeological materials, particularly textiles. In addition to her work in conservation, restoration, and scientific analysis of artifacts, she is also preparing guidelines for the excavation and handling of organic archaeological objects. LOUISE SYLVESTER is Reader in English Language at the University of Westminster. She is co-investigator on the five-year AHRC-funded project on Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 and principal investigator on the three-year Leverhulme-funded project on Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources. Her most recent book is Medieval Romance and the Construction of Heterosexuality (2008), and she is now working on Medieval Dress and Textiles: A Multilingual Anthology of Texts. KATHRYN MARIE TALARICO is Professor of French at College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She specializes in Arthurian literature and the romances of adventure, and has written articles on the Queste del saint graal, the Galeran de Bretagne, and the evolution of the Arthurian legend. At present, she is preparing an English translation of the Galeran de Bretagne. She also works in the area of second language acquisition. PATRICIA WILLIAMS is a graduate of the University of Bangor, North Wales, and the University of Manchester, where she worked as a lecturer for many years. Her research area is medieval Welsh language and literature. Her principal publications include annotated editions of Middle Welsh prose texts, including Kedymdeithyas Amlyn ac Amic and Gesta Romanorum. Her forthcoming book, Historical Texts from Medieval Wales, will be published in 2012.

xii

Preface Volume 8 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles presents the reader with pure gold, not just in the metaphorical sense, but also in the literal one: Three of our papers focus on this most precious of dress adornments. Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt NowakBöck discuss elite burials of the early sixth century at Unterhaching, Germany, which include not only sumptuous gold jewelry but also textile bands embellished with gold strips. Maren Clegg Hyer examines evidence for the recycling of such precious gold bands in the later Anglo-Saxon period. Louise Sylvester, drawing on the database of the Manchester Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project, investigates the lexis and lexicalization of gold in relation to cloth and clothing, offering a semantic classification applicable to multilingual medieval Britain. This volume also exhumes significant archaeological textiles from obscurity. Chrystel Brandenburgh describes two early medieval headdresses from the Netherlands, long hidden in museum stores, and Lisa Evans examines a colorful fifteenthcentury cushion, one of the earliest identifiable examples of patchwork, found in a bishop’s tomb in the small town of Impruneta, Italy. Uses of dress and textiles in literature are explored in Patricia Williams’s survey of the naming and function of items in the Welsh Mabinogion, and in Kathryn Talarico’s discussion of Jean Renart’s manipulation of clothing and gender roles in his Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole. The editors thank Miranda Howard of Western Michigan University for her years of service on our editorial board, and we welcome to the board Christine Meek, of Trinity College, Dublin, who has herself been published in Medieval Clothing and Textiles and has also given valuable advice to other authors. We are, as always, appreciative of the contributions of peer reviewers. All submissions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles are peer reviewed, and interdisciplinary articles often benefit from the input of several referees, who give their time and expertise most graciously. We continue to consider for publication in this journal all 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 speakers should be sent to [email protected] for Kalamazoo and [email protected] for Leeds. We also welcome independent proposals for contributions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Potential authors should send a 300-word synopsis to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, English and American Studies, The University of Manchester, xiii

Preface M13 9PL, UK; e-mail [email protected]. For author guidelines, see http://www. distaff.org/MCTguidelines.pdf. Authors interested in submitting a book proposal for our subsidia series “Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles” should apply using the publication proposal form on the Web site of our publisher, Boydell & Brewer, at http://www. boydellandbrewer.com. Potential authors of monographs or collaborative books are invited to discuss their ideas for such publications with the General Editors in advance of making a formal proposal.

xiv

The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed ­Burials from Sixth-Century Bavaria Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck

The burial ground of Unterhaching provides exceptional evidence of elite dress in the early sixth century. The cemetery, situated in the southern part of the county of Munich, Germany, in a geological region known as the Munich Gravel Plain, was excavated Dec. 8–13, 2004. The finds were subsequently conserved and scientifically examined by the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection, Munich, and the Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites. The most important results already have been presented to the general public in an exhibition and in an associated popular publication. At the time of writing, the scientific research is almost finished and is scheduled to be published in 2012. GRAVE GOODS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS

The ten burials, consisting of three men, six women, and a young girl, belong to the same archaeological period. According to various dating systems, this can be termed

Amelie O’Neill and Christoph Schott translated this article into English. Some of the findings described in this article have appeared in the popular catalog Karfunkelstein und Seide: Neue Schätze aus Bayerns Frühzeit, ed. Ludwig Wamser (Munich: Pustet, 2010). More of this material will also be published in the book Unterhaching: Ein Gräberfeld der Zeit um 500 n. Chr., ed. Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Hubert Fehr (Munich: Archäologische Staatssammlung, forthcoming). The authors are grateful to Ina Meissner, Gabriele von Looz, Penelope Walton Rogers, Gale Owen-Crocker, and Robin Netherton.    Many experts assisted with the analysis of specific finds described in this article; see note 55.  ���������������������   Ludwig Wamser, ed., Karfunkelstein und Seide: Neue Schätze aus Bayerns Frühzeit (Munich: Pustet, 2010).  ����������������������������������������   Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Hubert Fehr, Unterhaching: Ein Gräberfeld der Zeit um 500 n. Chr., Abhandlungen und Bestandskataloge der Archäologischen Staatssammlung München 1 (Munich: Archäologische Staatssammlung, forthcoming).

Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck stage 2 following Kurt Böhner, AM I following Hermann Ament, layer 1 following Rainer Christlein, or SD phase 3/4 according to Ursula Koch. Although the absolute dates suggest the time span between AD 480 and 520–30, the radiocarbon dates of the skeletons mostly fall in the early sixth century with a statistical confidence level of over 90 percent. They did not die contemporaneously during warlike events or a plague; based on the study of the human remains, the cause of death was very likely individual to each case. The plan of the cemetery (fig. 1.1) shows a loosely scattered, group-like burial site, typical for related cemeteries, not yet of the later “row-grave” type. The archaeological excavation seems to have reached the outer limits of the cemetery to the south, west, and north; there was no evidence of other graves in this space. In the adjacent area to the east a geophysical survey was carried out by the Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites. As a result, a continuation of the cemetery in this direction can be excluded. The deceased were probably buried in wooden coffins. The buried bodies are oriented west-east according to custom at that time, lying on their backs with the heads in the west and the arms parallel to the body. This type of burial resembles contemporaneous cemeteries in the close vicinity. A Late Roman tradition is recognizable in the way the buried are oriented and positioned, as well as in specific details, such as the attachment of niches in the grave wall and the clearly evidenced drink offering. The male graves of Unterhaching are very poorly equipped, as are contemporary graves in the region. The grave goods consisted merely of clothing, belts, and belt purses. Weapons were not added; in only one case a grave contained a short seax, which was likely to be a hunting knife rather than a weapon for battle. The female graves of Unterhaching, however, reveal a different picture. The female graves are all well-equipped with precious metals, especially the characteristic bow brooches, worn at waist level and associated with pendants.

 ��������������   Kurt Böhner, Die fränkischen Altertümer des Trierer Landes, Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit B 1 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1958), 1:17–25.  �������������������������������������������������������������������������  ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Hermann����������������������������������������������������������������� Ament, “Zur archäologischen Periodisierung der Merowingerzeit,” Germania 55 (1977): 133–44.  ��������������������   Rainer Christlein, Das alamannische Reihengräberfeld von Marktoberdorf im Allgäu, Materialhefte zur bayerischen Vorgeschichte 21 (Kallmünz, Germany: Michael Lassleben, 1966), 19–21.  ��������������   Ursula Koch, Das alamannisch-fränkische Gräberfeld bei Pleidelsheim, Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg 60 (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 2001), 70–88.  ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Gisela Grupe and George McGlynn, “Anthropologische Untersuchung der Skelettfunde von Unterhaching,” in Wamser, Karfunkelstein, 30–39.  ����������������������������������������   Arno Rettner, “402, 431, 476—und dann? �������������������������������������������������� Archäologische Hinweise zum Fortleben romanischer Bevölkerung im frühmittelalterlichen Südbayern,” in Neue Forschungen zur römischen Besiedlung zwischen Oberrhein und Enns, ed. Ludwig Wamser and Bernd Steidl, Schriftenreihe der Archäologischen Staatssammlung 3 (Munich: Bernhard Albert Greiner, 2002), 267–81, at 279.



Burials from Bavaria

Fig. 1.1: Plan of the cemetery and the ten burials. The border represents the edge of the ­excavated area. Drawing: Brigitte Haas-Gebhard.

While the method of burial as well as many details from the cemetery in Unterhaching fit perfectly into the spectrum of the time,10 there are a few differences to be noted. The grave goods at Unterhaching—especially those from the female graves— mostly resemble ones from contemporary cemeteries in the Munich Gravel Plain (bow brooches, bird- and fish-shaped brooches inlaid with garnet, beads, earrings). However, ���������������   Walter Sage, Das Reihengräberfeld von Altenerding in Oberbayern, 2 vols., Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit A 14 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1984); Hermann Dannheimer, Das baiuwarische Reihengräberfeld von Aubing, Stadt München, 2 vols., Veröffentlichungen der Prähistorischen Staatssammlung München (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 1998); Stephanie Zintl, “Das frühmerowingische Gräberfeld von München–Perlach,” Bericht der Bayerischen Bodendenkmalpflege 45/46 (2004/2005), 281–370.



Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck all female burials of Unterhaching include a garment fastener of precious metal located in the waist area. In other cemeteries of the surrounding Munich Plain, female graves equipped this way represent the upper class of the overall population. The precious metal dress-fasteners of the women therefore enable us to identify this burial group as members of the upper class. This means that the burial ground of Unterhaching, unlike the other cemeteries, can be identified as a separate cemetery of a wealthy group, whose members may have been differentiated from their contemporaries in death just as in everyday life. Unterhaching is the only cemetery to be discovered so far which can be identified as an elite, early-sixth-century burial ground. Clearly the Unterhaching group also constituted only a small part of the contemporaneous population. Based on examinations of contemporary neighbouring cemeteries, the upper-class individuals buried at Unterhaching would have represented only the upper 5 percent to 25 percent of those living in their community. A mathematical projection from the ten elite burials at Unterhaching suggests a community of between forty and two hundred people. Archaeologists can only guess that the burial site for the rest of the community may lie to the east of the grave group: the river lies to the west, and areas to the north and south have long been built over, without any archaeological finds being recorded. EXCEPTIONAL GRAVE GOODS

Although many objects from the burial ground of Unterhaching resemble those from other cemeteries in the Munich Plain, there are a few rarities. These include a pair of superlative cloisonné disc brooches with a bird-of-prey design inlaid in garnet, malachite, glass, and pearls, which must have been manufactured in Rome or Ravenna, from grave 5, as well as a pair of silver bow brooches with niello and garnet inlay and bird-head decoration from northern Italy, found in grave 9. The site is also exceptional for its dress remains: gold textiles in graves 4 and 5; the remains of silk in graves 5 and 10; and the quantity and range of mineral-preserved textiles in grave 5, which have made it possible to reconstruct the clothing of this rich burial (fig. 1.2). All these are discussed in the sections below. Also worth noting are a pair of iron buckles, used in fastening the leg clothing in male grave 3 (fig. 1.3), which are very unusual for the early sixth century, not just in the region of their discovery, but also outside it. There are no contemporary examples of the legwear worn in male grave 3 from the entire area north of the Alps; here, similar clothing is only worn a century later, though it appears in Mediterranean pictures from the sixth century.11

11  Gerard Brett, W. J. Macaulay, and Robert B. K. Stevenson, eds., The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors: First Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), p������������������������������������� l. 28, 30, 36, 37, 40 top������������ ; ���������� David Talbot Rice, ed., The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors: Second Report (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1958), pl. 44B, 45.



Burials from Bavaria

Fig. 1.2: Graphic documentation of grave 5. Drawing: Hans Stölzl.



Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck

Fig. 1.3: Graphic documentation of grave 3. Drawing: Hans Stölzl.

The wooden casket from female grave 512 is also unusual for this date and place. Wooden caskets do not usually appear in graves in Altbayern (“old Bavaria”).13 They are more common in the Rhine-Main area, but are not very numerous there until the

��������������������������������������������������������������������   Not visible in figure 1.2, since it was found in a higher stratum. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   A region excluding ��������������������������������������������������������������������� Franconia and Swabia; that is, Bavaria south of the Danube.



Burials from Bavaria middle third of the sixth century.14 Examples dating from the fifth and early sixth century rarely occur in the Rhine area and are only to be found in wealthy burial places, such as in the rich female grave from Cologne, St. Severin V, 217.15 BROOCHES

The brooches found in the cemetery include forms typologically indigenous to the Thuringian as much as to the eastern Gothic or Alamannic-Frankish area. The distribution of individual forms and styles has more to do with the repertoire of individual goldsmiths rather than membership of one of these ethnic groups. The many variations of forms and decoration, especially among the bow brooches (there are hardly any identical objects), show that there must have been a lively exchange among the craftsmen and that the smiths worked with great creativity. Detailed comparisons with the cemeteries of Aubing, Germany (city of Munich), and Altenerding, Germany (county of Erding), both also on the Munich Plain, during the scientific examination of the Unterhaching finds, clearly demonstrated that bow brooches were apparently chosen and worn in relation to a woman’s age and/or social class.16 In contrast, the special form and the style of the brooch do not indicate the ethnic allegiance of the owner but rather the craftsman’s level of experience and his contacts. Manufacturing locations of the metal jewelry elements can be defined only in the case of grave 9. Here, technical examination of the bow brooches (fig. 1.4) pointed to the fact that almost identical objects were produced in upper Italy. Concerning all other brooches except those of grave 5, native manufacture in the Munich Plain can be assumed; this includes both the silver bow brooches as well as the bird-shaped brooches from grave 10 (fig. 1.5), which were paralleled in Altenerding, grave 607.17 The production of the brooches was probably only possible by order: The client would give the raw silver to the smith, who would design and produce a specific item based on his repertoire of brooch models made of cheap material. A surplus production of brooches in the Bavarian area at this time can be excluded with some certainty. The gold disc brooches from grave 5 The two gold disc brooches once closing a young woman’s garment in the waist area are of outstanding workmanship and iconography (figs. 1.6 and 1.7). Each brooch has a diameter of 5.7 centimeters. The gold walls of the cloisonné work are soldered onto a gold ground plate. This is riveted with eight silver rivets to another ground plate,

�����������������   Bernd Päffgen, Die Ausgrabungen in St. Severin zu Köln, Kölner Forschungen 5 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1992), 1:476. �����������   Päffgen, St. Severin, vol. 3, pl. 92. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Gabriele von Looz, “Neue Beobachtungen an der Bügelfibel aus Altenerding Grab 512,” Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 39 (2009), 579–88. ��������   Sage, Altenerding, vol. 1, part 2, pl. 196, no. 16.17.



Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck

Fig. 1.4: Bow brooches from grave 9. Drawing: Hans Stölzl.

this one silver, which bears the pin and its construction. The symmetrical ornament on the brooch face shows four birds of prey—probably eagles—frontal with their heads turned in profile, which seem to raise their wings to fly. The cellwork of the cloisonné is filled with red garnet, now-weathered green malachite, pearls, and glass of orange and blue. Without doubt, these are precious products manufactured on demand by a goldsmith with great skill and astonishing background knowledge. The exceptional precise workmanship and the Christian symbolism are equally surprising. The single pearl on the chest of each of the birds of prey represents an abstract form of the Roman bulla. In Rome, the bulla belonged to the dress of distinguished boys; it was not taken off until the age of 13 to 16, when it was customarily dedicated to the Lares (gods of the 

Burials from Bavaria

Fig. 1.5: Bird-shaped brooches from grave 10. Drawing: Hans Stölzl.

house). In the Notitia dignitatum, from the first half of the fifth century, the legions of the Ioviani and Herculiani carry the rising eagle as a shield emblem; another two units with the same name and the addition of the word iuniores (boys) have the same emblems, but the two eagles are shown as young animals—iuniores—by bullae on their chest, represented by circles.18 These emblems quite possibly prove that in the fifth century, depictions of circles on the chest were seen as bullae and acted as the emblem of a boy or young animal. The illustration of a bird of prey wearing a bulla on a chain on its breast is quite common in Roman art of the Nubian and Coptic regions. Viewed one way, the eagles of Unterhaching seem to have their wings spread out; seen another way, they seem to sit in a kind of calyx (a cuplike device, such as the sepals of a flower). The illustration of a calyx is a topos in Roman portraiture for a deceased person, serving as a kind of logo comprehensible to all members of the Roman Empire. The reigning emperor was the only living person who could be presented in a calyx. On the great belt buckle (about AD 500) from the Castellani collection, now kept in the Villa Giulia in Rome, the same motif of a calyx can be found, already unusual by the early Middle Ages; instead of an eagle, a cross is in the center, surely to be seen as a symbol for Christ.19 Considering all these observations, the birds on the disc fibulas of Unterhaching can only be interpreted as symbols for Christ in the form of an eagle or phoenix. 18  Notitia dignitatum, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 9661, 110v and 74v. ���������������������   Volker Bierbrauer, Ostgotische Grab- und Schatzfunde in Italien (Spoleto: Panetto & Petrelli, 1975), 360, fig. 42.



Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck

Fig. 1.6: Disc brooch from grave 5, shown from the back (top) and the front (bottom). ­Photos: Britt Nowak-Böck.

10

Burials from Bavaria

Fig. 1.7: Disc brooch from grave 5. Top: Diagram of the surviving materials visible at the back of the brooch. Bottom: Reconstruction of the placement of the brooch on the garment opening, pictured from the inside of the garment. Drawings: Britt Nowak-Böck and Helmut Voß.

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Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck The high-quality material as well as the motifs depicted suggest that the manufacturer of the brooches was not only a person with great knowledge of religious symbolism, but was also in charge of a workshop capable of very precise workmanship, as it produced high-quality cloisonné work in gold and was also able to abrade garnet of hardness 720 into any form required; a workshop, furthermore, which had access to a major trading center, since it used gold, silver, iron, malachite, pearls, and garnets. The symbols and materials used may suggest that concealed behind the manufacturer was a person with some education, who possessed knowledge of Roman art as well as an understanding of early Christian symbolic language. At that time this kind of knowledge most probably came from a monk or other cleric. The goldsmith’s workshop was thus perhaps located in the surroundings of a monastery or episcopal residence.21 Considering the technical and ornamental details of the brooches, the workshop can probably be located in Italy, the main settlements of the time, namely Ravenna or Rome, being the only feasible places. The route the brooches took over the Alps cannot be traced, but it is possible they got to the Munich Plain just the same way precious clothes did, as valuable gifts or items connected to an individual person. They may have been received as diplomatic gifts. Although they certainly reflected the high status of the woman buried with them, she may not have been the original recipient. Archaeological evidence often suggests that brooches could be passed down from one woman to another, over more than one generation (for example, when a brooch was old when buried, or manufactured earlier than other grave goods). GOLD TEXTILES

Garments containing gold textiles were highly uncommon, representing only 1 percent of the available clothing from the fifth to the seventh century. Gold textiles were incorporated into cloaks, dresses, gartering, or, as in the case of Unterhaching, headdresses.22 The gold would originally be an integral part of the textile, but the organic elements decay during burial, so that only the metal survives as an archaeological find. The positioning of the Unterhaching gold textile components—which were flat strips and not wrapped around a core—suggests that they probably represent remains of the

20  Hardness according to the Mohs scale. Materials with hardness of Mohs 7 can scratch window glass. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Concerning high clergy working as goldsmiths, see Hayo Vierck, “Werke des Eligius,” in Studien zur vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Festschrift für Joachim Werner, part 2, Frühmittelalter, ed. Georg Kossack and Günter Ulbert, Münchner Beiträge zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Ergänzungsband 1.2 (Munich: Beck, 1974), 309–80; Helmut Roth, Kunst und Handwerk im Frühen Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 1986), 40–69. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Carina Stiefel, “Goldtextilien der Merowingerzeit in Süd- und Westdeutschland” (master’s thesis, University of Freiburg, 2008).

12

Burials from Bavaria vittae auro exornatae (fillets ornamented with gold) described in text and depicted in visual sources.23 The popular conception of the gold-ornamented headband as the emblem of a bride probably goes back to an overinterpretation of a passage by Gregory of Tours, where he refers to a scandal in the monastery of Poitiers, when the abbess Didima had a headband made for her niece from a gold embroidered altar cloth.24 However, iconographic sources, as well as the written and archaeological information, hardly leave any doubt that gold-decorated headbands were also worn by married women of the highest level of society.25 Some well-observed grave finds from England allow us to interpret some gold bands as borders of head-veils.26 The gold textiles of graves 4 and 5 in Unterhaching are some of the oldest known gold textiles found north of the Alps in the early Middle Ages. There have been no comparable findings of that time in the Munich Plain. The only other two graves equipped with gold textiles from roughly the same time are the two female graves 266 and 451 from Straubing-Bajuwarenstrasse (Bavaria).27 Within wider surroundings, some graves in Rheinhessen,28 the Thuringian settlement area,29 as well as the royal Merovingian burials in Saint-Denis, near Paris, can be compared.30 The manufacturing technology and processing of the Unterhaching gold strips have been precisely reconstructed, using light microscope analysis and scanning electron microscopy as well as various scientific examination methods.31 In this way cut marks, running in longitudinal direction along the edges of the gold strips from grave 5 (the richest female grave), could be detected, as well as several offsets with cutting imperfections. The sharp edges sometimes are not vertical to the surface of the gold foil, but slope slightly, giving the strips a trapezoidal cross-section. In contrast, the edges of the gold strips from grave 4, a girl’s grave, are perpendicular. In parts a groove and a ridge run parallel to the rim. These observations suggest that the strips from grave 5 were cut with a knifelike tool out of thinly hammered gold foil, while the

23  Elisabeth Crowfoot and Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids,” Medieval Archaeology 11 (1967): 42–86; ���������������������������������������������������������������� Elisabeth Crowfoot, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids: Addenda and Corrigenda,” Medieval Archaeology 13 (1969): 209–10. 24  Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, X.16, available online at http://la.wikisource.org/wiki/­ Historiarum_Francorum_libri_X (accessed Dec. 9, 2011). �����������   Päffgen, St. Severin, 1:426–29. 26  Penelope ��������������� Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450–700, CBA Research Report 145 (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007), 158. ����������������   Hans Geisler, Das frühbairische Gräberfeld Straubing-Bajuwarenstraße I, Internationale Archäologie 30 (Rahden: Marie Leidorf, 1998), pl. 398, 6–8. �������������������������������������������������������������������������   P. T. Kessler, “Merowingisches Fürstengrab von Planig in Rheinhessen,” Mainzer Zeitschrift 35 (1940), 1–12. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Berthold Schmidt, “Thüringische Hochadelsgräber der späten Völkerwanderungszeit,” in Varia Archaeologica: Festschrift Wilhelm Unverzagt (Berlin: Akademie, 1964), 195–213, at 197 and 203. ������������������������������������������   Michel Fleury and Albert France-Lanord, Les Trésors Mérovingiens de la Basilique de Saint-Denis (Woippy, France: Klopp, 1998), 88–187. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Ina Meissner, “Untersuchungen an Goldtextilien des frühen Mittelalters” (diploma thesis, Technische Universität München, 2010).

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Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck strips from grave 4 were cut by shearing. The thickness of the strips varies significantly in both examples. The main components of the gold alloy were measured at etched microsections by using scanning electron microscopy, coupled with an energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence method. The gold in grave 5 consists of 82.6 percent gold, 16.1 percent silver, and 1.3 percent copper. The gold content of grave 4, at 96.6 percent, is considerably higher, and the proportion of silver (2.1 percent) significantly lower, while the copper content (1.3 percent) is consistent. Metallographic tests on etched microsections of the gold strips showed that the gold strips in grave 5 were processed in a more flexible state than the ones in grave 4. The obverse pattern of the two bands from graves 4 and 5 is different from that on the front. In several places twists of the gold strips and processing faults could be detected. Various textile techniques are known to have existed during the Merovingian period that could incorporate either spun or unspun strips of gold foil, either during or after the manufacture of the textile which carried them. Among these are band or tablet weaving, in which gold strips were incorporated during the making of the band, and embroidery, in which the gold was applied to the woven textile. Both gold bands from Unterhaching have been recreated in experimental reconstructions using the tablet-weaving technique (fig. 1.8). Presumably the gold ornaments only formed the central part of a wider tablet-woven band. The experiments showed that a flexible tension of the gold strips is very helpful with this manufacturing technique and does explain the accidental twisting of the strips that often can be noticed in both Unterhaching finds. Because of the rarity of gold textiles among the otherwise plentiful archaeological material from the same time, the high status of the females in Unterhaching graves 4 and 5 is evident. Especially striking is that one of these two burials (grave 4) contains a young girl. The presence of two newly manufactured bow brooches as well as a piece of gold textile—symbols of an adult woman—clearly demonstrate her family’s status in society. SILK

Very valuable, too, among the archaeological finds are the two pieces of silk, which were detected in female graves 5 and 10. The analysis of grave 10 identified the silk as the remains of a probable headdress—perhaps a veil—since the textile remains were found on the garnet-decorated exterior of an earring. Before the excavation of Unterhaching, silk had not been found in southern Bavaria and was very rare in an even wider region from this period. The lack of finds cannot be explained by supposing that textile remains existed but were not identified, since burial grounds such Altenerding, Straubing, and Aubing were subject to detailed and expert archaeological

14

Burials from Bavaria

Fig. 1.8: Front and back of a reconstructed tablet-woven braid with gold pattern from grave 5, produced by Anneliese Streiter and Erika Weiland. Photo: Britt Nowak-Böck.

textile research.32 Because of its characteristic of not twisting or twisting only slightly, silk is so distinctive that no archaeological textiles expert of the last 50 years would have been likely to miss it. The silk finds, as well as the gold textiles, confirm that the women of Unterhaching were members of upper-class society, wearing clothing which differed significantly

���������������������������������������������������������   Hermann Helmuth, Dietrich Ankner, and Hans-Jürgen Hundt, Das Reihengräberfeld von Altenerding in Oberbayern, vol. 2, Anthropologie, Damaszierung und Textilfunde, Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit 18 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 154–90; Hans-Jürgen Hundt, “Bestimmung der Textilreste,” in Dannheimer, Aubing, 67–73; Barbara Wagner, “Technische Analyse der Textilfunde,” in Geisler, Straubing-Bajuwarenstraße I, 333–38.

15

Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck from those of their contemporaries. These pieces of clothing were status symbols, originating probably in the Mediterranean area, since local production of silk and gold textiles at that time is unlikely.33 The wearing of silk or gold clothing by unauthorized people was subject to severe punishment according to the Codex Theodosianus, from the year 438. Only the emperor and his domus were entitled to wear gold textiles. (The imperial domus almost certainly included not only members of the emperor’s family, but his complete court with its high officials and military commanders.)34 In the year 533, the Codex Iustinianus repeated this bylaw almost exactly and emphasized very clearly the imperial ministerium, which apparently was the legitimation for wearing gold bands.35 Of course neither the scope of these laws nor how much they were actually obeyed, especially in the Northern provinces, is known; but nonetheless they do seem to be reflected in the archaeological findings.36 It is uncertain how these precious pieces of clothing came across the Alps. It is unlikely that they were far-distance trade products, since they would probably be more common among the archaeological finds if their possession had depended merely ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Shing Müller, “Die Wege der Seide. Der Ost-West-Seidenhandel vom 1. bis zum 6. Jahrhundert,” in Wamser, Karfunkelstein, 78–86. 34  Codex Theodosianus 10.21.1: “����������������������������������������������������������������������� Auratas ac sericas paragaudas auro intextas tam viriles quam muliebres privatis usibus contexere conficereque prohibemus et in gynaeceis tantum nostris fieri praecipimus.” � [We forbid the weaving or making for private use of borders of gold or of silk interwoven with gold on garments for either men or women, and we command that such garment-borders be made only in our weaving establishments.] 10.21.2: “Nemo auratas habeat aut in tunicis aut in lineis paragaudas. Non enim levi animadversione plectetur, quisquis vetito se et indebito non abdicarit indutu.” ���� [No person shall have woven gold borders, either on tunics or on linen garments. For if any person should not desist from the use of such forbidden and unauthorized clothing, he shall be stricken with no light punishment.] 10.21.3: “����������������������������������������������������������������������� Temperent universi, qui cuiuscumque sunt sexus dignitatis artis professionis et generis, ab huiusmodi speciei possessione, quae soli principi eiusque domui dedicatur.”������ [All persons, of whatsoever sex, rank, skill, profession, or family, shall abstain from the possession of that kind of material which is dedicated only to the Emperor and to His household.] Iacobi Gothofredi [Jacques Godefroy] ed., Codex Theodosianus, 6 vols. (Lyon: Sumptibus Ioannis-Antonii Huguetan and Marci-Antonii Rauaud, 1665), 5:245. Translations from Clyde Pharr, Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions: A Translation with Commentary, Glossary, and Bibliography (Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2001), 288. Special thanks to Thomas M. Izbicki for locating the translation. 35  Codex Iustinianus 11.9.1: “Auratas ac sericas paragaudas auro intextas viriles privatis usibus contexere conficereque prohibemus et a gynaeciariis tantum nostris fieri praecipimus.” [We prohibit the weaving and making for private use of gold and silk borders on men’s clothing, inlaid with gold, and we direct that they shall only be made by our weavers.] 11.9.2: “Nemo vir auratas habeat aut in tunicis aut in lineis paragaudas, nisi ii tantummodo, quibus hoc propter imperiale ministerium ­concessum est. Non ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� enim levi animadversione plectetur, quisquis vetito se et indebito non ­ abdicaverit indumento.”������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� [����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� No man shall have gilded borders either on his tunic or his linen vestments, unless that right is granted him by reason of his services in the imperial government. Whoever fails to lay aside a prohibited garment and one not becoming to his station will be punished severely.��] Codex Iustinianus, available online at http://webu2.upmf-grenoble.fr/Haiti/Cours/Ak/Corpus/codjust.htm (accessed Dec. 7, 2011). Translations from Fred H. Blume, Annotated Justinian Code, ed. Timothy Kearley, online at http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/blume&justinian/ (accessed Dec. 24, 2011). Special thanks to Thomas M. Izbicki for locating the translation. �������������������������   Haas-Gebhard and Fehr, Unterhaching.

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Burials from Bavaria on trading capabilities. The finds may represent clothing connected to an individual person or diplomatic gifts from the Mediterranean. TEXTILE ARCHAEOLOGY IN BAVARIA

For many decades, archaeological research into the early Middle Ages has dealt with the questions of what the clothes of people looked like and how they were made. In addition to the protective function of clothing, the cloth itself with its colors and design, the garments’ construction, and the wearing method with its specific accessories all served as important symbol indicators and deliberate expression of the personality of the wearer. For a long time, a kind of uniform clothing was assumed for early medieval groups, especially for women on the Continent who wore the so-called “four-brooch costume,” with two bow brooches in the waist/hip area and two smaller brooches on chest and neck. Nowadays, however, it is acknowledged that factors such as the age or health status of a woman could have influenced the number of her brooches, and with that probably her clothing.37 Particularly in southern Germany, there are special challenges for the comparatively recent discipline of textile archaeology and clothes research. There are hardly any written or visual sources concerning the design and use of clothing, just as there so far is a lack of well-preserved garments such as shirts, dresses, cloaks, trousers, or jackets. There are only a few fortuitous exceptions in Bavaria—for example, the remains of leather clothing from the clerical graves in Augsburg, St. Ulrich and Afra (around 600),38 and fragments of a woman’s leather shoe from Wielenbach, county of Weilheim-Schongau, dating to the early eighth century, which was preserved in a sarcophagus of blocks of rock made from consolidated volcanic ash, called tuff.39 In general, archaeological textiles remain well-preserved under dry conditions, as for example in desert regions, salt rocks, or sheltered church tombs. Due to drought and cold, complete garments can also be preserved for many centuries in glacier regions and permafrost soils. Wet conditions can also preserve organic material. North European bogs present one of the most important sources for textile research, especially for the Bronze and Iron ages. The acid environment of the bogs, being low in oxygen and with constant conditions, provides excellent preservation of animal material like wool and leather. In contrast, underwater excavations in the lakes around the Alps reveal finds of plant fibers such as flax and tree bast. Due to waterlogged alkaline conditions in lakes with underlying calcareous geology, articles such as fishing nets, baskets, mats, and other utensils of everyday use in prehistoric daily life have been preserved. In contrast, the periodically wet and aerated soils in southern Germany present the worst imaginable preservation conditions for textiles. Physical, chemical, and ��������������������������������������������������   Haas-Gebhard and Von Looz, “Neue Beobachtungen.” �����������������������   Joachim Werner, ed., Die Ausgrabungen in St. Ulrich und Afra in Augsburg 1961–1968 (Munich: Kommission zur archäologischen Erforschung des spätrömischen Raetiens, 1977), 191–99, pl. 23, 33, 34. ������������������������������������������������������������������   Brigitte Haas-Gebhard, “Rekonstruierter Lederschuh,” in Wamser, Karfunkelstein, 120.

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Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck biological processes cause rapid decomposition of any organic material. Important factors in this process are the chemical composition and the pH value of the surrounding soil as well as the temperature and humidity. Above all, microorganisms ensure a quick and complete reduction of every organic material. There are better chances of preservation in cases of finds in wells, lakes, or sites with permanently waterlogged soil, though correlating wet discoveries dating back to early medieval times are yet unknown in the Bavarian area. Generally the organic material is almost completely decayed, and only small remains, dark discoloration, or even only marks indicate the former presence of fabric. However, within the immediate vicinity of metal finds made of silver, bronze, or iron, close examination of the corrosion crust shows many patterns of textiles, leather, or feathers, preserved in mineralized form. For example, garment fabrics beneath a belt buckle or a wooden handle of a knife very quickly become soaked or enclosed with conserving corrosion products and are consequently preserved. During the corrosion of copper alloy, biocidal copper salt solutions arise, which prevent the reduction of soaked fibers by microorganisms and therefore allow the preservation of small organic areas. Iron corrosion compounds do not have toxic effects on microorganisms, but they enclose the substances very quickly, which can generate detailed negative imprints of the surface structure, with all its morphological characteristics. Therefore, the evidence of textiles or clothing in early medieval graves depends on the intensive, almost forensic, search for traces of fabric remains on the metal findings. From this there has evolved a field of work for archaeological textile specialists whose task it is to record, preserve, and interpret detailed information with specialized methods. When the artifacts are first excavated, it is difficult to identify the textile structures. They are revealed to the experts in the workshop only through specialized treatment with thin needles, rods, and brushes under the microscope. In this way, the various structures and their layer sequence on the front and back of the metalwork are examined and documented. Subsequently, the diverse thin layers on every metal object within a grave can be compared and their arrangement can be analyzed. The position and orientation of the individual objects (such as belt buckles, brooches, pins, or strap ends) and organic remains attached to them enable specialists to draw conclusions about burial customs and the use and arrangement of cloth and garments. In order to gain the maximum information from a textile technological analysis, extremely sensitive handling of organic remains is required initially at the excavation. Accurate documentation of the metal finds and an undisturbed grave are required. THE CLOTHING OF THE WOMAN IN GRAVE 5

All finds from Unterhaching lay about 1.5 meters beneath the earth for many centuries, unaffected by grave robbery or agricultural activities. In grave 5 (fig. 1.2), numerous remains of the complex and high-quality clothes of the woman were preserved, though these organic remains only survived in the form of fragments in mineralized condition and impressions on the metal objects. A band decorated with gold strips, already men18

Burials from Bavaria tioned above, and a silk textile in the area of the head or chest most likely belonged to the formal headwear (such as a veil) of the buried woman.40 Two bird-shaped brooches closed a robe made of linen (flax or hemp) tabby in the chest region. The hems of this garment were decorated in detail with ornamental stitching, and the garment edges were bordered with tablet-woven bands made of wool. Similar decorative borders were also found on a front-opening wool garment in 2/2 twill weave, which was held together in the waist region by the two large disc brooches. Small needleworked button loops, through which the pins of the brooches were threaded, served as fixing points; however, at one spot the cloth was pierced directly.41 Which part of the clothing was worn outermost cannot be judged from the archaeological evidence. Neither is there any information about the length of garments. Therefore the linen item might have been a light coat or wrap just as well as a shirt-like undergarment. The remains of the wool garment, kept together by the disc brooches and probably open to the front, do not allow any conclusion as to whether it was a coat or—less likely—a kind of sash, as presumed by Max Martin.42 In addition to serving as garment fasteners, the brooches in this grave had a further function, as carriers of beaded bands and pendants on which pieces of jewelry (possibly with ritual significance) as well as utilitarian objects were fixed. S-plied threads were knotted onto both bird-shaped brooches as well as to one of the disc brooches (fig. 1.7). Colored beads made of glass, amber, and jet were strung on these threads.43 The pins of the great disc brooches supported, next to the string of beads, two finely decorated leather pendant ribbons; fixed on them were further beads, silver decorative strips, and a filigree knife with a horn handle and linear-ornamented leather sheath, which lay at thigh level.44 Beneath the wool garment closed by the disc brooches—which, as noted above, might have been either a coat or a sash—the woman �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Britt Nowak-Böck and Gabriele von Looz, “Die Textilien aus den Gräbern von Unterhaching,” in Wamser, Karfunkelstein, 40–45. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Similar loops have been found on the backs of various brooches. For example, see Antja Bartel and Ronald Knöchlein, “Zu einem Frauengrab des sechsten Jahrhunderts aus Waging am See, Lkr. Traunstein, Oberbayern,” Germania 71 (1993): 419–39. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Max Martin, “Tradition und Wandel der fibelgeschmückten frühmittelalterlichen Frauenkleidung,” Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 38 (1991), 629–80, at 659, fig. 34. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Grietje Suhr, “Das frühmittelalterliche Gräberfeld von München-Sendling/Brudermühlstraße,” Bericht der Bayerischen ������������������ Bodendenkmalpflege 51 (2010): 407–28, at 415, fig. 4; Rogers, �������� Cloth and Clothing,� 193–94. 44  For comparison, see the bow brooches of Herrenberg, Kr. �������������������������������������� Böblingen, grave 392; Susanne Walter, Christina Peek, and Antje Gillich, Am liebsten schön bunt! Kleidung im Frühen Mittelalter (Esslingen: Gesellschaft für Archäologie in Württemberg und Hohenzollern e.V., 2008), 37. Much broader pendant bands with the same perforated ornament occur from the early Merovingian period, for example, from Schwangau, county of Ostallgäu, graves 28 and 33, and from Bruckmühl, county of Rosenheim, grave 35; Walter Bachran, “Zaumzeug am Gürtel: Zur sekundären Verwendung frühmittelalterlichen Pferdegeschirrs,” in Spurensuche: Festschrift für Hans-Jörg Kellner, ed. Hermann Dannheimer, Kataloge der Prähistorischen Staatssammlung München Beiheft 3 (Kallmünz, Germany: Michael Lassleben, 1991), 185–90, at 188; Grietje Suhr and Hubert Fehr, Goldohrring und Bajuwarenschwert: Bruckmühl am Ende der Merowingerzeit (Bruckmühl, Germany: Markt Bruckmühl, 2007), pl. 16.

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Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck wore another garment made of wool which was probably long-sleeved, indicated by the textile structures on the lower surface of the knife, the belt buckle, and the iron object the dead woman held in her left hand. The plain-weave cloth lay in many fine folds aligned longitudinally to the axis of the body. Pleated fabrics made of wool or linen so far seem to have been very rare in the Merovingian period and were obviously reserved for persons at a high level.45 On the iron object held in the buried woman’s left hand were preserved not only pleated wool fabric, but also fine hair of an animal fur. The hair came from a small mammal, for which the closest match is stoat (ermine) or weasel. Whether the fur is the remains of clothing, such as a sleeve, or part of a now-decayed glove is no longer clear. Nevertheless the remains of fur correspond to the exclusive equipment and therefore the status of the buried woman.46 A few textile remains on the back of the buckle, which secured a leather belt 2.5 centimeters wide, indicate that the woman wore, nearest to her body, a girdled undergarment made of linen tabby fabric. In fiber and quality, it is comparable to the textile on the bird-shaped brooches in the chest area. Very similar textile remains have also been found on other objects in the grave, for example on the surface of the disc brooches, but they cannot all be definitely assigned to only one piece of clothing. The stratigraphy of the identified textile layers shows that there were at least two different pieces of clothing made of the same type of linen tabby in the grave. For this reason it is uncertain whether the top two brooches fastened an inner garment, as has been found to be the case in Kent, England.47 From the Unterhaching evidence, they could also have closed an outer coat or scarf, as Max Martin presumed.48 The equipment of the buried woman also included leg clothing, indicated by two bronze buckles and traces of leather gartering at the knees.49 Fine structures of feathers on a nail outside the grave pit pose questions. A lot of feathers in early medieval burials can be interpreted as coming from a mattress under the body and from cushions.50 It remains unclear whether the feathers on the single �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The female grave 138 in Greding-Großhöbing, county of Roth, contained a pleated garment; Antja Bartel and Martin Nadler, “Detailbeobachtungen in zwei frühmittelalterlichen Frauengräbern von Großhöbing,” Das Archäologische Jahr in Bayern 1998 (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1999), 107–10. For further information on this type of fabric, see, for example, Antoinette Rast-Eicher, “Römische und frühmittelalterliche Gewebebindungen,” in De l’Antiquité Tardive au Haut Moyen-Age (300–800): Kontinuität und Neubeginn, ed. Renata Windler and Michel Fuchs (Basel: Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Urund Frühgeschichte, 2002), 118–23. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Remains of a border or garment lining made of the fur of a marten could, for example, be detected on an arm-ring from grave 21 in Flaach, Switzerland. Information kindly supplied by Antoinette Rast-Eicher. ����������   Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 190–93. �����������������������������������������������   Martin, “Tradition und Wandel,” 659, fig. 34. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   On the subject of leg clothing and footwear in early medieval times, see most recently Marquita Volken, “Kurzer Überblick über archäologische Frauenschuhfunde von der Spätantike bis ins Frühmittelalter,” in Gräber, Gaben, Generationen: Der frühmittelalterliche Friedhof (7. Jahrhundert) von der Früebergstrasse in Baar (Kanton Zug), ed. Katharina Müller (Basel: Archäologie Schweiz, 2010), 1:306–9. ����������   Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 225–26.

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Burials from Bavaria nail here are to be seen as part of the grave furnishing or if they played some role in the funeral ritual.51 Due to the fragmentary preservation of the few textile remains, a detailed catalogue of the individual pieces of clothing and their shape, cut, and color is not possible, and since there are no pictorial representations from the Bavarian region in the early sixth century, a definite reconstruction of the clothing cannot be achieved. However, the high number (at least six) of items of clothing which the woman demonstrably wore on her body is remarkable. The combination of the various types of materials—including fabrics of plain weave, twill weave, tablet weave, and pleating, made variously of linen, wool, and silk, along with leatherwork, gold ornaments, fur, and feathers—is, compared to contemporary burials, absolutely exceptional and so far unique. The woman’s high social status, apparent through the possession of the unique disc brooches, is also demonstrated by the richness of her clothing compared with contemporaries. STUDY OF THE HUMAN REMAINS

Anthropological research, carried out by the Anthropological State Collection Munich, led by Gisela Grupe, indicated that the people buried at Unterhaching belonged to a well-nourished, high-status group. Judging from lack of degradation, they probably did not do any hard labor during their lifetimes and reached a high age, well over the average for the time. The anthropological examination therefore supports the indication of the grave goods that these people were an exclusive, high-class part of the population. Strontium-isotope analysis showed that eight of the ten dead did not spend their childhood in the surrounding Haching Valley, but on a granite or gneiss ground. Based on this evidence, most of the people buried at Unterhaching belonged to a foreign and nonlocal population, though the exact place they came from cannot be located because this kind of terrain is very widespread. Future tests of isotopes from other material might reveal some more information about these individuals’ origins. So far there are no DNA tests which would show the level of genetic relationship, but the morphological similarity of the skeletons should be just as much proof. According to the archaeological and anthropological evidence, the two individuals whose strontium isotopes differ from the others (graves 3 and 5) could well belong to the same family as the other eight individuals. They might not have been born until after the move to the Haching Valley, but the possibility that these two people

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Fragments of feathers are often to be found in early medieval (seventh-century) grave contexts in Bavaria. Mostly they are interpreted as mattress stuffing, garment lining, or decoration details, but they may also reflect a form of ritual addition. ���������������������������������������������� Britt Nowak-Böck, “Von Fädchen, Federn und moderner Technik: Beobachtungen an einer vielteiligen Gürtelgarnitur aus Grab 34 von Bruckmühl, Ldkr. Rosenheim, ������������” Projekt für lebendige Archäologie des frühen Mittelalters, Jahresschrift 2004 (2005), 79–86.

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Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck were foreign as well and came from an area with a ground geologically similar to the Haching Valley cannot be excluded. The Unterhaching people followed the local burial custom of that time, which emerged from local late Roman traditions52 while also showing similarities to the adjacent regions to the south and east. The grave offerings on the whole belong to the local and regional area, but the few prominent objects indicate contacts with the Mediterranean, probably Italy. ATTEMPTING A HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION

While acknowledging the well-known problem that objects and people can move around, we are dealing with a high-ranking group of people who maintained close contact with the eastern Gothic Empire in Italy and might have occupied the Munich Plain by order of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric. There are many possible interpretations concerning the historical background, such as the Unterhaching people having been an Ostrogothic or at least an Ostrogothic-oriented group that had moved to Raetia II (the Roman province that included South Bavaria, under Theodoric’s rule from 493), or that they belonged to a late Roman provincial population already living in the area. A combination of both cannot be excluded. The likely reasons this specific population with contacts to the Mediterranean area, especially Italy, settled in the Haching Valley can be summarized in two words: river and road. The advantages of river connections for a preindustrial population go without saying. The special significance of this settlement area, occupied since late Neolithic times, covering roughly the area from Deisenhofen in the south to Perlach in the north, is based on the fact that the Haching River, flowing in a north-south direction, was the only running water in the eastern Munich Plain.53 In the adjacent areas to the east of the Haching Valley, underground water is only found at a depth of 20 meters in hard rock. Following the river, an ancient north-south land route runs through the Haching Valley, dating back to the late Neolithic period. This road still existed in Roman times and eventually linked the two Roman roads between Augsburg and Passau and Augsburg and Salzburg. That it definitely continued to exist after the time of the burial site of Unterhaching is proven by the fact that it still dominated the pattern of the Urkataster (the first official map of Bavaria) in the mid-nineteenth century.54 The small-sized burial site of Unterhaching definitely came to an end around 520–530, roughly the time when the Ostrogothic Empire started to decline and Raetia II was handed over to the Franconians. The central region of the Haching Valley was �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Specifically the Roman custom of inhumation and east-west orientation and details like niches in the walls of the graves where pots have been deposited. ����������������������������������������������������������������������   Today, the Haching is merely a small creek, known as Hachinger Bach. ��������������������������������������������   Hermann Dannheimer and Gertrud Diepolder, Aschheim im frühen Mittelalter, 2 vols., Münchner Beiträge zu Vor- und Frühgeschichte 32 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988), 2:115–18.

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Burials from Bavaria probably subjected to a new system of government very quickly, though up to now this cannot be proven by archaeology.55

55  The analysis set out in this article reflects the contributions of not only the authors, but also many specialists whose expertise made possible the identifications of the various finds. The authors extend their thanks to Hubert Fehr (University of Freiburg), Gabriele von Looz (Bavarian State Archaeological Collection, Munich), and Antoinette Rast-Eicher (ArcheoTex, Ennenda, Switzerland), as well as to the following individuals for their specific contributions: Penelope Walton Rogers (Anglo-Saxon Laboratory, York), Frank Reckel (Bavarian State Investigation Bureau, Munich), and Ursula Baumer, Patrick Dietemann, and Irene Fiedler (Doerner Institute, Munich), for analysis of the silk fibers; Penelope Walton Rogers for analysis of the fur remains; Franz Herzig (Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites, Tierhaupten), for analysis of the wood remains; Monika Dreher (Bavarian State Library, Munich), for additional testing of organic remains; Christian Gruber (Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites, Munich), for SEM-EDX analysis of the fibers; Ina ­Meissner and Günter Grundmann (Technical University Munich) and Christian Gruber (Bavarian State ­Department of Monuments and Sites, Munich), for analysis of the gold textiles; Anneliese Streiter and Erika Weiland of Nuremburg, for reconstructions of the gold braids; Norbert Gast and Albert Gilg (Technical University Munich), Thomas Calligaro (Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, Paris), and Patrick Périn (National Archaeological Museum, Saint-Germainen-Laye, France), for examination of the gold disc brooches from grave 5; Gisela Grupe, George McGlynn, and Michaela Harbeck (University of Munich) for anthropological analysis; and Andreas Scharf (University of Erlangen) for carbon-14 analysis.

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Old Finds Rediscovered: Two Early ­Medieval ­Headdresses from the National Museum of ­Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands Chrystel Brandenburgh In the early years of the twentieth century, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, obtained several textile finds from early medieval settlements in the north of the country. Among these finds were two items of headwear: a pillbox cap from Leens, which dates to between 600 and 900, and a headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion, which recently has been radiocarbon-dated to the period 568–651. The hat from Leens was put on display for a while, was recorded, and afterward disappeared in the organic storage of the museum. The headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion was never recognized as such and spent its days in the storage of the museum as well. Recently both artifacts were rediscovered and analyzed by the author. Because no restoration had been conducted on the finds and no linings had been fixed in them, it was possible to analyze the objects in detail, from both the inside as well as the outside. Sewing techniques and the order in which the pieces were put together could be reconstructed and will be presented in this article. The results shed light on a range of questions concerning the production and use of the headdresses: How were they made? What techniques were used? How were they worn and by whom? And lastly, how can we relate these items to other finds from the sixth to ninth centuries? THE FRISIANS AND THEIR SETTLEMENTS IN THE NORTHERN COASTAL AREA OF THE NETHERLANDS

The northern coastal area of the Netherlands has been inhabited since the early Iron Age, which in this region started around 750 BC. The lives of the people living on The author would like to thank Annemarieke Willemsen, Marianne Stouthamer, and Robert Ritter (National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden) for the opportunity to analyze the finds in the museum. Furthermore, many thanks are due to Penelope Walton Rogers of the Anglo-Saxon Laboratory, York, for conducting the necessary analyses on fiber and dye samples from the headdress of Dokkum–Berg Sion.  �������������������������������������   The hat is mentioned in Lise ������� Bender ����������� Jørgensen, North European Textiles Until AD 1000 (Aarhus, Denmark: University Press, 1992), 220, cat. ������������� NL IV:3 s. ��

Chrystel Brandenburgh the marshlands near the coast were strongly influenced by the changing landscape. The rising sea level caused the water to flood the open land several times, depositing layers of clay. This made the land fertile, but also wet and unstable. People protected themselves against the water by building their settlements on raised mounds, known as terpen (singular terp) or wierden. Leens (province of Groningen) and Dokkum–Berg Sion (province of Friesland), where the headdresses were found, are examples of such raised settlements. The area became densely populated from the fifth century. The inhabitants—generally known as Friezen or Frisians—were mainly farmers who worked the land and kept livestock. Craftspeople were present as well: evidence for the production of bone, metal, amber, and glass artifacts, as well as textiles and pottery, is found in many settlements. Written sources mention the existence of a large Frisian kingdom, which is probably not a correct description of the way society was organized. It is more likely that the area was divided into several smaller territories, led by local leaders, who were in turn affiliated with one or more strong kings. Many prestigious objects from the area indicate that a part of society was indeed well off. From the eighth century, the political power of the Frisians diminished. Frankish troops conquered the ruling Frisian kings, and the area was slowly Christianized. Still, the economic position of the Frisians was by no means lost. They are known in written sources for their activities in trade, and from the eighth century, they became part of an international trade network. Many rich finds from the eighth to tenth centuries indicate that the area was still wealthy. ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE TERPEN-AREA

Archaeological research in the area of the terpen has known a long history, starting at the end of the nineteenth century. The soil of the terpen that had accumulated for centuries had become a valuable fertilizer, and therefore groups of diggers methodically dug away large parts of the mounds. These commercial excavations uncovered many artifacts, which drew the attention of local historians. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a broad network had developed of people monitoring the commercial excavations. These local historians could not conduct systematic research, but their efforts nevertheless produced a vast collection of artifacts, photographs, and documentation. Meanwhile, archaeologists and historians had recognized the rich history of the area and started to conduct research into the terpen and their inhabitants. A key figure in the research of the area was Professor Albert van Giffen. Van Giffen started his career in the north of the country, but was employed by the National Museum of Antiquities  ������   Egge ������������������������������������������������ Knol, Alexandra C. Bardet, and Wietske Prummel, Professor van Giffen en het geheim van de wierden (Veendam, Netherlands: Heveskes ���������������������������������� Uitgevers,��������������� 2005)��������� , 187–92.  ������������������   Stéphane Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs frisons du haut Moyen Age, vol. 2, Corpus des sources écrites (Lille, France: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1983).

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Early Medieval Headdresses in Leiden from 1911 to 1916. In 1916 he started working for the Groninger Museum in Groningen. Throughout his career Van Giffen visited the excavations several times, documenting sections and collecting artifacts. In later years he conducted the first systematic archaeological excavations in the terpen. Many of the diggers had an eye for antiquities as well; they often collected archaeological finds and offered them to museums. Most finds came into the possession of the museums in the north of the country, but from 1911 to 1916, during Van Giffen’s tenure, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden also started to collect artifacts from the northern provinces. As a result the museum now has a considerable collection of early medieval textiles from Dokkum–Berg Sion and several other settlements in the provinces of Friesland and Groningen. Many of the finds from the terpen are poorly dated. This reflects the way the objects were unearthed. Laborers generally excavated sections out of a mound, digging straight from the top down. This meant that they might collect objects dating from a span of more than a thousand years in a single day, making it difficult nowadays to affix a narrow date to the objects. EXCAVATIONS AND HABITATION OF THE SETTLEMENT IN LEENS

The western Tuinster wierde near Leens was one of the first mounds to be excavated in detail by Van Giffen. During the commercial excavations in 1925 a section through the terp was documented, followed by a second section in 1926 and a third in 1930. On these occasions only Carolingian artifacts were found. The central part of the terp was excavated in 1938 by Van Giffen. The three-meter-high mound was excavated in seven different levels, during which the remains of several houses and many artifacts were found. The chronology of houses and finds gives evidence of continuous habitation from 600 to 900. The hat from Leens was presented to the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden in December 1930. However, it is unlikely that the hat was found by Van Giffen during his work on the site in that year. At that time Van Giffen was employed by the Groninger Museum, which logically would have received his finds rather than the National Museum in Leiden. Presumably the hat was found by laborers and sold to the museum in Leiden. This makes it difficult to assign a specific date to the object based on stratigraphy or associated finds. Without radiocarbon dating, the hat can only be assigned to the period 600 to 900, which is the entire period of habitation of the settlement.  ���������������������������������������   121 fragments of 77 individual weaves.  �����������������������   Albert E. van Giffen, “Mededeeling ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� omtrent het systematisch onderzoek, verricht in de jaren 1928, 1929 en 1930,” Jaarverslag van de Vereeniging voor Terpenonderzoek 13–15 (1928–31): 16–46, at 23 and fig. 13.  �����������������������   Albert E. van Giffen, “Een ������������������������������������������������������������������� systematisch onderzoek in een der Tuinster wierden te Leens,” Jaarverslag van de Vereeniging voor Terpenonderzoek 20–24 (1935–40): 26–115; Egge Knol, “De Noordnederlandse kustlanden in de Vroege Middeleeuwen” (Diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1993).

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Chrystel Brandenburgh THE PILLBOX CAP FROM LEENS

The hat from Leens (fig. 2.1) is very well preserved. It has not undergone restorations, and it was stored on a specially constructed base. Most of the hem has disappeared, but the hat is complete enough to reconstruct all of its measurements and characteristics. The hat is a so-called pillbox cap with a circumference of 51 centimeters. It is made from wool and consists of an oval crown and a more or less rectangular side panel. The hat is damaged but shows no traces of contemporary repair. Fabric The fabric used for the crown is a Z/S broken diamond twill with 13–14 warp threads per centimeter and 11–13 weft threads per centimeter. The warp is irregularly spun (low-to-medium twist) and 0.5–0.75 millimeter thick. The weft is low-to-medium twist and 0.5 millimeter thick. The broken diamond twill is irregularly woven. Many faults in the pattern are visible, showing some variation in the pattern repeat. In most cases the diamond pattern repeats after 12 weft threads and 18 warp threads.

Fig. 2.1: Pillbox cap from Leens, Netherlands, ca. 600–900. Photo: National Museum of ­Antiquities, Leiden, Netherlands, by permission.

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Early Medieval Headdresses The side panel is made out of a similar fabric, also a Z/S broken diamond twill with 12–13 warp and weft threads per centimeter. There are, however, small differences compared with the fabric used for the crown. The weft threads are more regularly spun: medium twist and 0.5–0.75 millimeter thick. Moreover, no faults are visible in the diamond pattern: the pattern repeat of 12 weft and 18 warp threads is consistent throughout the fabric. Nevertheless, both fabrics may be parts of the same original piece of cloth, since warp, fineness, and pattern repeat are consistent. The differences observed may be the result of inattentiveness of the weaver and the use of different batches of weft threads. Construction The construction of the hat (figs. 2.2 and 2.3) and the order in which the different parts of the hat were sewn could be analyzed in detail because of the lack of modern interference and because the item was sufficiently flexible to be turned inside out during analysis. The oval crown of the hat was made out of two similarly shaped halves stitched together. It seems that the oval edges of these two parts were first secured to prevent

Fig. 2.2: Reconstruction drawing of the pillbox cap from Leens. Drawing: Chrystel ­Brandenburgh.

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Chrystel Brandenburgh

30 Fig. 2.3: Seams and stitching used in the pillbox cap from Leens. Drawing: Chrystel ­Brandenburgh.

Early Medieval Headdresses the pieces from fraying. These edges (8 millimeters when finished) were folded double and secured with a row of blanket stitches 4–5 millimeters long. After this the straight edges of the two halves were folded into each other and secured on the inside with blanket stitches 6–7 millimeters long, not visible from the outside (fig. 2.3, seam 1). The sewing thread used to secure all the seam allowances of the crown is a single Ztwisted thread, 0.5 millimeter thick. On the outside, the two parts of the crown were sewn using a decorative raised plait stitch (fig. 2.3, seam 1 and A) resembling a braid 3–4 millimeters wide. The stitch length here is 5–7 millimeters. The sewing thread used is a 2SZ medium-plied thread, 0.5–0.75 millimeter thick. After this, the edges of the side panel were secured to prevent them from fraying. As with the crown, the edges (8 millimeters when finished) were folded double and secured with blanket stitches 4–5 millimeters long (fig. 2.3, seam 2). The hem of the hat seems to have been sewn at this point as well, because the same sewing thread was used. To create the hem, the lower edge of the side panel was folded double and attached on the inside with blanket stitches 4–8 millimeters long (fig. 2.3, seam 3). The hem was furthermore stitched through with a row of running stitches, 4 millimeters from the edge. The sewing thread for all these edges as well as for the running stitch on the hem has the same characteristics as the thread used in the decorative stitch in the crown (2SZ thread, 0.5–0.75 millimeter thick, with a low twist and tightly plied). Lastly, the side panel was closed (fig. 2.3, seam 2) and the upper edge of the side panel was attached to the crown, both with the same decorative stitch as used on the crown (stitch length 5–6 millimeters). The sewing thread for these seams is a 2ZS medium-plied thread, 0.75 millimeter thick. Colors No dye analysis has been conducted on the fabric and the sewing thread. The thread used to stitch through the hem seems to be of a lighter color than the weave. THE RESEARCH AND HABITATION OF DOKKUM–BERG SION

In the early twentieth century, the terp of Dokkum–Berg Sion was partly excavated by laborers. Professor Van Giffen visited the excavation several times. In 1909 he supervised documentation of a large section through the terp, which covers an area of about six thousand square meters. This section uncovered the remains of several houses with sod walls. On the southern side of the mound a cemetery was found with

 ��   2SZ indicates a two-ply thread, consisting of two S-spun threads twisted together in Z direction.  �����������������������   Albert E. van Giffen, “Het ������������������������������������������������������������������������� dalingsvraagstuk der Alluviale Noordzeekusten, in verband met bestudeering der terpen,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, Land- en Volkenkunde 25 (1910): 258–94, at 278 and plate V.

31

Chrystel Brandenburgh 18 to 28 graves, both cremations and inhumations. Van Giffen documented another section in 1925.10 In 1928 the terp was completely excavated. Finds from the terp give evidence of habitation starting in the Roman period. The settlement and cemetery documented by Van Giffen are most probably of Merovingian origin. The excavated houses, however, are of a type that continued to be constructed until the thirteenth century. During the later periods of the Middle Ages, a chapel of St. Mary and several other new buildings arose on the terp, housing a group of nuns who were allied to the nearby abbey of Dokkum. These buildings were demolished in 1580.11 The headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion was offered to the National Museum of Antiquities in November 1913, together with a large quantity of other textiles. A month later the museum received another large group of textiles. Unfortunately these finds cannot be related to one of the excavations of Van Giffen, but were most probably found by laborers. The headdress has recently been radiocarbon-dated to the late sixth century or the first half of the seventh.12 It is not certain whether the other textiles from Dokkum–Berg Sion are of the same date, but since they were stuck together in clay when offered to the museum, it is likely that they had been found near or on top of each other. THE HEADDRESS FROM DOKKUM–BERG SION

The headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion (fig. 2.4) is made out of one main panel with two side panels. The item is rather poorly preserved. Large parts of the main panel and the side panels have disappeared. This poor state of preservation poses problems in defining the shape of the headdress. Stitch holes in the main panel clearly show where the side panels were attached and where not, but this still leaves ample room for different reconstructions and hypotheses about the way in which the headdress may have been worn. Fabric The fabric used for the entire headdress is a Z/S broken diamond twill with 12–16 warp threads per centimeter and 11 weft threads per centimeter. The warp is regularly spun  �����������������������   Albert E. van Giffen, “Een ���������������������������� en ander over terpen,” Opmerker: Weekblad voor architecten, ingenieurs, fabrikanten 46 (1911): 78–79. ��������������   Van Giffen, “Mededeeling, ���������������” 20–22 ����������������� and afb. 3. ������������������   Adrie Ufkes and Jan ���������������� Schoneveld, Een archeologisch onderzoek in de terpzool Berg Sion bij Dokkum, gem. Dongeradeel, Friesland, ARC-publicaties 22 (Groningen, Netherlands: Center for Archaeological Research & Consultancy, 1998)����� , 13. �������������   GrA-43945; ����� 1445 �� ± 30 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� BP. Radiocarbon dating measures the age of organic objects ��������������� in radiocarbon years before present (BP). Such raw ages need to be calibrated to give calendar dates, because the level of atmospheric carbon-14 has not been strictly constant during the span of time that can be ­radiocarbon-dated. The reliability of this calibration is statistically defined as 1σ (68%) or 2σ (about 95.5%). When calibrating with a reliability of 1σ (68%), the hat dates between AD 599–644; when calibrating with a reliability of 2σ (about 95.5%), the hat can be dated between AD 568–651.

32

Early Medieval Headdresses

Fig. 2.4: Headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion, dated to 568–651. Photo: National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, Netherlands, by permission.

(medium-to-high twist) and 0.5–0.75 millimeter thick. The weft is low-to-medium twist and 0.75 millimeter thick. Both warp and weft are spun from naturally brown wool. The broken diamond twill is densely and regularly woven. The diamond pattern repeats after every 22 warp threads and 18 weft threads. Construction The headdress was made out of three rectangular pieces of fabric (fig. 2.5). The main panel measures approximately 40 x 23 centimeters. Although the side panels are poorly preserved, the stitch holes on the main panel suggest that the side panels would have measured about 40 centimeters. The width of the side panels could not be ascertained. 33

Chrystel Brandenburgh

Fig. 2.5: Reconstruction drawing of the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion. Drawing: Chrystel Brandenburgh.

The remaining width is 12 centimeters, but the original width was evidently larger since the hem is missing. The edges (6 millimeters when finished) of the two short sides and one long side of the main panel were folded double and secured with blanket stitches 3–4 millimeters long, using a 2ZS sewing thread, 0.5 millimeter thick, with high twist and ply (fig. 2.6, seam 2). The other long side of this panel—the edge that would remain free, not joined to the side panels—was treated differently. This edge (10 millimeters when finished) was folded once and secured with a row of whip stitches 9 millimeters long, which are visible on the outside as well (fig. 2.6, seam 1). The sewing thread here is a Z-twisted double thread. Subsequently, the main panel was folded in half and sewn partly together into an open tube (fig. 2.6, seam A-B) using whip stitches in the same sewing thread. This seam is very badly preserved, leaving only 3 centimeters of stitching (3 stitches), which makes it impossible to reconstruct how long the seam originally was. The edges (10 millimeters when finished) of the side panels were folded double and secured with a decorative stitch with a length of 4–5 millimeters (fig. 2.6, seam 3). The sewing thread here is a 2ZS thread, 0.75 millimeter thick, with low twist and medium ply. This thread is differently spun and plied from the one used to secure the edges of the main panel. The side panels were joined together end-to-end and sewn onto the main panel using the same decorative stitch used in the hat found in Leens (fig. 2.6, seam C-D). The stitching resulted in a braid of 2.5 millimeters in width, with a stitch length of 6–7 millimeters. The sewing thread used is a 2ZS light-brown, medium-plied thread, 0.75 millimeter thick. 34

Early Medieval Headdresses

35 Fig. 2.6: Seams and stitching used in the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion. Drawing: Chrystel Brandenburgh.

Chrystel Brandenburgh Colors Dye analysis of the fabric and decorative stitching was conducted by Penelope Walton Rogers of the Anglo-Saxon Laboratory.13 The headdress, which was originally of brown wool, was dyed with a tannin-based brown or black colorant. Tannins are widely distributed in nature, especially in material from trees, and it is not always possible to recognize tannins deliberately applied as dye. In this case, however, the colorant was detected in the main fabric of the hat but not in the needlework, which suggests that the tannins were present in a dye applied to give a solid black to the already naturally dark color of the fabric. The sewing thread was probably not dyed, and this decorative band would have contrasted with the dark fabric. Ways to wear the headdress When one attempts to construct a replica of the Dokkum–Berg Sion headdress, the result is a somewhat strange but also practical article which could have been worn in different ways. The decorative stitching on the seams attaching the side panels to the main panel is clearly in contrast to the rather rough whip stitching on the other edge of the main panel. This suggests that the lavishly sewn seams were visible when wearing the headdress, and the other edge was perhaps partly out of sight. When one wears the decorative bands in the front, the other side falls at the back and is partly covered by the hair, which can be drawn into a plait or ponytail and placed through the tube formed by the main panel. Figure 2.7 shows three of the possible ways in which the headdress may have been worn. Furthermore, the decorative stitching used to secure the seam allowances on the inside of the side panels suggests that this edge may also have been visible while wearing the headdress. The third image in figure 2.7 shows the headdress with the edges folded back and the decorative stitching in contrasting thread clearly visible. A headdress of this kind is both decorative and practical since it would have enabled the wearer to protect his or her hair while working or cooking above a fire. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Several aspects relating to the hat from Leens and the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion need to be further elaborated. These concern these artifacts’ wearers, their manufacturers, and their place within the existing knowledge of headgear in this period. Following the reconstruction presented above, it seems likely that the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion was worn by a woman or at least a person with long hair. The hat from Leens, however, is not so easily assigned to a specific person or gender. The following discussion of the development of European headgear throughout ­prehistory

��  Penelope ������������������������ Walton Rogers, “The �������������������������������������������������������������������������� Raw Materials of Textiles from the Dutch Terpen” (unpublished report on behalf of Leiden University; Anglo-Saxon Laboratory, York, 2009).

36

Early Medieval Headdresses

Fig. 2.7: Reconstruction of three different ways the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion may have been worn. Photos: Annemies Tamboer and Guusje Harteveld.

and the early Middle Ages offers clues as to how these items were worn and who may have worn them. Archaeological finds and contemporary art give an impression of the developments in hats and headdresses throughout history. Several hats, caps, and hairnets have been found on bog bodies from the Bronze Age and Iron Age.14 More evidence is available for the Roman period. John-Peter Wild, in his study of representation of clothing on tombstones in the northern provinces of the Roman empire, concluded that the hoods on capes were the most commonly used headgear for men in this period.15 In some cases other headdresses have been observed.16 Roman soldiers frequently wore pillbox-shaped Pannonian hats (pileus pannonicus). In pictorial evidence these hats are depicted with either a smooth or a rough

��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ The earliest find of headgear in the Netherlands is a fur cap found on a male body from the bog of Emmer-Erfscheidenveen (ca. thirteenth century BC). ������������������������������� Willy Groenman-Van Waateringe, ���� “De kledingstukken van leder en bont,” in Mens en moeras, ed. Wijnand A. B. van der Sanden (Assen, Netherlands: Drents Museum, 1990), 174–80; Sandra Y. Comis, “Prehistoric Garments from the Netherlands,” in Textilien aus Archäologie und Geschichte: Festschrift ���������������� für Klaus ������������� Tidow, ed. Lise Bender Jørgensen, Johanna Banck-Burgess, and Antoinette Rast-Eicher (Neumunster, Germany: Wachholtz, 2003), 193–204. In ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Denmark, hairnets and woolen caps made in sprang technique are the form of headdress most often found in female graves. Danish burials also show that conical woolen hats with piled, furry surfaces were customary among men during the Bronze Age. Iron Age male bog bodies were found wearing tight-fitting leather caps. H. ���������������������������������� C. Broholm and Margrethe Hald, “Skrydstrupfun��������������� det: En sønderljysk kvindegrav fra den ældre bronzealder,” Nordiske Fortidsminder 3, no. 2 (1939): 60–62 and fig. 11; Margrethe Hald, ������ Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials. A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles (Copenhagen: National ���������������������������������� Museum of Denmark, 1980). ������ �� John �������������� P. Wild, “Clothing ������������������������������������������������������������ in the North-West Provinces of the Roman Empire,” Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseums in Bonn 168 (1968): 166–240��������� , at 186�. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Several types of hats known in the Roman period, such as the tight-fitting conical hat, the widebrimmed Petasos, and the Phrygian hat, are not further elaborated here since they are not relevant to the discussion of the Dutch hats.

37

Chrystel Brandenburgh surface, suggesting they could be variously made of leather, felt, or a woven fabric.17 A very well-preserved example of this type of hat has been found in Egypt, at the site Mons Claudianus.18 This hat, which can be dated to the years 100 to 120, was made out of felt, dyed green. Its oval crown measured 19.5 x 13 centimeters, making it only slightly larger than the example from Leens. In late Roman art these hats are worn high on the head, covering only part of the hair.19 At Mons Claudianus another example of a nearly complete Roman hat has been found, featuring a round crown, earmuffs, and neck protector. This hat was very colorful. It was sewn out of 15 triangular pieces of red, green, and yellow fabric.20 Women in the Roman provinces are sometimes depicted wearing a closely fitting bonnet which covers the hair completely. A woman from Neumagen is represented wearing such a bonnet,21 and a female statue from Ingelheim shows the same type of headgear, covering braids of hair and a bun at the neck. Wild concluded from the way the headdresses are depicted that they must have been made from a very light material, suggesting a gauze-like weave or a hairnet covering the bonnet.22 Veils were in use in this period as well, hanging loose or attached with a fillet. Several funerary reliefs show women in matron’s attire. It is not certain whether the deceased actually wore these clothes, but the effigies all clearly depict a specific type of headgear. The matronal bonnet is very high and large, covering two plaits. This bonnet is held in place by a net of cords.23 A sandstone head found in the Roman fort of Birrens in Dumfries, Scotland, shows a headdress different from the ones described above (fig. 2.8). The sculpture is considered of Roman date, although a medieval origin was originally also debated.24 The headdress closely fits the head, while the front edge is folded back, showing a bit of hair. The side flaps beside the head are folded outward, giving the impression of a Dutch bonnet. Several incised lines are visible across the headdress that might be interpreted as stitching (possibly decorative) or seams. The side flaps as well as the incised lines show a resemblance to the headdress found in Dokkum–Berg Sion. Only very few examples of headgear from the fifth to sixth centuries are known, and evidence from art is sparse as well. Remains of veils are recognized in several Anglo-Saxon graves. Several Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna (fifth to sixth centuries) �����������������   Graham Sumner, Roman Military Dress (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2009), 165, fig 109; Penelope Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England����� , AD ������� 450–700, CBA Research Report 145��������������������������������������������������������������� (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007), 209, ��������������� fig. 5.58. ������������������   Ulla ����������� Mannering, ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Questions and Answers on Textiles and their Find Spots: The Mons Claudianus Textile Project,” in Textiles in Situ: Their Find Spots in Egypt and Neighbouring Countries in the First Millennium CE, ed. Sabine Schrenk (����������������������������������������������������������� Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 2006), 149–59, ����������� at 153–54 and fig. 2. �����������������   Graham Sumner, R������������������� oman Military Dress (Stroud, UK: Osprey,������������ ����������� 2009), 163. �������������   Mannering, “Questions ������������������������������������������� and Answers,” 155–56 and fig. 6. �������������������������������������������������������   The head of the tombstone of Neumagen is pictured in Jocelyn ����������������������� M. C. Toynbee, “A ��������������������� Roman (?) Head at Dumfries,” Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952): 63–65. ��������   Wild, “Clothing ����������������������������������������������������� in the North-West Provinces,” 199, fig. 20. ��  Ibid., �������������������� 211, fig. 29. �����������  ��������� Toynbee, “A ������������������������������� Roman (?) Head at Dumfries.”

38

Early Medieval Headdresses

Fig. 2.8: Roman-era sandstone head found in Dumfries, Scotland; Dumfries Museum, DUMFM:1950.53.3. Photo: Dumfries Museum, by permission.

depict women wearing veils and coifs.25 One of the female heads on the scepter from the Sutton Hoo ship burial shows a woman with parted hair drawn away from the face.26 The (probably male) figure on the Spong Hill pot lid wears a pillbox cap at the back of the head, comparable to the way this type of hat was worn in Roman times.27

����������  �������� Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 162–63.� ������������������������   Gale R. �������������� Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 78, fig. 57. ����������  �������� Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 209, ������������������������������ fig. 5.58; Owen-Crocker, �������������� Dress, 20, fig. 3; also discussion at 79.

39

Chrystel Brandenburgh

Fig. 2.9. Hat from Leens, Netherlands, ca. 600–900, Groninger Museum, Groningen, ­Netherlands (GM1939/IV:13/1). Photo: J. Stoel, by permission of the Groninger Museum.

Archaeological and pictorial evidence from the seventh to ninth centuries is more abundant. The Netherlands have yielded several hats and headdresses from this period. Besides the two headdresses described above, four others have been found, as follows.28 In the settlement of Leens, a second hat has been found which dates to the period 600 to 900 (fig. 2.9).29 This hat is constructed out of three pieces of different fabrics, with thread counts per centimeter ranging from 8 x 7 to 12 x 9. The crown is attached to the sides with whip stitches 5 millimeters wide. Seam allowances are secured on the inside with stitches 5 millimeters wide. The hem is folded twice and coarsely secured with whip stitches, more than 10 millimeters apart. The sewing thread is a double Z-spun thread.30 �����������������������������������������������������������������������   A detailed publication on these four hats is being prepared by Hanna Zimmerman. ���������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������  �������������������������������������������������������������������� Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands,��������������������������� object �������������������������� no. GM1939/IV:13/1�. �����������   Hanna A. ����������� Zimmerman, “Two ��������������������������������������������������������������������� Early Medieval Caps from the Dwelling Mounds Rasquert and Leens in Groningen Province, the Netherlands,” in North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles X, ed. Eva Andersson Strand, et al. (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), 288–90, at 288.

40

Early Medieval Headdresses

Fig. 2.10. Cap from Rasquert, Netherlands, ca. 800–900, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands (GM1928/VIII:1). Photo: M. de Leeuw, by permission of the Groninger Museum.

In the settlement of Rasquert (which, like Leens, is in the province of Groningen) a cap has been excavated which may be dated to the period 800 to 900 (fig. 2.10).31 It is made out of a fine diamond twill (17 x 9 threads per centimeter) and sewn with great care. The crown and peak are attached with decorative stitches in S-twisted red thread. The seam is sewn with whip stitches, with two threads drawn through these stitches, creating a decorative effect.32 The province of Friesland has yielded two hats. The hat from Aalsum may date to the period 700 to 900 (fig. 2.11).33 It is made out of scraps of four different fabrics, with a thread count of approximately 10 x 8 threads per centimeter. The hat is sewn roughly with whip stitches and running stitches, using plied sewing thread 1–2 millimeters thick. The hem at the back is edged with blanket stitches, while the hem at the front is folded back and attached with small whip stitches. The hat has undergone high-quality repairs, using small (5 millimeters) stitches and thin (0.7 millimeter) red thread.34 ���������������������������������������������������������������������  ������������������������������������������������������������������� Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands,�������������������������� object ������������������������� no. GM1928/VIII:1. �� Zimmerman, ����������� “Two ������������������������������� Early Medieval Caps,”����� 288. ��  Fries �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands, o���������������������������������������������������������� bject no. 33-373.����������������������������������������� It ���������������������������������������� must be stressed, however, that this date may not be correct, since it is based not on radiocarbon but on associated finds. ����������������������������   Chrystel R. Brandenburgh, �������������� “Early ��������������������������������������������������������������������� Medieval Textile Remains from Settlements in the Netherlands: An Evaluation of Textile Production,” Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries 2, no. 1 (2010): 41–79, at 69�.

41

Chrystel Brandenburgh

Fig. 2.11. Hat from Aalsum, Netherlands, ca. 700–900, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, ­Netherlands (FM 33-373). Photo: Chrystel Brandenburgh.

The hat from Oostrum is dated to the period 700 to 900 as well (fig. 2.12).35 It was made out of white wool, which was dyed to a pale red shade.36 The fabric is of good quality (0.5–0.7 millimeter threads, 14 x 12 threads per centimeter) and the hat was sewn with great care, using the same decorative stitch as the pillbox cap from Leens and the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion (fig. 2.13). This decorative stitch was probably of a deeper red color, making it a contrasting and attractive decoration. The ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands, ���������������������������������������������������������� object no. 35B-48. As with the hat from Aalsum, this date may not be correct, since it is based not on radiocarbon but on associated finds. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Dye analyses of the fabric and the sewing threads were conducted by Penelope Walton Rogers, ­Anglo-Saxon Laboratory, York.

42

Early Medieval Headdresses

Fig. 2.12. Hat from Oostrum, Netherlands, ca. 700–900, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, ­Netherlands (FM 35B-48). Photo: Chrystel Brandenburgh.

hem of the hat was secured with very small running stitches that were hardly visible from the outside. The hat was heavily used and repaired in many places. These repairs seem to be done all at one time, because the same technique and same type of thread were used for all the repairs. The repairs are firm, but rough, although it appears the person doing the work attempted to use fabric of equal quality to the original.37 There are few contemporary finds of male or female hats or headdresses from elsewhere in Europe, which is remarkable since pictorial evidence shows that it became customary for women and girls to cover their heads after the conversion to Christian-

����������������  �������������� Brandenburgh, ������������������������������������� “Early Medieval Textile Remains,”���� 69.

43

Chrystel Brandenburgh

Fig. 2.13. Detail of decorative stitching on the hat from Oostrum. Photo: Chrystel ­Brandenburgh.

ity. Historical sources suggest that in the seventh century, the hair on the forehead was still visible, but from the eighth century onward, female hair was covered completely by a headdress.38 In Leens, several fragments of a textile that might have been used for such headdresses have been found: known as Schleiergewebe, this is a very fine and open tabby, woven out of naturally white wool. Comparable weaves have been found in England,39 Germany,40 and Denmark.41 In Toornwerd (province of Drenthe), remains have been found of a netlike haircovering made in a loose tabby weave from plied horsehair with a wool repp starting border.42 This fragment, however, cannot be assigned to a specific period in the early Middle Ages. Tenth- to eleventh-century art depicts women with covered heads and necks, with either a veil or a shawl wrapped around the head and neck. A coif or fillet is also depicted in combination with a veil. Archaeological finds indicate that Viking women in Britain frequently covered their heads. In York, remains of three silk caps have been found. These Viking-age caps resemble coifs with seams on the outside.43

����������������  �������������� Owen-Crocker, Dress, 159. �����������������  ��������������� Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 68. �����������������������������   Settlement of Hessens; see Klaus ������������� Tidow, “Textiltechnische ����������������������������������������������������� Untersuchungen an Wollgewebefunden aus friesischen Wurtensiedlungen von der Mitte des 7. bis zur Mitte des 13. ��������� Jhs. und ��������������� Vergleiche mit Grab- und Siedlungsfunden aus dem nördlichen Europa,” Probleme der Küstenforschung im südlichen Nordseegebiet 23 (1995): 353–87��������� , at 367�. �������������������������������������������   Berringhøj (Mammen); see Margrethe Hald, ������ Ancient Danish textiles from Bogs and Burials: A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles (Copenhagen: ����������������������������������� National Museum of Denmark, 1980)�� �������, 102–11 and fig. 97. ���������   Bender Jørgensen, ����������� North European Textiles, 47 (fig. 57), 221. ��  Penelope ����������������� Walton, �������� Textiles, Cordage, and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate, The Archaeology of York: The Small Finds 17/5 (London: ��������������������������������������������������������������� Council for British Archaeology,������������������������������� 1989), 360–67; ��������������� Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 165�.

44

Early Medieval Headdresses Comparable silk finds are known from Lincoln and London.44 In Dublin, the remains of 13 headdresses made out of wool or silk have been found, as well as the remains of 14 rectangular scarves with fringes. These scarves may have been used as headdresses as well.45 Lastly, there are the excavations in Greenland, where several pillbox caps have been found dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. These hats were found in graves of men and boys.46 Given the evidence from the Roman period and Middle Ages, the pillbox cap from Leens fits well in a long tradition. The hat is comparable to the Pannonian cap known in the Roman period. The fifth-century Spong Hill pot lid probably shows a similar hat as well, and even in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, this type of hat was frequently worn by men and boys in Greenland. Nowadays the hat from Leens (51 centimeters in circumference) could only be worn by a boy, but sizes were smaller in antiquity.47 If worn at the back of the head as in Roman times it may have fit a small man’s head. Furthermore, the Leens hat is only slightly smaller than the one found in Mons Claudianus, which is most certainly a military context, making it likely that both hats were worn by grown men. The headdress of Dokkum–Berg Sion seems more likely to have been worn by a woman. No distinct parallels are known so far, but the headdress bears resemblance to several headdresses mentioned above. When worn with the side flaps folded back, there is some resemblance to the stone head from Dumfries, Scotland. Tied closely around the head, as in the first example in figure 2.7, the headdress looks quite similar to a coif, which may have been worn independently or under a veil. COLORS AND DECORATIVE STITCHES: A SIGN OF WEALTH?

Although very different in size and shape, the artifacts from Leens and Dokkum–Berg Sion share a distinctive decorative stitching. This same stitch appears in the hat from Oostrum. Somewhat simpler versions of this stitch have also been documented on a pillow cover from the ship burial of Sutton Hoo (Mound 1) in Suffolk, in York, and on a ���������������������   Frances Pritchard, ����������� “Textiles ������������������������������������������������������������� from Recent Excavations in the City of London,” in Archäeologische Textilfunde: ���������������������������������������� Textilsymposium Neumünster 6.5.–8.5.1981, ed. Lise Bender Jørgensen and Klaus Tidow (Neumünster: Textilmuseum Neumünster, 1982), 193–208, at 196–97�. �����������������������������   Elizabeth Wincott ����������������� Heckett, Viking Age Headcoverings from Dublin, Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962–81, ser. B, vol. 6 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2003), 44–75. �������   Else ����������� Østergård, Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2004)�������������� , 132, 219–20. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Carol van Driel-Murray has pointed out that in the Roman period in the Netherlands and Germany, shoe sizes were smaller than nowadays. Sizes for most adult men varied from 37–40 (UK sizes 4–6½). Larger shoes up to size 43 (UK 9) have been found as well. Carol van Driel-Murray, “Footwear in the North-Western Provinces of the Roman Empire,” in Stepping through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times until 1800, ed. Olaf Goubitz, Carol van Driel-Murray, and Willy GroenmanVan Waateringe (Zwolle, Netherlands: Stichting Promotie Archeologie, 2007), 337–78��������� , at 360�.

45

Chrystel Brandenburgh presumed cushion from the tenth-century princely burial at Bjerringhøj (Mammen) in Denmark.48 Dye analysis of the hat from Oostrum and the headdress of Dokkum–Berg Sion has made it clear that the decorative bands were sewn in contrasting dyed threads, making them stand out clearly from the fabric. No dye analysis has been done on the hat from Leens, but the sewing thread used in the hem of this hat is even nowadays of a lighter color than the fabric, making it likely that this hat was sewn with contrasting dyed thread as well. Hats and headdresses seem often to have been dyed. As mentioned above, the pillbox cap from Mons Claudianus was dyed green, and the hat with crown and earmuffs from this same site was made out of pieces of red, green, and yellow fabric.49 The Roman bonnet of the Neumagen sculpture is painted in yellow, and the lines of the hairnet covering the bonnet are painted red.50 The lines on the sandstone head from Dumfries, Scotland, may be interpreted as seams that were clearly visible as well. This effect may have been obtained by using differently colored threads or decorative stitching, making the seam stand out against the texture of the fabric as in the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion and the hat from Oostrum. Several of the Viking Age caps were colorful as well: traces of madder and lichen purple have been found, suggesting a rich use of dyestuffs. The stitching present on the Dutch headdresses must clearly have been a popular way to sew and embellish garments. A reconstruction project of both artifacts has shown that it is a quick-to-learn and useful sewing technique, but also rather timeconsuming. Seven hours were necessary to sew the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion, whereas with simpler needlework it would have taken less than half that time. The Dutch items that were dyed and sewn using this technique were clearly superior in quality compared with the majority of the textiles found in the terpen region. Therefore they were probably an indicator of wealth or status. The high-status burials in Sutton Hoo and Mammen fit this interpretation, suggesting that decorative needlework must have belonged to the higher spheres of society. However, one should not forget that many textiles found in the Dutch terpen probably functioned as household textiles, which did not need to be embellished and are inevitably of lower quality. However, the fact that three out of the six (known) headdresses in the Netherlands are sewn with the same decorative stitch may also be considered as a sign of stan­ dardization in making these objects. Because of this standardized and time-consuming ��������   Hald, Ancient Danish Textiles, 110, fig. 296, shows the raised fishbone stitch observed in the Bjerringhøj textile. In this case the stitch loops through the fabric twice, while in the Dutch examples the loop goes behind the braid but not through the fabric; Elisabeth ���������� Crowfoot, ������������������� “The Textiles,” in The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, vol. 3, Late Roman and Byzantine Silver, Hanging Bowls, Cauldrons and Other Containers, Textiles, the Lyre, Pottery Bottle and Other Items, ed. Rupert Bruce-Mitford (London: British Museum Publications, 1983), 409–62, at 420–22������������������������ ; Elizabeth ������������ Coatsworth, ������������������� “Stitches in Time: Establishing a History of Anglo-Saxon embroidery,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 1–27, at 6 and 14. �������������   Mannering, “Questions �������������������������������� and Answers,” 155–56. ��������   Wild, “Clothing ��������������������������������������������� in the North-West Provinces,” 220; John �������������� P. Wild, “Die ������������������������������ Frauentracht der Ubier,” Germania 46, no. 1 (1968): 67–73, at 69.

46

Early Medieval Headdresses production process, these headdresses might have been made by specialized craftspeople working in textile workshops.51 It is clear that the similarities of the needlework on the various finds in the North Sea region reflect the intensive contact within this area. Did these contacts merely cause this popular sewing technique to spread in the region, or did they enhance trade in ready-made garments as well? With the data now available these questions can unfortunately not be answered. CONCLUSION

The two headdresses discussed in this article provide detailed information about the construction and sewing techniques used to make such items in the sixth to ninth centuries. The hats were carefully sewn using small and often decorative stitches. Although the shape of the two items is very different, there are similarities in the way they have been constructed. In both cases the edges of the separate panels were first hemmed to prevent fraying, and after this the panels were sewn together. Both headdresses showed decorative stitching in contrasting-colored thread, making the seams stand out against the fabric. This specific stitch has also been observed on another Dutch hat from this period as well as on textiles from the burials in Sutton Hoo and Mammen. The pillbox cap from Leens was most probably worn by a man. The hat fits in a long tradition which goes back to at least the Roman period, where a similar hat style has been named the “Pannonian cap” by archaeologists. Finds from Greenland show that this type of hat stayed in use far into the Middle Ages. The headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion probably belonged to a woman and may have been worn in any of several ways. The decorative stitching on the inside of the side panels suggests that these panels were folded outward, but the headdress could also be tied closely around the head. When worn that way, the headdress resembles a coif, which may have been worn under a veil. Pictorial and archaeological evidence shows that hats and headdresses were often colorful. This is certainly true for the headdress from Dokkum–Berg Sion, which was dyed and sewn with contrasting-colored thread. Furthermore, the decorative stitching is of a quality not often found in the archaeological record. Since this specific stitch was also found in rich burials of Sutton Hoo and Mammen, it is likely that the colorful hats sewn in this technique were considered of superior quality by their owners as well. The similarities of these high-quality items, found in different countries around the North Sea, underlines the intensive contacts in this region. These contacts may have enabled specific sewing techniques to spread throughout the North Sea region. It is, however, also possible that the items themselves travelled, as opposed to the techniques to make them. This would imply an international trade of finished garments in the North Sea region.

����������������  �������������� Brandenburgh, ������������������������������������� “Early Medieval Textile Remains,”���� 75.

47

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England Maren Clegg Hyer

In 934, King Athelstan paid a visit to the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street near Durham. He left behind costly gifts: an embroidered stole covered in gold and two gold-embroidered maniples. These gifts are probably the three items—a stole, a maniple, and a textile known as Maniple II—later found with the saint’s body when his tomb in Durham was opened in 1827. The extant Durham pieces are important archaeological evidence confirming the skillful and beautiful textile work the AngloSaxons were known for, work also attested in textual sources. But the Durham vestments may be emblematic of more than just skill and beauty; their provenance and construction highlight Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward textiles, attitudes alluded to in the Liber Eliensis (the history of the monastery at Ely) and hagiographical sources of the period. Rather than seeing expensive textiles as end-use products, many AngloSaxons appear to have adopted an attitude to textiles echoed in the modern catchphrase “reduce, reuse, recycle,” reimagining textiles and their constituent parts in different ways and for different needs. The extant Durham vestments were not initially designed for St. Cuthbert. Two of the three donated articles were worked between 909 and 916 by order of Ælfflaed, one of Edward the Elder’s wives and Athelstan’s stepmother, as Latin inscriptions embroidered into the maniple tell us: “ÆLFFLÆD FIERI PRECEPIT / PIO EPISCOPO FRIÐESTANO” [Ælfflæd had this made / for holy Bishop Friðestan]. In other words, Ælfflæd had the Durham stole and maniple made for Bishop Friðestan, yet years later, her stepson King Athelstan donated the vestments to the shrine of a different ecclesiast; he recycled his stepmother’s intended donation for a different purpose. In doing so, Athelstan demonstrated two aspects of Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward expensive textiles. First, regifting was less embarrassing to them than it is today; as swords had long lives and multiple users, so vestments might be used and reused,

Portions of this paper were presented in May 2010 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Maren Clegg Hyer reimagined for different contexts and owners. Second, Athelstan clearly considered expensive textiles as portable wealth that he could donate, perhaps at a moment of need for heavenly intercession. Donations to religious institutions were not always textiles; often they consisted of land, gold, silver, books, or even servants. Expensive textiles, like other donations, thus appear as units of monetary exchange alongside other items representing wealth. Athelstan’s donation of the Durham stole and first maniple for reuse as whole textiles is certainly not unique. The regifting or reusing of vestments explains much of the extensive textile wealth inventoried and listed among the treasures of Ely, Evesham, and other religious foundations. Thus, the chasubles of Bishop Osmund, Archbishop Wulfstan, and Bishop Aethelstan are inventoried as in use at Ely in the mid-1100s, long after their deaths. Women’s wills surviving from the period also record the donation and reuse of household textiles and garments for ecclesiastical foundations, such as Æthelgifu’s donation of her best wall hanging (“betste wahrift”) and best seat cover (“betste setrægl”) to St. Albans in the late tenth century or Wulfgyth’s gift of a seat cover (“setrayel”) to Christchurch and a woolen gown (“wellene kertel”) to St. Etheldreda’s in the early eleventh century. Similar donations could be moderately refashioned for different use, such as the construction of two albs “from the cloth in which the body of St. Æthelthryth had been wrapped” at Ely, or for different purpose, as were pieces of St. Æthelthryth’s old clothing supposedly used for healing purposes nearly 500 years after her death. Perhaps such refashioning explains what may be Athelstan’s third donation, the textile often called Maniple II (fig. 3.1). It consists of two long, gold-embroidered bands sewn together side by side, although it probably originated as a single longer piece. Because the bands are reversible, Elizabeth Coatsworth suspects that it may have been a clothing tie from a cloak or headdress of a “piece of royal secular dress,” and Elizabeth Plenderleith has previously suggested that the article was Athelstan’s belt, perhaps the cingulum that textual sources state he donated for use at St. Cuthbert’s

 �������������������   See, for example, Janet ����������������������������������� Fairweather, ed. and trans., Liber Eliensis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 233– 35 and 358. The corresponding Latin passages are found in E. O. Blake, ed. and trans., Liber Eliensis, Camden Third Series 92 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1962), 196–97 and 293. Similar lists can be found in Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. and trans. Jane Sayers and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), 156–57.  ��������������   Fairweather, Liber, 358 (Blake, Liber, 293).  ������������������������������������������������������  ����������������������������������������������������� Dorothy Whitelock, Neil Ker, and Lord Rennell, eds., The Will of Æthelgifu��: �� A �������������������� Tenth-Century AngloSaxon Manuscript (Oxford: Roxburghe Club, 1968), line 7. The will is dated ca. ����������� 980–90.  ����������������������������   “�������������������������� The Will of Wulfgyth,” in Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (1930; repr., New York: AMS, 1973), 84, line 30, and 86, line 2. The will is dated ca. 984–1016. ���������  �������������   Fairweather, Liber, 358 and 375, respectively (Blake, Liber, 293 and 306).  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   Elizabeth Coatsworth, “The Embroideries from the Tomb of St. Cuthbert,” in Edward the Elder 899– 924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (London: Routledge, 2001), 292–306, at 302–5.  ���������������������������������������������������������������������   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, at 388–89. Chroniclers record a similar donation at Ely of a belt “made of the girdle of King Edgar”; Fairweather, Liber, 358 (Blake, Liber, 293).

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Anglo-Saxon Textiles

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Fig. 3.1: Detail of Maniple II from the tomb of St. Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral, tenth century. Photo: Used with the permission of the Chapter of Durham Cathedral.

shrine. In either case, before or after that donation, the strip was divided in two and sewn together to serve as a maniple, or a short length of fabric draped over a priest’s arm. If indeed the second maniple began its life as a textile as a clothing tie or a belt for the king, then its donation represents an alteration and a recycling of a secular object for a religious function and setting, as well as a reuse of a strip of royal, gold embroidery as a unit of religious monetary exchange. The donation of embroidered strips for the second maniple is also not unique. In the Liber Eliensis, the monastic chronicler recounts that Byrhtnoth (of Battle of Maldon fame) stayed with monks at Ely on the way to his battle against the Danes, an event fifty or so years after Athelstan’s donation to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. Appreciative of their hospitality and perhaps hoping for celestial insurance against catastrophe in his impending fight, Byrhtnoth donated several estates, gold and silver, and two gold crosses to Ely. He also donated “two borders of his cloak, woven with costly work in

 �������������   Such as the Karta Regis Æthelstani in Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: A History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of His Patrimony, ed. and trans. Ted Johnson South, Anglo-Saxon Texts 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 64–65.  ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Athelstan’s donation of a royal headcovering interwoven with gold (“regium pilleum auro textum”) at the same time suggests a potential parallel; perhaps the headcovering had a similar fate as the cingulum, a secular textile re-envisioned for ecclesiastical use. South, Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, 64 (translation mine).

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Maren Clegg Hyer gold and gems,” with the condition that the monks would retrieve his body and bury him in holy ground at Ely should he fall in battle.10 The chronicler’s account does not state that Byrhtnoth donated his cloak entire to their foundation, but rather, the gold borders from his cloak. Questions naturally follow Byrhtnoth’s choice. How or why did he detach the golden edges of his cloak? Why not donate the entire cloak? Would donating the edges alone destroy either the edges or the rest of the cloak? Similar references in the inventories of the Liber Eliensis to donated freestanding “pendant-strips with gold,”11 as well as an alb decorated at its lower edge with gold-worked bands from “the boots of King Edgar,”12 raise similar questions. An answer to the riddle of Byrhtnoth’s cloak (as well as King Edgar’s boots) lies in the examination of the construction of extant Anglo-Saxon textiles, including what were possibly Athelstan’s donations. There are very few surviving textiles larger than fragments or impressions in metal, but three of the larger groups, all found in ecclesiastical settings, contain pieces that are constructed of embroidered strips and panels as well as freestanding tablet-woven bands brocaded in gold. Textiles discovered in the casula (chasuble) ascribed to St. Harlindis and St. Relindis and located in Maaseik, Belgium, are a good example (fig. 3.2).13 The casula, until recently a composite textile likely assembled in the late Middle Ages, comprised three different pieces of silk or silk blend, eight sections of embroidery, and multiple strips of tablet-woven braid (fig. 3.3). All of the components are too late to have been constructed by the saints, who died in the mid-eighth century; the embroidery and most of the braids have been identified as southern English from the late eighth or early ninth century.14 The sections of embroidery themselves include four monograms (possibly representing Alpha and Omega) heavily embroidered in multiple colors; at some point, the fabric on which the monograms were embroidered was trimmed away, leaving edges subsequently folded under so that the monograms could be stitched onto the fabrics of the casula. The other four embroideries include two panels of arcades, embroidered luxuriously throughout with geometric, animal, plant, and interlace images in multiple colors, and two panels of circular roundels with a bird or other animal embroidered within and vines without. Multiple strips of tablet-woven braids were sewn onto the casula, probably in the late Middle Ages, to cover edges and seams, and

���������������   Fairweather, Liber, 162. The Latin passage reads “duabus laciniis pallii sui, pretioso opere auri et gemmarum contextis” (Blake, Liber, 135). The sense of laciniis could imply a number of options for the positioning of the borders on his cloak: on the hem, on the upper edges of the cloak at the sides or the neck, or perhaps as fastening ties. ���������������   Fairweather, Liber, 234; “ii pendentia cum auro” (Blake, Liber, 197). ���������������   Fairweather, Liber, 358; “Et xi albe parate subterius aurifrixo leviter, i de caligis Ædgari regis” (Blake, Liber, 293). 13  Described in Mildred ��������������������������������������������������������������� Budny and Dominic Tweddle, “��������������������������� The Maaseik Embroideries,” Anglo-Saxon Eng� land 13 (1984): 65–96, and Budny and Tweddle, “The Early Medieval Textiles at Maaseik, Belgium,” Antiquaries Journal 65, no. 2 (1985): 353–89. The casula is pictured here as a composite; it has since been separated into constituent pieces. �����������������������������������������������������   Budny and Tweddle, “Early Medieval Textiles,” 353.

52

Anglo-Saxon Textiles those woven from red and beige silk brocaded richly with gold threads in geometric patterns are the ones identified as Anglo-Saxon.15 The embroidered and tablet-woven pieces are probably a set, but given their location in a composite textile comprising textiles from apparently different times and backgrounds, they very likely represent the recycling of earlier, elaborate materials in a later medieval context.16 Two related velamina (veils or altar cloths) associated with the casula are that ascribed to St. Harlindis, also a composite textile consisting of pieces of silk and tablet-woven braids from the late eighth to early ninth century of uncertain origin,17 and that ascribed to St. Relindis, a fragmentary composite of indeterminate but medieval origin.18 Like the casula, both composites bear evidence of having reused elaborate medieval embroideries and borders—in the case of the first velamen, works covered with gold, pearls, blue and green beads, and copper bosses, and in the case of the second, borders.19 Both composites also bear evidence of having been despoiled of much of the same. It is noteworthy that all of the Maaseik textiles, including the Anglo-Saxon pieces, share common features: they were sewn together for ecclesiastical reuse and recycling beyond their first purpose, and they were probably chosen for their value in richness of materials. Thus, they were all considered detachable and reusable, valuable elements of original textile works. The monograms and other portions of embroidery were cut from their original fabrics and hemmed and stitched into new contexts. The tablet-woven bands, however, were detached and reused more easily, a natural feature of their composition. Tablet-woven bands can be woven onto the edges of a textile in the loom, or woven separately, as decorative strips that can be sewn onto the edges or seams of finished textiles, and later removed. The second extant group, the Durham textiles, differ from the Maaseik textiles in that they are not composite fragments of disparate ages, the stole and maniple with figures appearing to be a set and to be of comparable age to Maniple II; however, they consist of elements similar to the Anglo-Saxon pieces among the Maaseik textiles: embroidered panels of cloth and brocaded, tablet-woven borders, with the edges and seams of the larger pieces disguised with tablet-woven borders brocaded in gold and matching plaits (figs. 3.1 and 3.4).20 Imported silks also found at Durham are similarly

�������������   Ibid., 366. ��������������   Ibid., 372. �������������   Ibid., 353. �������������   Ibid., 383. �������������������������������   Ibid., 374–75, 378, and 383. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   For a full description, see Plenderleith, “The Stole and Maniples,” and Crowfoot, “The Braids,” in Battiscombe, Relics, 433–63. Crowfoot mentions additional assorted tablet-woven braids found among the relics.

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Maren Clegg Hyer

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

Fig. 3.2: Casula attributed to St. Harlindis and St. Relindis in Musea Maaseik Treasury, Maaseik, Belgium, late eighth or early ninth century, in its later medieval composite state (87 x 57 cm). Photo: Copyright © KIK-IRPA, Brussels.

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Anglo-Saxon Textiles

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Fig. 3.3: Pieces from the Maaseik casula after dissassembly. From top, tablet-woven braids (varying lengths), embroidered monograms (each 12 x 13 cm), embroidered panels with roundels (combined, 34 x 7.5 cm), and embroidered panels with arcade motifs (63 x 9.5 cm and 66 x 10 cm). Photo: Copyright © KIK-IRPA, Brussels.

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Maren Clegg Hyer

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

Fig. 3.4: Textiles from the tomb of St. Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral, tenth century. Left: Detail from the St. Cuthbert stole, one of seven surviving fragments. Right: Detail from Maniple I. Photos: Used with the permission of the Chapter of Durham Cathedral.

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Anglo-Saxon Textiles

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book. Fig. 3.5: Gold couched embroidery on silk, found attached to a dalmatic, from the relics of St. Ambrose, Basilica Ambrosiana, Milan (38 x 3.8 cm). Photo: Parrocchia de S. Ambrogio, Milan; by permission of the Abbot of S. Ambrogio.

adorned by tablet-woven, gold-brocaded braid.21 An additional similarity to the Maaseik textiles, as discussed above, is that the Durham textiles have also been recycled, but in a different sense. A third piece of possible Anglo-Saxon embroidery is found among the relics of St. Ambrose in Milan at the Basilica Ambrosiana. The strip of textile is embroidered in gold, and according to Elizabeth Plenderleith and Grace M. Crowfoot,22 as well as David Wilson,23 it looks much like the Durham vestments (fig. 3.5). No one is certain how or why an isolated strip of Anglo-Saxon embroidery might have reached Milan or exactly how it is related to the Durham vestments, but clearly, the strip had a first function, and then was detached and perhaps donated to St. Ambrose as an item of value. The only surviving Anglo-Saxon textile of considerable size that does not contain gold embroidery or tablet-woven borders or bands embroidered in gold and which does not show evidence of resultant recycling is the Bayeux Tapestry. However, it depicts yellow borders at the edges of the costumes of some major characters, such as

������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   In particular, weft-patterned silk adorned with a braid with soumak brocading, as described by Hero Granger-Taylor, “The Weft-Patterned Silks and their Braid: The Remains of an Anglo-Saxon Dalmatic of c. 800?” in St. Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200, ed. Gerald Bonner, Clare Stancliffe, and David Rollason (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), 303–27. Granger-Taylor argues the braid is Anglo-Saxon. She also discusses two additional stretches of braid in Ravenna and Salzburg that are likely Anglo-Saxon. The late-seventh-century or early-eighth-century Ravenna example is a reversible, tablet-woven, gold-brocaded braid and is considered a girdle, in both respects similar to Durham’s Maniple II (319). The Salzburg example (proposed early ninth century, with pieces in Bern and Los Angeles) is also a tablet-woven and gold-brocaded braid and was clearly recycled for later use, adorning a late medieval mitre (320). ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Plenderleith (“The Stole and Maniples,” 392–94) includes a report written by Grace M. Crowfoot, titled “Note on a Fragment of Embroidery from the Basilica Ambrosiana in Milan,” which details their visit and examination of the textile fragment. Both concluded the embroidery was identical in material and technique to the Durham vestments. Its dimensions are 380 mm by 38 mm. 23  David M. Wilson, “Craft and Industry,” in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. David M. Wilson (London: Methuen, 1976), 273�.

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Maren Clegg Hyer

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

Fig. 3.6: Detail showing King Harold disembarking, from the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century, Bayeux, France. Photo: By special permission of the City of Bayeux, with thanks to Gale R. Owen-Crocker.

King Harold, King Edward, and Duke William, which might represent gold borders such as those on Byrhtnoth’s cloak (fig. 3.6). Luxury Anglo-Saxon textiles, in particular dress items, are commonly described in the textual sources of the period as being embroidered in gold and having golden 58

Anglo-Saxon Textiles borders,24 a symbol of the elite.25 Clearly, the archaeological record of extant textiles agrees.26 Embroidered sections and tablet-woven borders were common features of Anglo-Saxon textiles, both secular and sacred. Their construction features may explain the story of Byrhtnoth’s cloak. If the borders of Byrhtnoth’s cloak were tablet-woven bands of gold sewn onto the edges of his cloak, they would be visible, transportable, and removable signs of his affluence and later his piety in donating them to Ely. Their removal would not necessitate the destruction of his cloak, any more than would the removal of decorative bands from King Edgar’s boots.27 If, on the other hand, his borders were not tablet-woven, the tradition of cutting and reworking gold-embroidered textile sections for a different ecclesiastical use is also well-attested in the extant textiles. The Liber Eliensis describes a similar refashioning of a donation by Athelstan’s nephew to Ely: “a chasuble well-embroidered all over, made of the cloak of King Edgar.”28 In either case, the sense that embroidered and bordered sections of textile were considered removable and transportable from one textile use to another could help to explain an odd feature of Anglo-Saxon textile history: Many of the extant AngloSaxon textiles (particularly in ecclesiastical contexts) are pieces that seem to have been removed from first-use textiles to be compiled into secondary-use textiles.29 Thus, the �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Borders are described in text as a common element of Anglo-Saxon dress across a surprising length of time. An early-eighth-century writer, Paulus Diaconus, described customary dress of Anglo-­Saxons as being “decorated with wide borders interwoven in various colors” (“hornata instititis latioribus vario colore contextis”); G. Waitz, ed., Pauli Historia Langobardorum IV, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 48 (Hanover, Germany: Hahn, 1878), 155. For this reference, I am indebted to Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 171–72 and 185. Three centuries later, a monk of St. Bertin mirrors Paulus’ remark, while writing the history of King Edward for his widow. He distinguishes Edith’s elaborate decoration of the king’s robe from the norm, “cloaks and robes adorned at the top with gold in the national style”; Frank ������������������������������ Barlow, ed. and trans., The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, 2��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� nd ed., ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 25. The full passage in Latin reads “Nam cum priscis Anglorum regibus antea moris non fuerit lauciorum cultibus uestimentorum uti preter sagos auro supra paratos et huiusmodi uestes secundum morem gentis . . .” (24). ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   As Robin Fleming points out, “bordered garments were rich-men’s attire, and peasants drawn labouring in the period’s calendars never wear them”; Fleming, “Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Early Medieval Europe 15, no. 2 (2007): 127–58, at 134. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Elisabeth Crowfoot and Sonia Chadwick Hawkes document a significant number of fragments of gold strips from inhumation graves from the early Anglo-Saxon period; their contention is that the fragments represent similar Anglo-Saxon gold braids, likely tablet-woven. If so, the tradition of ­tabletwoven gold braids is consistent throughout the entirety of the Anglo-Saxon period. Crowfoot and Hawkes, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids,” Medieval Archaeology 11 (1967): 42–86; Crowfoot, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids: Addenda and Corrigenda,” Medieval Archaeology 13 (1969): 209–10. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Perhaps as a cuff, or perhaps as trailing ribbons or bindings; see Fleming, “Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk,” 154–55 and fig. 7 for continental examples. ���������������   Fairweather, Liber, 378; “Et i infula tota bene brusdata, facta de clamide Ædgari regis” (Blake, Liber, 293). The chronicles of Glastonbury indicate Edgar also donated his coronation robe to cover the altar there; William of Malmesbury, The Early History of Glastonbury, ed. John Scott (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1981), 130–31. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   This question takes on exponential significance if bits of valued silk are brought into consideration; see Fleming, “Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk,” 127–58.

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Maren Clegg Hyer textiles at Maaseik may be the removable remnants or the “good bits” of a donated textile, the bits that had sufficient monetary and artistic worth to justify transferral and recycling. That possibility might also explain the unexpected presence of a small strip of gold embroidery that may be from Anglo-Saxon England in a church in Milan. Perhaps it too had a different first use, but was subsequently removed and left at a religious house, like the edges of Byrhtnoth’s cloak. Perhaps it was also a donation, portable wealth the donor gave in exchange for divine or ecclesiastical help on the way to or from a pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem. An interesting story that confirms the recycling of strips of embroidered textile and their perception as portable wealth is found in the “Miracles of St. Dunstan” by Eadmer of Canterbury, a monk of Anglo-Saxon parentage writing in the decades following the Norman Conquest. Eadmer reports the story of a matron from London who had long been ill. St. Dunstan comes to her in a dream and asks her if she wishes to recover. Upon her positive reply, he tells her, “Take the golden embroidery which you keep hidden away in your money chest and attach it to my chasuble, which is kept in Westminster, and you shall recover.” The matron obeys, decorating the chasuble “with golden embroidery,” and is instantly healed. Eadmer adds that part of the miracle to many was that the “golden embroidery attached to the chasuble” fit the chasuble precisely without further alteration.30 The story is revealing in a number of ways. First, the woman had pieces of textile embroidered in gold that were not attached to a larger textile and which were kept in safekeeping in her money chest, presumably with other valuables. The embroidery had likely had a prior use—what, we cannot say—but may have been detached and saved to be reused or recycled as an ornament for a different textile at some future date. The embroidery itself was clearly perceived as an item of portable wealth, like money, probably because of the precious metal and elaborate working that went into it. When the woman, like Athelstan and Byrhtnoth, needed something from heavenly powers, she donated her embroidery in order to receive St. Dunstan’s assistance. The gold embroidery was thus recycled or reimagined for a differerent context. That the Anglo-Saxons might have held such attitudes and that their dress may have been constructed to mirror such attitudes may confirm the solution to a potentially puzzling exchange of portable wealth in a secular context. In her late-tenth-century will, Æthelgifu leaves instruction that her executors should “Ceorfe man of hire bende

������������������������������������������������������������������������   “Matrona uero quaedam Lundoniensis graui infirmitate diutissime tenta …. ������������������������� Huic, sicut putabatur iam et extemplo moriturae, per uisum uir Dei Dunstanus apparuit, sciscitans utrum ab illa infirmitate conualescere uellet. Qua et ‘Maxime’ quidem respondente, intulit: ‘Tolle aurifrigium quot in arca tua reconditum habes, et pone illud in casula mea quae habetur apud Westmonasterium, et conualesces.’ At illa, mox facto mane, misit et casulam deferri fecit. Quam deosculans, et aurifrigio, sicut erat admonita, perornans, ilico integerrime conualuit, et deinde pluribus annis incolumis uixit. In quo illud quoque admirationi nonnullis fuit, quoniam idem aurifrigium planetae appositum nec maius nec minus inuentum est quam uestis ipsius mensura petebat.” Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. and trans. Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), 204–7.

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Anglo-Saxon Textiles

Fig. 3.7: Cnut and Ælfgifu-Emma in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster at Winchester, dated 1031 (London, British Library, MS Stowe 944, 6r). Photo: Copyright © British Library Board, by permission.

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Maren Clegg Hyer witsige v mancessas” [Have a man cut five mancuses from her headband for Witsige].31 To complicate matters further, the same man is to cut five mancuses-worth of value from the same headband for four other people.32 Gold headbands are listed in wills and ornamented ones shown in drawings.33 But can one imagine the cutting-off of a chunk of solid gold or any other metal of value from a headband? Perhaps, if indeed the headband were constructed of or adorned with strips of gold embroidery or tablet-woven bands brocaded in gold. Pagan-period archaeology suggests the use of embroidered or tablet-woven headbands.34 Elizabeth Coatsworth likewise identifies headbands with trailing ribbons (perhaps embroidered or tablet-woven?) in the later iconography of manuscripts of the period, suggesting we may see just such a design in an eleventh-century image of Emma and Cnut (see the trailing bands down her back, fig. 3.7).35 If so, then the bequest can be explained: a portion of the headband, perhaps a trailing tablet-woven ribbon brocaded in gold, was to be given to each recipient, as portable wealth and inheritance from a kinswoman or friend. Such attitudes of reusing and recycling sections of textiles are pragmatic attitudes, really, and probably should not be surprising to us. Textiles wear out. The expensive parts can be reused, recycled, and reimagined for different contexts. It would be logical that they should have been constructed in such a way that they could be salvaged and trimmed or detached and transferred for a variety of uses and reenvisionings, including their exchange as donated objects of worth and beauty between secular people and ecclesiastical foundations. The Anglo-Saxons were clearly reusers and recyclers of textiles, but in the end, their embroidered fabrics were also reduced. There is a reason why so few AngloSaxon textiles remain, including the few pieces with gold-embroidered panels and gold-brocaded tablet-woven borders. Considered portable wealth by the invading Normans, as well, many textiles were reduced to ashes and the gold taken for its precious content.36 Today, only a handful of textiles remain to remind us that the AngloSaxons knew what it meant to reduce, reuse, and recycle, particularly when it came to their luxury textiles.

�������������������������������  ����������������������������� Whitelock, Ker, and Rennell, The Will of Æthelgifu�, line 46. An Anglo-Saxon mancus can be a silver or, in this case, gold coin of precious but unknown value. Presumably, the will requests that gold equivalent to five gold mancuses be taken from the headband for Witsige and the others. ���������������������  ������������������� Ibid., lines ������������ 46–47. ����������������   Owen-Crocker, Dress, 224–25. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Crowfoot and Hawkes, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids,” 50. See also examples in “The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials from Sixth-Century Bavaria,” by Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak-Böck, chapter 1 in this volume. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Coatsworth, “Embroideries,” 304. Fleming (“Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk,” 136 and notes 40 and 41) lists a number of archaeological finds of similar ribbons in continental and AngloSaxon contexts. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Bishop Nigel, for example, scandalized the monks at Ely by illicitly selling gold-embroidered, donated vestments to raise cash; Fairweather, Liber, 461 (Blake, Liber, 372). The new royal family also demanded its share of ecclesiastical wealth, contributing to the “good deal of recycling [that] was taking place”; Fleming, “Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk,” 143–44.

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Mining for Gold: Investigating a Semantic ­Classification in the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project Louise Sylvester This article seeks to discover what we can learn about the importance of gold in the clothes and accessories of medieval Britain through a process that combines historical evidence with language analysis. It begins by considering the place of gold in the dress and textiles of medieval Britain. It then examines the terms relating to GOLD (the semantic field) in the data collected by the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 project (LCCB). It looks at the lexis and lexicalisation of GOLD, investigates how the words and phrases collected can be delineated within the semantic field of cloth and clothing, and offers a semantic classification of the relevant lexis. The basic premise of this investigation is that we may gain a new perspective on cultural history by viewing a related set of words in semantic categories in the light of the material and literary evidence for a specific concept. GOLD IN THE DRESS AND TEXTILES OF MEDIEVAL BRITAIN

In the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, we are told “Gold fāg scinon / web æfter wāgum wundorsīona fela / secga gehwylcum þāra þe on swylc starað” [Tapestries decorated with gold shone on the walls, many wondrous sights for everyone who looks at such

This article is a version of a paper presented in May 2010 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am grateful to Gale Owen-Crocker for her continued collegial support and amazing efficiency. My thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and guidance, and to Mark Chambers and Mark Zumbuhl for helpful research into remote corners of the Lexis project’s data, as well as a number of dictionaries and other sources.  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 is a five-year project based at the universities of Manchester and Westminster. Gale Owen-Crocker is principal investigator; Cordelia Warr and I are co-investigators. Our grateful thanks go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing the funding for this project. For details, see http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ (accessed Aug. 21, 2011).

Louise Sylvester things]. Elizabeth Coatsworth suggests that this statement “constitutes important evidence for rich hangings contributing to the splendour of a secular, courtly interior.” Certainly it is clear that in medieval Britain, textiles could express wealth and status: The rejection of luxurious fabrics showed humility; their adoption displayed status and power. The value of fabrics arose from “the costliness of the often imported raw materials or finished piece, and the elaborateness of methods of manufacture.” The most luxurious effect was produced by decorating with gold, by brocading while weaving or embroidering the woven cloth. English gold embroidery was famous before the Norman Conquest, though it was most prominent, as opus anglicanum, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The embroidery was executed in polychrome silk threads and threads of precious metals. These metal threads were extremely expensive and were made by wrapping narrow strips of metal—at its most opulent, these were gold—around a silk core. Norman observers noted large quantities of sumptuous textiles in Anglo-Saxon England, including “imported silks, often patterned; textiles embroidered with gold, not only as an ornament for the edge of a piece of material, but sometimes so heavily decorated with gold as to appear encrusted with it.” The richness of Anglo-Saxon attire is seen in the headbands of wealthy women. Evidence for gold-brocaded headbands has been found in Kentish graves of the sixth century, and there is linguistic evidence for them from the later Anglo-Saxon period.10 The headbands “were probably tablet-woven and possibly, to judge from Continental

 ��������������������������������������   Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), lines 994–96. Translation in Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life: Domestic Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2007): 1–12, at 5.  �������������������������������������������   Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life,” 5.  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   For discussion of Anglo-Saxon attitudes to expensive textiles, see Maren Clegg Hyer, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Re-imagined Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England,” in this volume. For attitudes in the later medieval period based on extant accounts records, see Wendy R. Childs, “Cloth of Gold and Gold Thread: Luxury Imports to England in the Fourteenth Century,” in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. Chris GivenWilson, Ann Kettle, and Len Scales (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2008), 267.  �������������������������������������������   Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life,” 2.  ��������������������   Gale Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 285–86. Note also that the addition of gold or silver thread inflated the price of any textile, the cost of cloth of gold varying according to the amount and type of gold thread it contained; see Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 26.  ������������������������������������   See Coatsworth, “Opus Anglicanum,” 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). I am grateful to Gale Owen-Crocker for allowing me to see this and other draft entries in advance of the encyclopedia’s publication.  ���������������   Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 228.  ����������������   C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 174–75. ����������������   Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 79.

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Semantic Classification of Gold examples, made of silk.”11 The metal threads used to ornament the early Anglo-Saxon bands were “narrow strips cut from gold foil sheet metal, which had probably been prepared by a long process of heating, stretching, hammering, and burnishing to bring it to the paper-thin pliability and brilliance of finish required by the weaver.” Most of them seem to have been made of “good gold, not too heavily alloyed with baser metals.”12 We can be certain that these woven gold bands were luxury goods because of the contexts in which they have been found: Most of the women who wore them were buried with large quantities of high-quality personal jewellery and other possessions. It seems that the gold bands were “an aristocratic prerogative.”13 In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the headband became a form of “portable wealth.”14 The evidence from Anglo-Saxon wills suggests that there was so much gold in them that their owners could arrange for them to be shared by several beneficiaries as a form of gold bullion: The will of Brihtric and Ælfswith of between 973 and 987 includes a bequest to St. Augustine’s of “healfne bænd gyldenne” [half a gold headband]; and the will of Wulfwaru gives one headband worth 30 mancuses of gold to her elder daughter, Gode (“ic geann Godan minre yldran dehter . . . anes bendes on ðritigum mancussum goldes”), while a headband worth 20 gold mancuses is to be shared among her four servants (“ic geann minum feower cnihtum. Ælmære. & Ælfwerde. & Wulfrice. & Wulfstane. anes bendes on twentigum mancussum goldes”).15 We should note, too, the large number of metal threads found in the seventh-century Taplow grave, suggesting that there must have been a large amount of gold braid, perhaps decorating a baldric worn to carry a sword and certainly functioning as a symbol of status.16 There is particular evidence for gold as an element of rich textiles associated with King Edward the Confessor. William of Malmesbury records that the king’s clothing for great feasts was “interwoven with gold, which the queen [Edith] had most sumptuously embellished.”17 The throne is said to have been “adorned with coverings embroidered with gold, [which] gleamed in every part.”18 �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Ibid., 96; see also Elisabeth Crowfoot and Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids,” Medieval Archaeology 11 (1967): 42–86, at 43, and Elisabeth Crowfoot, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids: Addenda and Corrigenda,” Medieval Archaeology 13 (1969), 209–10. ��������������������������������������������������������������   Crowfoot and Hawkes, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids,” 43–44. ������������   Ibid., 51. �����������   Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 175; see also Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 225. ��������������������������   Dorothy Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930): Wynflæd’s will, 10–15; the will of Brihtric and Ælfswith, 26–29; Wulfwaru’s will, 62–65. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Crowfoot and Hawkes, “Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids,” 45–48. While concurring with the notion that the gold-brocaded bands in the Taplow grave are signals of status, Penelope Walton Rogers suggests that the asymmetrical pattern would seem more appropriate to a garment border (as originally suggested by the excavators). Rogers considers that the wide band might be reinterpreted as the border on the front flap of a warrior jacket; Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450–700 (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007), 212–13. Gale Owen-Crocker (Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 286) has suggested that it might be an early example of the cloak ribbon. ����������������   Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 233; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 70. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life,” 9, citing Frank Barlow, ed. and trans., The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, Attributed to a Monk of St. Bertin, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 24–25.

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Louise Sylvester Most of the evidence for gold cloth (woven or embroidered), however, concerns its use for religious purposes. In the tenth century, St. Æthelwold gave two gilded altar cloths to Peterborough, and Queen Emma presented Ely with an altar cloth “of bloodred edged with gold” and a “large green altar-frontal adorned with bands of gold.”19 King Edgar is known to have donated a cloak so laden with gold embroidery that it looked like chain mail to the church at Ely, where it was made into a chasuble. A well-known pictorial representation of Edgar appears to indicate that the fashion for gold-bordered hems on cloaks was traditional.20 Mathilda, William the Conqueror’s queen, bequeathed one of her own cloaks to be used as a cope. The garment is described as being “of gold” (ex auro). Mathilda is known to have used English embroideresses: If the cloak’s gold decoration were embroidered, it is possible that it was English work.21 The decoration of Anglo-Saxon vestments took various forms. The back of a red chasuble presented to Ely by Leofsige in the first half of the eleventh century was covered with gold embroidery, and the front was decorated “with a sort of chequering of gold and gems.” At Canterbury, vestments given just after the Conquest, but thought to be of Anglo-Saxon workmanship, had “stars and crescents and great circles all in gold.” At Ely and elsewhere, there is mention of a gold acanthus leaf.22 A chasuble donated by Countess Godiva had a gold-embroidered tree. Vestments at Canterbury had “flowers, plants, branches, and pinecones in gold,” as well as gold beasts in circles, and heads in gold circles. The dalmatic found with St. Cuthbert’s body in 1104 had small animals and flowers embroidered on it.23 Opus anglicanum was used for some textiles made for secular purposes, but the best-preserved examples were created for liturgical use, including altar frontals and vestments.24 An opus anglicanum vestment was considered a superior donation to a church or prelate: “The materials, workmanship, and design could all function within this context, convincing the recipient of the devotion and wealth of the giver.”25 In her examination of the accounts and minute books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the Goldsmiths’ Company of London, Lisa Jefferson comments on the “intrinsic fascination of gold”;26 this fascination remained in play in later medieval Britain. Jefferson’s work shows the rigour of the standards of the goldsmiths of London: The requirement is set out that the gold and silver used should be of a high quality,

�����������   Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 141; many other examples are listed. �����   In New Minster Charter, Winchester, 966–84 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A.viii), 2v., reproduced in Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress and Fashion (London: British Library, 2007), 22– 23, and in Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, plate K. See the discussion there, 237, and that in Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 179. ����������������   Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 228; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 180. �����������  ��������� Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, 183. �������������   Ibid., 185. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Susan Leibacher Ward, “Saints in Split Stitch: Representations of Saints in Opus Anglicanum Vestments,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2007): 41–54, at 42–43. ������������   Ibid., 52. ������������������   Lisa Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London, 1334–1446 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003), xi.

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Semantic Classification of Gold specifying “oor de l’asay.”27 There are also a large number of rules for the actual working of gold and silver pieces based on the highest standards of craft practice.28 For evidence of the importance of gold in the textile arts in this period, we can turn to the Royal Wardrobe accounts, some of which have been examined in detail, though the corpus of documents is largely unedited at present.29 In the wardrobe accounts, some gold-embroidered garments appear. Their importance appears to be underlined by the detailed descriptions, which cite not just the time spent on the workmanship but also the patterns that were worked. In July 1330, a suit of violet velvet embroidered with gold squirrels was made for Queen Philippa to wear to church after the delivery of her firstborn child, though it was probably a mark of the impoverishment of the English court at the time that this was the only suit of hers that was embroidered, out of several made around this time.30 Though England was still poor in the following decade, provision was more generous: The accounts for 1342–43 include an embroidered guyt (a type of garment of a style as yet unidentified) for the queen and two for her two daughters. The queen’s guyt is described as powdered with a design of squares of enamel, worked with gold thread, with a quatrefoil of pearls in the middle of each square. Fifteen ounces of gold and silver were used on this garment. The guyts for the two princesses were also scattered with enamel squares and embroidered in gold. An inventory of materials bought during the same year shows that leaf gold and gold soudatum (the term for gold used in ornamenting clothing in the Royal Wardrobe) were purchased in fairly large quantities for casting as buttons or for making small ornaments.31 Gold brocade and embroidery feature in the wardrobe account of 1347, which details the trousseau ordered for Princess Joan. As Stella Mary Newton describes, the clothing included a tunica and a mantilletum of a thick imported silk woven with gold, to be worn at the wedding; a suit made of the same stuff; and two garments of cloth of gold. Newton continues, “Suits of two garments of cigaston [an expensive imported silk] woven with a pattern of stars and crescents in gold were made for the king and four of his nobles, and a suit of three garments, for the king alone, was made of cigaston with a dark blue ground and a woven pattern of lozenges and birds in gold.” Other ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   In 1300 this was defined as the same quality as that required in Paris, 19.2 carats; ibid., xix. ���������������   Lisa Monnas (Merchants, Princes and Painters, 16) comments on the usefulness of information derived from guild statutes, particularly when it is used in conjunction with modern scientific tools, noting that the chemical analysis of metal threads has, for example, helped to differentiate between silk fabrics woven in the Mongol Empire and their Italian imitations. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   I am principal investigator, with Gale Owen-Crocker as co-investigator, of a new three-year project, Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources, based at the Universities of Westminster and Manchester, which will enable some of these documents to be made available as an edited corpus of texts. We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the funding for this project. For details see http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/english/medieval-dress-andtextile-vocabulary-in-unpublished-sources-project (accessed Aug. 21, 2010). �����������������   Kay Staniland, Embroiderers (London: British Museum Press, 1991), 28; see also Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980), 21. ����������   Newton, Black Prince, 21­–22.

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Louise Sylvester garments made for Joan included two guyts, one embroidered in gold in a design of rose arbours, wild animals, and even wild men, the other having a pattern of circles with lions in them and a background scattered with gold leaves. The embroidery was done in coloured silks and metal thread, and small shapes cut or stamped out of thin plate gold decorated the clothes. These ornaments required a pound (in weight) of this thin plate gold.32 The account for the year 1360–61 also lists the wedding dress for Mary, a daughter of King Edward III. Newton writes that her wedding suit “consisted of a mantle and a tunic of cloth of gold racamatiz of Lucca and of cloth of gold baldekyn d’outremer; altogether seven pieces of these cloths [about 45 ells] were used.”33 Her new husband received donations of clothing from the Royal Wardrobe; among the items were two cloaks with embroidery that required three pounds of plate gold and three pounds of coloured silks.34 The account for this year also indicates that the deaths of distinguished members of court were marked by oblations of cloth of gold of Lucca from the king, the queen, and members of the aristocracy.35 A wardrobe account of 1363–64 notes that for a visit from the King of Cyprus, King Edward and Queen Philippa had garments made of cloth-of-gold baldekyn of Lucca, and soon after Edward ordered a suit of armour covered in gold baldekyn of silk.36 The same account includes a suit for Edward and a goune for the queen both made from cloth-of-gold baldekyn of Lucca.37 Nobles at Richard II’s court could also afford lavish displays. Inventory records of dukes and earls from 1397 and 1400 include rich vestments in their chapels and gold cloth used in a secular setting, including, for example, a bed of cloth of gold of old Cyprus with a design of black and white stripes and the owner’s coat of arms; also “a tester and celure of gold swans on a black ground; and a tester of swans of Cyprus gold on a red ground.” The inventory also includes “gold damask, cloths with Lucca gold, and a towel of Venice gold . . . twenty-three cloths of gold of one pattern . . .; a dorser and costers of cloth of gold with the story of Alexander; a blue tapestry worked with gold dogs; a blue cloth of gold worked with gold oak trees and greyhounds; and a red cloth of gold worked with white bucks and gold trees.”38 Some information about the ownership of similarly rich textiles at lower levels of society appears in a study of the textiles and clothing named in late medieval wills. Examples include the will of Agnes de Fraunceys, a chandler’s widow who died in 1349. She named only one piece of clothing, “a ‘robe of gold work’ (probably embroidered ������������   Ibid., 33. ������������   Ibid., 61. �������   Ibid. ���������������   Ibid., 61–62. ���������������   Ibid., 62–63. �����������   Ibid, 62. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Childs, “Cloth of Gold,” 269. Information about the various types of silk cloth worn at the English court during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with a particular focus on the technique of weaving velvet cloths of gold, may be found in Lisa Monnas, “Silk Cloths Purchased for the Great Wardrobe of the Kings of England, 1325–1462,” Textile History 20, no. 2 (1989): 283–307, and Lisa Monnas, “Textiles for the Coronation of Edward III,” Textile History 32, no. 1 (2001): 2–35.

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Semantic Classification of Gold with gold thread).”39 The 1381 will of Margery Broun lists bedding and mantles and also several textiles used for religious purposes, including “a pair of vestments with a chasuble of cloth of gold diapered with birds, and a matching towel and frontal.”40 The rich textiles that were evidently being made and imported in Britain across the medieval period appear, too, in the literature; in particular, as we might expect, in romance texts. We find detailed descriptions of clothing in the Middle English romance Sir Launfal. As Launfal sits in the forest grieving over his poverty and the derision it has provoked, he sees two maidens emerge from the woods: Har kerteles wer of Indesandel, Ylased smalle, jolif, and well—   Ther myght noon gayer go. Har manteles wer of grene felvet, Ybordured wyth gold, ryght well ysette,   Ypelured wyth grys and gro. Har heddys wer dyght well wythalle: Everych hadde oon a jolyf coronall   Wyth syxty gemmys and mo.      (lines 232–40)41 [Their gowns were made of indigo silk and were laced tightly and well. No one could have been more beautifully turned out. Their cloaks were made of green velvet bordered with gold beautifully adorned, and edged with grey and white fur. Their heads were beautifully coiffed and each wore a beautiful coronet set with more than sixty jewels.]42

Here we see the gold edging to the mantles as well as the velvet and fur familiar from the wardrobe accounts. The earlier Anglo-French43 version of the Launfal story is not nearly as detailed as the English text and omits the gold borders, as well as much else, from the description of the two maidens. The difference in the perception of richness and beauty in women’s clothing is evident when one compares the late-fourteenth-century English version, above, with Marie de France’s text of the late twelfth century: Vestues ierent richement, Laciees mut estreitement ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Kristen M. Burkholder, “Threads Bared: Dress and Textiles in Late Medieval English Wills,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 133–53, at 142–43. �������������   Ibid., 151. 41  Sir Launfal, in The Middle English Breton Lays, ed. Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995); online edition available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/ camelot/teams/launint.htm. �����������������������������������������������������   All translations are my own unless noted otherwise. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The term “�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Anglo-French” has traditionally been used of the French spoken in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; it sometimes describes continental French texts circulating in copies made in England, as well as French as a language of record used by English speakers on the Continent. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The term “Anglo-Norman” is still sometimes used to denote the French used in England from the time of the Norman Conquest to the fifteenth century, but i����������������������������� n recent scholarship, “AngloFrench” is used to refer to all the types of French associated with England.�

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Louise Sylvester En deus blians de pupre bis; Mut par aveient bel le vis. (lines 57–60)44 [They were richly dressed in tightly laced tunics of dark purple and their faces were very beautiful.]45

In the Middle English Lay le Freine, the plot turns on the beautiful cloth in which the mother wraps the baby she plans to abandon. The baudekine is not described in the Middle English version, but we are told that it comes from Constantinople.46 In this case, there is a little more description in the Anglo-French version of Marie de France, of which the Middle English poem is a translation: En un chief di mut bon chesil Envolupent l’enfant gentil E desus un paile roé— Ses sires l’i ot aporté De Costeninoble, u il fu; Unques si bon n’orent veü. (lines 121–26) [They wrapped the noble child in a cloth of fine linen and then placed over her the finest piece of striped brocade which her husband had brought from Constantinople where he had been.]47

Again, the exact nature of the textile is not entirely clear.48 Having considered some of the material evidence that remains to us in writing, pictures, and archaeological artefacts, it seemed worth investigating how much of this cultural history might be legible in the data of the LCCB project, and what these data could tell us about the uses and status of gold in the clothing and textiles of medieval Britain. GOLD IN THE LEXIS OF CLOTH AND CLOTHING IN BRITAIN PROJECT

The LCCB project aims to produce a Web-held searchable database of the vocabulary of cloth and clothing in use in Britain between about 700 and 1450. Starting in late ���������������������   Alfred Ewart, ed., Marie de France, Lais, with introduction and bibliography by Glyn S. Burgess (1944; repr. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1995). �������������������������������������������   Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby, trans., The Lais of Marie de France (London: Penguin, 1999), 73–74. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   We may note that the lack of description has given rise to some ambiguity in the interpretation of the baudekine in the latest edition of the poem. The term appears twice, first at line 136, where it is glossed as “embroidered cloth,” and again at line 364, where the gloss reads “brocaded cloth.” See Lay le Freine, in Laskaya and Salisbury, Middle English Breton Lays; online edition available at http:// www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/freinfrm.htm. ���������������������   Burgess and Busby, Lais of Marie de France, 62. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   For a fascinating discussion about the difficulty of interpreting the vocabulary describing the making of beautiful textiles in French romances, see Sarah-Grace Heller, “Obscure Lands and Obscured Hands: Fairy Embroidery and the Ambiguous Vocabulary of Medieval Textile Decoration,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 5 (2009): 15–35.

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Semantic Classification of Gold 2006, we began to collect the terms for garments, textiles, and processes of production and trade in use in medieval Britain. One early decision that we made was to include information from all the languages for which there is textual evidence of use within the British Isles. These languages include Anglo-French, Cornish, Irish, Medieval Latin, Middle English, Norn, Norse, Old English, Old Scots, Scots Gaelic, and Welsh. We are thus in the process of creating a multilingual lexical resource devoted to the clothing and textiles of medieval Britain. The data are drawn for the most part from the historical dictionaries of those languages, principally the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, the Dictionary of Old English (Toronto), the Oxford English Dictionary, the Middle English Dictionary, the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language, and the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. The definitions in these dictionaries form the starting point (though we are occasionally challenging lexemes and definitions in the dictionaries), and we are adding material gleaned from scholarship on medieval dress and textiles. We are thus augmenting the information given in the dictionaries, and also refining some definitions where the distinctions between the shades of meaning represented within the definitions need to be more fine-grained. The initial data-collecting phase of the project is now complete, and we have commenced editing the entries, which currently number approximately eight thousand. At the time of writing, the design of the database is being finalised. We are planning to enable searches at various levels so that users will be able both to track down a puzzling word in a text and to find out more about the contexts of the vocabulary in this area by searching by genre, use, or gender of wearer, for example. The desire for order is such, however, that at present at least, and possibly in its final form, the first screen includes a list of the headwords in alphabetical order in a sidebar. It is possible to scroll down this list and click on any of the headwords to arrive at the screens offering information about—in the case of a garment, for example—the type of garment, the gender and age of its likely wearer, the kind of occasion on which the garment might have been worn, and the language community in which the term would have been in use.49 We are tagging the items as they are entered into the database. The most common descriptors for the data selected are Manufacture, Textile, Decoration, and Raw Material. Other tags (out of twenty-two in all) include Occupation, Dye, Armour, etc.

��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The descriptor “language community” is perhaps a little obfuscatory. Those of us working on the LCCB project allocate language labels to the terminology collected based on the dictionaries in which the term appears. We became aware quite early in our research that language divisions of the kind we routinely make may well be anachronistic when applied to the multilingual situation of medieval Britain; see David Trotter, “Language Contact, Multilingualism, and the Evidence Problem,” in The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. Ursula Schaefer (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006); see also David Trotter, “Language Labels, Language Change, and Lexis,” in Proceedings of the WUN Conference on Medieval Multilingualism, Madison, Wisconsin, September 2006, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Brepols, forthcoming). Our compromise was to assign the term to a linguistic community, though these are labelled with the conventional language names such as Latin, Middle English, etc. It seems clear that the issue of language divisions and labels in this period remains to be resolved.

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Louise Sylvester The mass of the data of the LCCB tempts one to narrow down the field of investigation and to look closely at a specific conceptual area: to consider the data within semantic fields so that the terminology for one particular conceptual category becomes available for investigation. In defining the “gold” category, this analysis follows the model offered by the editors of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED).50 Although the HTOED classification was originally strongly influenced by componential analysis, latterly it became clear that prototype theories about classification (in which members are admitted to a category on the basis of their degree of similarity to the prototypical member at the core of the category) were salient for that project.51 Delimiting the semantic field Following the HTOED model, the first issue concerned which components were most central or basic to the meaning. The working version of the database enabled examination of the definitions collected and constructed based on historical dictionaries and scholarship in the field of medieval dress and textiles. As was done in the editing of the HTOED, the terms were sorted according to keywords in the definitions, beginning with the collection of all the lexical items that had the term “gold” in the definition. Inevitably, this first trawl caught terms that pertained to gold, but for which gold was not an essential component of the meaning; a number of terms for items of jewellery such as bracelet and circle fell into this category. The next step was to delimit the semantic field for this investigation, by omitting all the terms signifying objects likely to be made of gold but which are not invariably made of gold. Such terms are present in the database because they represent jewellery, or accoutrements of armour, or accessories, or ornamentation for garments that might be made of gold threads, but they do not specifically denote gold or its attributes, such as goldenness. For example, fragments from the grave of King Edward the Confessor indicate that the body was shrouded in a golden-coloured silk.52 The modern perception that the silk is “golden-coloured” raises the issue of how to treat words that appear to mean “the colour of gold, golden” in the LCCB database. Polysemous terms, such as aur (or), which include “gold” (the substance) and “the colour of gold, golden” among their senses, suggest that the link was present in the medieval mind, at least in some contexts.

���������������������������������   Christian J. Kay et al., eds., Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary: With Additional Material from A Thesaurus of Old English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   See Christian J. Kay, “Historical Semantics and Historical Lexicography: Will the Twain Ever Meet?” in Lexicology, Semantics, and Lexicography: Selected Papers from the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium, Manchester, August 1998, ed. Julie Coleman and Christian J. Kay (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000), 56–57; Louise Sylvester, “Categories and Taxonomies: A Cognitive Approach to Lexicographical Resources,” in Categorization in the History of English, ed. Christian J. Kay and Jeremy J. Smith (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), 239. ����������������   Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 299.

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Semantic Classification of Gold The lexical items in Table 4.1 are the terms that are included in the project’s data but which were excluded from this investigation, although in some cases there would appear to be arguments for their inclusion.53 These lexemes were picked out in the initial selection of the GOLD-related lexis in the database because gold—as precious metal or as fashioned into thread—does feature in the definition language of these terms. Knowledge of the items they denote adds to our picture of the kinds of accessories and ornaments that were in use in medieval Britain. Gold did not, however, appear to be an essential part of the bangles, braids, fringes, and trimmings listed in Table 4.1. Excluding these terms, there are 119 lexemes denoting gold items, amounting to about 1.5% of the approximately eight thousand headwords in the database. The evidence from lexicography and from material culture: An example One of the drawbacks of deciding to exclude particular words or senses from this investigation is the loss of background information about the place of gold in the universe represented in the data. It seems evident that an understanding of the role played by gold within the cloth and clothing of medieval Britain would be impoverished by excluding, for example, the Welsh term aur (or), which appears in the database with the following three senses: 1  Manufacture; gold. 2  Manufacture; coins, money, or wealth. 3  Manufacture; the colour of gold, golden. We might wonder, though, which, if any, of these senses belongs in an investigation concerning medieval dress and textiles. It is perhaps necessary to include the first sense, which describes the raw material, because it would seem to be the core sense and was presumably essential to the manufacture of such items as gold thread. The second of the senses does not at first sight appear to have a place in the database. However, Newton discusses the founding of the four Orders of Chivalry, including the Order of the Garter, at the end of the 1340s, a time when clothing surfaces were becoming more decorative. She notes that in one instance, a tunic is mentioned as having been embroidered with colfacches. These were certainly variants of the bezants that could appear in so many forms and suggests that in view of their curious name, colfacches were perhaps small objects of metal actually stuck on to the fabric.54 The LCCB database states that bezant is a type of jewellery, specifically “a thin gold or silver gilt ornament, made in a variety of shapes and patterns. Bezants could be stitched loosely to cloaks and hats so that they dangled, or they could be integral to embroidered ornament.” The term bezanty is defined within the class of decoration terms and means “decorated or charged with bezants (gold coins or roundels).” The �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Less contentiously, for an investigation of the terminology in use in the medieval period, nouns and noun phrases that are present only in Modern English were omitted. ����������   Newton, Black Prince, 43.

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Louise Sylvester Table 4.1: Terms excluded from the investigation of “gold” Word

Sense

Language (linguistic community)*

band

(n.) Accessory; chaplet or diadem, worn on the head, metal or gold-embroidered; sufficiently valuable to be bequeathed in the late tenth century.

OE

bracelet

(n.) Jewellery; decorative armband or ring; bangle or metal band (of gold, silver, etc.) worn around the wrist or arm. Earliest attestations in Britain appear to come from the Rotuli Parliamentorum.

AF, L, ME, MdE, OSc

circle

(n.) Jewellery; circle (with various senses); in particular, a circle of gold or other metal; a ring, circlet, or coronet of precious metal; the band of a crown; a metal circlet, often set with gems, encircling the head or else encircling a knight’s helmet; wreath or garland.

AF, L, ME, MdE

circle

(n.) Headgear; circle (with various senses); in particular the ring or fringe of a monastical tonsure.

L, ME, MdE

circle

(n.) Jewellery; circle (with various senses); ring, earring, or other kind of circular jewellery or ornament.

AF, L, ME, MdE

circle

(n.) Accessory; circle (with various senses); penitential belt; shackle.

L

fimbria

(n.) Decoration; fringe, hem, or border of a garment; occasionally described as manufactured from a second type of thread, possibly gold.

L

lace

(n.) Accessory; in cloth and clothing contexts: a lace, tie, or fastener; a cord made of braided or intertwined strands of silk, gold thread, etc. Also, a piece of such cord.

AF, L, ME, MdE

orphrey

(n.) Decoration; rich embroidery, braid, fringe (esp. of gold). Ornamental band or border, often embroidered, especially on ecclesiastical vestments. Also (in some ME uses), richly embroidered cloth; decorative trappings.

AF, ME, MdE, W

purfiled

(adj.) Decoration; trimmed or bordered, usually with fur. Regularly appears in the phrase “purfiled with pelure” (trimmed with fur—cf. ME pelure). In later senses, having a decorated or ornamented border (of lace, fur, gold, etc.). Also, embroidered, decorated.

ME

purfiled

(adj.) Decoration; of a woman: richly adorned with purfiling (ME purfiling) or elegantly trimmed garments.

ME

*AF = Anglo-French; L = Latin; ME = Middle English; MdE = Modern English; OE = Old English; OSc = Old Scots; W = Welsh. Source: Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain project prototype database. Material from the database has been reformatted, and only the information considered relevant to this discussion has been included.

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Semantic Classification of Gold Oxford English Dictionary senses do not suggest that a bezant was anything other than a coin or the representation of a coin in financial sense.55 The second sense listed in the Middle English Dictionary for bezant, however, offers “A bezant used as an ornament, an ornament resembling a bezant,” indicating that an actual coin might be used as an ornament, or the ornament might mimic a coin.56 The entry cites, among other texts, the romance Sir Degrevant, in which the lengthy description of the furniture and accoutrements of Melidor’s bedroom includes these details: Hur bede was of aszure, With testur and celure, With a bryȝt bordure, Compasyd ful clene; And all a storye as hyt was Of Ydoyne and Amadas, Perreye in ylke a plas, And papageyes of grene. Þe scochenus of many knyȝt Of gold and cyprus was i-dyȝt, Brode besauntus and bryȝt; And trewelouus by-twene   (Cambridge MS, lines 1489–1500)57 [Her bed was blue, with a tester and canopy with bright borders neatly devised depicting the story of Ydoyne and Amadas. There were precious stones everywhere and green parrots and the coats of arms of many knights. It was adorned with gold cloth, with bright bezants and true-loves here and there.]

Sir Degrevant was almost certainly composed in the first decade of the fifteenth century, and its details provide a sense of verisimilitude that seems to be borne out by existing evidence. Elizabeth Coatsworth describes a 1397 inventory of goods belonging to the Duke of Gloucester that includes two lists of beds, one marked by full celours (canopies) with hangings of gold and silk. Coatsworth cites a translation of part of the inventory: “A large bed of cloth of gold, comprising coverlet, tester, and whole celour of fine blue satin worked with gold garters, and three curtains of tartarin ‘beaten’ [batuz] to match.”58

�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The idea of the representation of a coin comes from the sense “gold roundel representing the above coin plain and unstamped: according to Littré, originally signifying that the bearer had been in the Holy Land.” Oxford English Dictionary, online ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000–), s.v. “bezant.” 56  Middle English Dictionary, online ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), s.v. “bēsaunt.” ���������������������   L. F. Casson, ed., The Romance of Sir Degrevant: A Parallel-text Edition from mss Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2 and Cambridge University Ff.1.6, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., �������������������� 221 (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life,” 3, citing the translation of Penelope Eames, “Documentary Evidence Concerning the Character and Use of Domestic Furnishings in England in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Furniture History 7 (1971): 41–57, at 43.

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Louise Sylvester This leaves us with the unresolved question of whether all the terms in the database which have as a sense “coins” may also signify dress ornaments, and so those senses of the terms should be included in the Lexis project’s database. The third sense of aur (or) is perhaps trickier. It seems possible to argue that part of the allure of gold, of its preciousness and mystique, arises from its colour and shining quality. The colour sense would thus seem to be important in a consideration of the meaning of goldenness as a quality, if not of gold, and it is the former which is presumably present in such items as cloth of gold. The work of editing the database is ongoing. So far, it is clear that some terms that belong to the GOLD category undoubtedly merit inclusion among the project’s data; for example, adauratus in the sense “made or woven with gold thread” looks quite central to the semantic field of cloth and clothing, while aur (or) with the meaning “coins, money, or wealth” should perhaps not appear in the final database. In some cases a term is polysemous, but not all of the senses offered by the dictionaries seem to be pertinent to the investigation of cloth and clothing terminology. The term aureus may be classed among those terms which undoubtedly merit inclusion, but not in every sense. Included among the six senses that have been entered into the database is “Textile; woven with gold/gold thread,” which suggests that the term is quite central to the field, but also “Other; gold (coin, money)” a meaning which appears to have no place in the project’s database. We may wonder which of the senses is prototypical for the term, but all that is required for our project’s purposes is that we collect all the relevant senses. Considering polysemous items One of the ways of interpreting the data is to consider lexicalisation as indicative of the importance placed by a particular culture on the concepts it chooses to lexicalise. We know that languages differ in the size of their lexicons for different domains, and in explaining this sort of variability, most scholars see size of lexicon as a reflection of cultural emphasis.59 Addressing this question using our data is somewhat complicated, however. Many of the terms listed in the LCCB database have multiple senses and, as we have seen, not all of the senses of each item, even some of the senses currently included in the database, are relevant to the subject of our research, but the process of sorting these is not yet complete.60 The database is still under development; for example, we find an entry for the noun phrase gold wir as follows:

���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   John Gatewood, “Familiarity, Vocabulary Size, and Recognition Ability in Four Semantic Domains,” American Ethnologist 11, no. 3 (1984): 507–27, at 507; although see Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (London: Penguin, 1995), 64, on the ways in which “a patronizing willingness to treat other cultures’ psychologies as weird and exotic” has fuelled popular understanding of this idea in his discussion of The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Metaphorical senses, for example, are being reconsidered, although in some cases they are being retained in headnotes to the relevant entries.

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Semantic Classification of Gold gold wir, gold, + golden + wir, + wire (n.): ������ Raw Material; gold thread; fine gold wire (which could be silver wire covered with gold leaf), often used in cloth of gold. Also, a fringe of gold thread (c. 1450). Also in the ME occupation name Goldewirdrawer (one who makes gold wire, 1463). [ME]

Later in the alphabetically ordered list of data we come to the following entry: goldwir, gold + wir (n.): Manufacture; really an English term. Gold wire or thread used in gold cloth. [W]

At present, these are two separate entries, but it seems clear that here we have the same term, with slightly variant spelling, in two languages—or perhaps only in one, as the note preceding the definition of the Welsh term suggests. On the other hand, the occupation name Goldewirdrawer mentioned in the note to the Middle English term does not have an entry in the database, although the database does contain, for example, the terms goldsmiþ, an Old English term not glossed in the database but listed as an occupation, and orfever, a Middle English and Anglo-French word meaning “goldsmith.” The term goldewirdrawer has, however, been included as a separate item for this investigation of GOLD-related vocabulary (and a note has been appended in the database suggesting that perhaps it deserves its own entry). The overall numbers are somewhat rough, therefore, but they offer some sense of the universe delineated by this vocabulary. The 119 terms entered amount to 136 senses, although, as we have seen, not all of these may, finally, be deemed relevant to our field of study and retained in the database. SEMANTIC CLASSIFICATION

There are a number of questions we might wish to ask of the data in the LCCB database. At least some of these may be addressed by reordering a subcategory of the data to produce a semantic classification of that subcategory. Table 4.2 presents a semantic classification of the terms relating to gold and the uses to which gold was put in the associated dress and textile industries. The first issue to address was which aspects of gold pertinent to dress and textiles were lexicalised in the medieval period. The data fall fairly easily into a number of headings and subheadings. There are four main headings: “Gold as raw material,” “Gold thread,” “Gilding,” and “The colour of gold.” Many of the lexical items in the LCCB database are listed with more than one definition, as we saw in our examination of the Welsh term aur (or). As the example of the definition for gold wir shows, however, the definitions given in the database sometimes include more than one separate sense within a single definition. In order to classify the terms according to their senses, some of the definitions have been divided more finely than has been done in their current entries in the database. For example, the adjective gold has been placed in more than one subcategory in the classification, since the definition given in the database reads: “In cloth and clothing contexts, having the colour of gold or made partly of gold; embroidered or brocaded with gold thread 77

Louise Sylvester or gold wire (cf. gold wire); made of cloth of gold; etc.” The definition is drawn from the (nonspecialist) dictionaries which are the main source of our data and needs to be adapted for a more fine-grained semantic classification. Occasionally, as with aurifex, it is not only that the term appears to be polysemous, but the definition offered in the LCCB database—“(adj.) Occupation; skilled in working with gold; also (as substantive), a goldsmith”—encompasses more than one syntactic category.61 Table 4.2: A semantic classification of the GOLD data Following is a semantic classification of the lexis relating to gold at present in the LCCB database. The data from various languages contained in the database are presented, as far as possible, in the following order: Latin (L), Old English (OE), Norse (N), Anglo-French (AF), Middle English (ME), Old Scots (OSc), Welsh (W), Irish (Ir).

Gold as raw material (n.): aurum (or) [L]; gold [OE, ME]; or [AF, ME]; aur (or) [W]; ór (aurum) [Ir]   .flecks of gold (n.): casnodyn [W]   .gold leaf (n.): aurum (or) [L]; bracoleres [L]; brattea [L]; bratteola [L, OE]; goldfell [OE]; ­  goldlæfer [OE]; goldleaf [OE]; readgoldlæfer [OE]; blacbezencie (blatta) [AF]; cache [AF]   .made of gold leaf (adj.): bratteus [L, OE]   .gold pigment (n.): auripigmentum [L]    ..red or gold dye (n.): derg [Ir]    ..gold used for buttons and small ornaments (n.): soudatum [L]   .made of gold (wholly or partly) (adj.): aureus [L]; aurifer [L]; aurifluus [L]; auriger [L]; gold   [ME]; euraid [W]   .golden object (n.): goldgeweorc [OE]    ..as adornment (n.): goldfrætwe [OE]; goldgearwe [OE]; goldwlencu [OE]    ..golden ornament (necklace or brooch) (n.): eurdlws [W]     ...golden torque (n.): healsbeorggold [OE]; gullmen [N]; eurdorch [W]     ...gold pendant (n.): bracteate [L]     ...belt made of gold (and decorated with gems) (n.): strophium [L]     ...thin gold ornament (stitched onto garment) (n.): bezant [L, AF, ME, OSc, W]     ...decorated with gold coins or roundels (psp.): bezanty [AF, ME]     ...studded with gems set in gold (adj.): gemmé a or [AF]    ..gold border on a garment (n.): órfáithimm [Ir]    ..gold stripe (n.): auristragulatum [L]; bar [L]    ..adorned with gold (adj.): goldfah [OE]; goldhroden [OE]; goldwlanc [OE]; goldhladen [OE];    goldfæted [OE]; goldwreken [OE]; gold-faw [ME]     ...ornamented with gold stripes (adj.): barry [L]     ...golden chain (adj.): eurdid [W]   .worker of gold, goldsmith (n.): aurifaber [L]; aurifex [L]; goldsmiþ [OE, ME]; orfever [AF,   ME]; órthóir [Ir]

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Classifying the data revealed a number of subcategories that, on reflection, do not seem to me to belong in our collection of the lexis of cloth and clothing. Having categorised them, I present them here, but with misgivings about their place in the database. It should be noted that this is a classification of senses and not lexical items:     Coins, money, or wealth (n.): aur (or) [W]; aureus [L]; aurum (or) [L]     Crown of glory (?metaphorical) (n.): aureolus [L]; aureus [L]     Gold-coloured hair (n.): auricomus [L, OE]     Ring finger (n.): goldfinger [OE]

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Semantic Classification of Gold   .female goldsmith/wife of a goldsmith (n.): aurifabra [L]; orfevresse [AF]   .the work of a goldsmith (n.): aurifabria [L]; orfevrerie [AF, ME]    ..skilled in working with gold (adj.): aurifex [L]   .goldsmith’s shop (n.): aurifabria [L] Gold thread (n.): aurifilum [L]; aurum (or) [L]; bisset [L, OSc]; goldþræd [OE]; fildor [AF, ME]; or de Cipre [AF]; orfoile [ME]; gold thread [ME]; gold wir [ME]; gold [ME]; eurllin [W]; goldwir [W]   .gold thread imported from Genoa (n.): gold of Genoa [ME]   .gold thread imported from Venice (n.): gold of Venice [ME]   .one who makes gold thread (n.): goldewirdrawer [ME]   .weaving or embroidering in gold thread (vn.): auritextura [L]   .made or woven with gold thread (n.): adauratus [L]; aureus [L]; aurifactorius [L]   .to weave with precious thread such as gold (v.): tisshew [OSc]   .cloth interwoven or embroidered with gold thread (n.): aurum (or) [L]; baldachin [L, AF,   ME, OSc]; drap d’or [AF]; orfergié [AF]; cloth of gold [ME]; gold-web [ME]; nak [ME]; tinsel   [ME]; eurllin [W]    ..cloth embroidered or bordered with gold (n.): orphrey [AF, ME, W]; orphreyed [ME]    ..damask interwoven with gold thread (n.): gold damask [ME]    ..dyed-gold cloth (n.): solsecle [ME]; sursie [ME]    ..gold fabric imported from Genoa (n.): gold of Genoa [ME]    ..gold fabric imported from Venice (n.): gold of Venice [ME]    ..blue or purple fabric interwoven with gold thread (n.): gold of jacint [ME]   .woven with gold thread (adj.): aurotextus [L]; goldgewefen [OE]; gold-woue [ME]   .embroidered or brocaded with gold thread (adj.): aurifrigiatus [L]; aurinus [L]; baldachin   [AF]; gold [ME]; gold-broiden [ME]    ..heavily embroidered with gold thread (adj.): overgilt [ME]    ..mantle with gold upon it/woven into it (n.): órmatal [Ir]    ..drape or furnishing of this fabric (n.): baldachin [L, AF, ME, OSc]     ...ornamentation (small knots of gold thread) (n.): gold poudre [ME]   .one who works in gold embroidery, an orphreyer (male) (n.): aurifrigiarius [L]   .one who works with gold embroidery, an orphreyer (female) (n.): aurifrigiaria [L]; ­    aurifrigiatrix [L]    ..gold work on cloth, such as embroidery (n.): aurifrigiarium [L]    ..gold edging to cloth (n.): aurifrigiarium [L]; aurum friscum [L]   .having a gold fringe (adj.): órcimsach [Ir]   .to decorate with gold fringing (v.): orfreiser [AF] Gilding (n.): gilt [ME]; díór [Ir] the act of gilding (n.): diórad [Ir] gilded (adj.): auratus [L]; aurifer [L]; bracteus (bratteus) [L]; gylden [OE]; goldfyld [OE]; orin [AF]; orré [AF]; overgilt [ME]; forórda [Ir] gilded (psp.): gegyld [OE]; ofergyld [OE]; ofergylden [OE]; desorré [AF]   .painted in gold (adj.): auripictus [L]    ..of gilded leather (adj.): goldfellen [OE] to gild (v.): gyldan [OE]; begyldan [OE]; ofergyldan [OE]; dorer [AF]; euraf [W]   .crown (gilded circle) (n.): gyldenbeag [OE]; cynegold [OE]   .coat of gold mail (n.): goldhama [OE]   .(of armour) a gold covering (n.): eurdo [W]   .(of a shield) embossed or chased with gold (adj.): eurgrwydr [W]   .(of armour) covered in gold (adj.): eurgalch [W]   .wearing golden spurs (having been knighted) (adj.): auratus [L] The colour of gold (n.): goldbleo [OE]; solsecle [ME]; aur (or) [W] gold-coloured (adj.): aureolus [L]; auricolor [L]; gylden [OE]; gold [ME]; euraid [W]; eurliw [W]

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Louise Sylvester   .shiny bright as gold (adj.): goldbeorht [OE] golden (psp.): desorré [AF]   .gold as used in heraldry (n.): aurum (or) [L]; aureus [L]; or [AF]

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DATA AND CONCLUSIONS

With the semantic classification before us, we are able to discover which concepts relating to gold within the semantic field of dress and textiles are most heavily lexicalised. The category headings themselves are indications that the particular concepts and items they represent are prominent in the data. One of the concepts that is best represented by lexical items deriving from the different languages collected in the database is that of “Gold as raw material.” Here we find nouns and phrases in Latin, Old English, Anglo-French, Middle English, Welsh, and Irish. Some terms relating to gold as raw material appeared to be missing from the data, but the answer is often that they exist in the language but are not found in a cloth and clothing context. There are almost as many terms and languages represented in the subcategory headed “worker of gold, goldsmith”: two Latin terms (aurifaber and aurifex), one Irish term (órthóir), one term found in Old and Middle English (goldsmiþ), and one term shared by Anglo-French and Middle English (orfever). As we might expect, given the thrust of the data collection, the concept “gold thread” is the most heavily lexicalised. It consists of twelve items: two from Latin (aurifilum, aurum (or)); one from Latin and Old Scots (bisset); one from Old English (goldþræd); two from Anglo-French (fildor, or de Cipre), the first of which is also Middle English; four further Middle English terms, at least one of which appears to be derived from French (orfoile, gold thread, gold wir, gold); and two Welsh terms (eurllin, goldwir), although the second of these has a note appended to it in the database to the effect that it is really an English term. The term or de Cipre is especially noteworthy in view of information provided by the customs account of 1390, in which gold cloth is described as woven or embroidered with Cyprus gold.62 In this account, the majority of imports with gold are described as brokett’ aur’ de cipr’, “brocades woven with gold thread made in Cyprus or in the style of Cyprus thread.” Some silk baudekins and velvets are said to be bald’ seric’ pulverizat’ cum aur’ de cipr’ or velvet’ pulverizat’ cum aur de cipr’, that is, “powdered with Cyprus gold.” Wendy Childs suggests that the customs collectors’ decision to specify the cloth as woven with Cyprus gold may be an indication of a classification of the cloth as “at the high end of the spectrum.”63 It seems likely, however, that Cyprus gold was gilded membrane, parchment, or leather wound round a linen or cotton core, rather than the more expensive metal-wound threads. The gilded membrane version was less durable and less lustrous than filé (metalwrapped) thread and was also likely to be less expensive. Cloth woven with Cyprus ����������������������������������   Childs, “Cloth of Gold,” 274–75. �������   Ibid.

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Semantic Classification of Gold gold would therefore not have been as valuable as cloth woven with filé gold, though it was ­probably more valuable than cloth with no gold at all.64 The issue as to how terminology is counted is not entirely straightforward, however. This is illustrated by the seventh subcategory beneath the category “Gold thread”: “cloth interwoven or embroidered with gold thread.” This subcategory contains nine items: aurum (or), baldachin, drap d’or, orfergié, cloth of gold, gold-web, nak, tinsel, eurllin. In one case, we may see a loan translation: perhaps the Middle English cloth of gold is calqued on the Anglo-French drap d’or. It does not seem possible to be sure, however, given that cloth and gold are both Old English terms. The question of the number of items that were in play signifying such cloth is partly complicated by the methodology of the LCCB database, which combines entries where the same term appears to be present in more than one language. In the case of the items here, we find the language labels for Anglo-French, Latin, Middle English, and Old Scots all attached to the lexical item baldachin, so that a different method of counting would render it as four terms, each in a different tongue. The first two subcategories under the heading “Gold thread” are “gold thread imported from Genoa” and “gold thread imported from Venice.” Each subheading has one item listed under it, the self-explanatory gold of Genoa and gold of Venice, both current in Middle English. The prominence of these terms illustrates the expansion of the horizons of English businessmen toward the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, when financial and technological advances in sea trading, together with a number of new innovations, made direct long-distance voyages a possibility.65 These two terms recur in the classification in subdivisions of the subcategory “cloth interwoven or embroidered with gold thread.” The definitions of the two terms given in the LCCB database are “gold thread (or fabric) imported from Genoa” and “gold thread (or fabric) imported from Venice.” It seems likely that both thread and textiles were imported in this period and after, as we saw in the suits of clothes ordered by the king and queen at the time of the visit of the King of Cyprus described in the Royal Wardrobe accounts. The issue of the look of things that are gold together with the significance of the sheen and hue of gold appears in a number of ways in the data. The need for a category for the terms relating to gilt and gilding was clear from the recurrence of this idea in the definition language. The data include nouns, adjectives, verbs, and participles for “the act of gilding,” “gilded,” and “to gild.” A glimpse of the importance of gold in the world of knighthood is revealed by the number of subheadings that name elements or accoutrements of armour: “coat of gold mail,” “(of armour) a gold covering,” “(of a

�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Lisa Monnas, “Cloth of Gold,” and Paul Garside, “Gold and Silver Metal Thread,” both in OwenCrocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopaedia. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The first voyages were made by the Genoese: Nicolozzo Spinola reached Bruges in 1277, and it was a Genoese ship that first reached England the following year. By 1298, the Genoese shipowners had enough clients to ensure a regular link with Bruges and London. The Genoese example was followed fifteen years later by Venice. Jean Favier, Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Higgitt (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1998), 41–42.

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Louise Sylvester shield) embossed or chased with gold,” “(of armour) covered in gold,” and “wearing golden spurs (having been knighted).” The idea of gilding appears to be related to the question raised earlier concerning whether it is appropriate to include the third sense of aur (or)—“The colour of gold, golden”—in the LCCB database. The semantic classification of GOLD-related terms reveals thirteen terms in which the definition relates to colour or some colour-related property. These fall into four subcategories: the core sense of the category containing the nouns with the sense “The colour of gold”; the adjectives meaning “gold-coloured” and the subdivision of that category; the adjectival form with the meaning “shiny bright as gold”; and the form listed separately in the database as a past participle meaning “golden.” The final subdivision in this subcategory underlines the significance of the golden hue in the realm of chivalry: it is “gold as used in heraldry.” The languages represented by terms contained in these semantic subcategories and subdivisions relating to gilding and colour are Latin, Old English, Anglo-French, Middle English, Welsh, and Irish, indicating the importance of this idea across time and across cultures. This article has been concerned with the question of what we can learn about the concept of GOLD as lexicalised in medieval Britain, and about the place of gold in the world of the dress and textiles of medieval Britain, through examination of some of the data collected for the LCCB project and through their reordering to produce a semantic classification of the vocabulary. The sumptuous brocaded and gold-embroidered garments that figure so prominently in the evidence remaining from Anglo-Saxon and later medieval Britain are further revealed to us in the richness of the lexicon describing the raw material, textiles, garments, and accessories of the period. The LCCB project offers rich possibilities of analysis by providing us with the lens of lexical information through which to view the material culture of medieval Britain.

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Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion

Patricia Williams

The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven medieval Welsh tales. These are contained mainly in two manuscripts, The White Book of Rhydderch (Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 4–5), dated ca. 1350, and The Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Jesus College 111), dated sometime between ca. 1382 and 1403, but fragments of individual tales also appear in earlier manuscripts. The purpose of this article is to investigate the terms used for cloth and clothing in the above-mentioned tales and to discuss the relationships between the garments and their wearers, which the redactors of these tales exploit imaginatively to present the characters and to show their status in society. Since the tales of the Mabinogion are works of fiction rather than fact, the descriptions of cloth and clothing in them are not necessarily accurate descriptions of contemporary fashion, but could have been

The section of this article which deals with footwear and legwear was presented in July 2011 at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, England. I am grateful to Professor Gale Owen-Crocker for her advice and support in the preparation of this paper.      Mabinogion is not used as a title in any of the manuscripts in which they are contained. In fact the name mabinogion exists only at the end of the First Branch and is generally considered to be a scribal error, which was wrongly taken to be the plural form of mabinogi and first used as a title in the nineteenth century in “The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Amusements, being Ancient Welsh Romances,” The Cambrian Register, ed. William Owen Pughe (London: E. and T. Williams, 1795). The term was subsequently adopted by Lady Charlotte Guest as the collective title of the first complete translation of the tales into English, and such was the popularity of her work that the collection has been known by this name ever since; Guest, The Mabinogion: From the Llyfr Coch o Hergest (London: Longmans, 1849). There have been many attempts to explain the meaning of the term Mabinogi. The most likely explanation is that it originally meant “childhood,” then “a tale about childhood or youthful exploits,” and finally a “tale in general”; Ifor Williams, ed., Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1974), li. A useful précis of the proposed definitions of “Mabinogion” appears in John �������� T. Koch, ed., Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopaedia (Santa �������������������������������������������� Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 4:1207.   ���������   Daniel Huws, ������ Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), 228; also Huws, “Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 21 (Summer 1991): 37.   ���   Huws, ������ Medieval Welsh Manuscripts, 82, 194; also Daniel Huws, “Llyfr Coch Hergest,” in Cyfoeth y Testun, ed. Iestyn Daniel et al. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 1–2.

Patricia Williams based on conventional formulae or simply on literary models from other sources. The milieu is aristocratic; therefore these tales describe mostly the dress of the upper echelons of society rather than that of ordinary people. THE SOURCE MATERIAL

The Mabinogion collection consists of the following tales: 1  The so-called Four Branches of the Mabinogi, known individually as Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed; Branwen Daughter of Llŷr; Manawydan Son of Llŷr; and Math Son of Mathonwy. These tales, which have a very tenuous connection with one another, have their origin in mythology, and their final redaction is thought to be ca. 1060–1120. 2  Culhwch and Olwen, the longest and probably the oldest tale of the Mabinogion corpus, thought to have been composed ca. 1100. A mid-twelfth-century date has also been suggested mainly on orthographical evidence, but the question of dating still remains inconclusive. Within the framework of the Jealous Stepmother and Giant’s Daughter motifs, it tells of Culhwch’s endeavour to win Olwen as his bride, assisted by his cousin Arthur, who is depicted as a far less chivalric character than he is in the later romances. 3  Three other tales which focus on the knightly adventures of Arthur’s men, namely The Lady of the Well (also known as Owain), Peredur Son of Efrog, and Geraint Son of Erbin. These tales, which are often referred to as the Three Romances even though they are not presented as a trilogy in the manuscripts, are not the work of the same author, nor are they truly representative of the romance genre. This nomenclature has come about as a result of their resemblance to Yvain, Perceval, and Erec et Enide, the twelfth-century French metrical romances by Chrétien de Troyes. Whether these so-called romances were borrowed from Chrétien or whether the French and Welsh versions are derived from an older common source has been the subject of scholarly inquiry. Regardless of origin, however, the tales bear the hallmarks of Welsh native narrative tradition: for example, the description of a young squire in Geraint Son of Erbin echoes that of the young Culhwch setting out for Arthur’s court, to give only one example. Nevertheless there is an obvious French influence on these tales, which is particularly evident in the references to cloth   ����������������������������������������������������������������������������    Thomas Charles-Edwards, “The Date of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1970, 2:263–98.   ���������������������������������������������    Rachel Bromwich and D. Simon Evans, eds., Culhwch and Olwen (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992), lxxxi.   ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    Simon Rodway, “The Date and Authorship of Culhwch ac Olwen: A Reassessment,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 49 (Summer 2005): 41.   �������������������������������������������������������������    Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, “Medieval Welsh Tales or Romances? ������������������������������� Problems of Genre and Terminology,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 47 (Summer 2004): 41–58.   ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� A useful summary of the theories about the relationship between the French and Welsh versions is to be found in Koch, Celtic Culture, 4:1528–29.

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Dress in the Mabinogion and clothing, although the descriptions in the French and Welsh versions do not always coincide. 4  Two short pseudo-historical tales, known as Lludd and Llefelys and The Dream of Maxen. Maxen has been identified with Magnus Maximus, the Spanish commander of the Roman army, who in the year 383 usurped the seat of power from the emperor Gratian, only to be defeated five years later by Theodotius. Tradition has it that he was married to Elen, a princess of Segontium (the modern Caernarfon), having fallen in love with her in a dream. The general consensus is that it was composed in the second half of the twelfth century, but if the author was motivated by contemporary events, the years 1215–17, when Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (known as Llywelyn the Great) was at the zenith of his power in Wales, could be the time of composition.10 It is followed in the manuscripts by the tale of Lludd and Llefelys, whose central theme is also the unity of Britain. In its written form it must have been composed after the completion of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittonum but would have been known in an oral form late in the eleventh century.11 5  The Dream of Rhonabwy, an Arthurian satire, which exists only in The Red Book of Hergest. Internal evidence suggests that it was never part of the storytellers’ repertoire.12 Nevertheless, it displays the characteristics of oracy and it is probably more correct to say that it did not have a tradition of oral transmission before being committed to writing.13 It is difficult to know precisely when it was composed; its milieu is Powys during the reign of Madog ap Maredudd (1130–60), but there is no evidence that it was created during that period. Dates have been suggested ranging from 1220 to the late fourteenth century,14 but what is certain is that it was sufficiently well-known by the late fourteenth century to be given a reference in the work of Madog Dwygraig, one of the court poets of that period.15

  ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    For example, when Geraint/Erec hears from Enid(e) that he is being criticised for his unacceptable dalliance at court, fearing that his wife is making excuses to send him away, he insists she accompany him on his renewed knightly adventures. In the Welsh version he orders her to put on her worst dress, whereas in the French version he commands her to wear her best. It is not within the remit of this article to theorise about the reasons behind this difference in Enid(e)’s prescribed attire, but the incident suggests that her appearance is a marker of her changed circumstances. Glyn S. Burgess, Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide (London: Grant & Cutler, 1984), 53.   �����������������������������    Brynley F. Roberts, ed., Breudwyt Maxen Wledic (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005), lxxxii–lxxxv.   �����������������������������    Brynley F. Roberts, ed., Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), xv–xx.   �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The colophon states: “No-one knows the dream . . . without a book, because of the number of colours on the horses and the many unusual colours on the armour and their trappings, and on the precious mantles and the magic stones.” Sioned Davies, trans., The Mabinogion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 226. The significance of colour is also discussed in Fiona Winward, “Colour Terms in Medieval Welsh Literature” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 2003).   �����������   Davies, Mabinogion, 280.   ����������������������������������������������   For a survey of suggested dates, see Koch, ������ Celtic Culture, 1:280–82.   ���������������������������   Melville Richards, ed., Breudwyt Ronabwy (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1948).

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Patricia Williams Early editions of Middle Welsh texts focused primarily on grammar and syntax, authorship and dating, sources, external influences, and literary qualities such as structure and style, largely ignoring the material culture depicted therein. The last quarter-century, however, has seen a growing interest in the material and artistic culture of medieval Wales. The most recent comprehensive study of clothing in medieval Welsh literature is that of Alaw Mai Edwards (née Jones) in her doctoral thesis.16 There are also shorter but equally important studies of fashion in medieval Welsh texts,17 the most significant of which, from the point of view of this paper, is that by Sioned Davies in her groundbreaking study of oracy in the Mabinogion, where she discusses and tabulates the formulaic expressions used to describe appearance.18 Penelope Walton Rogers points out that to the archaeologist there is a difference between cloth and clothing, which the ordinary reader would not consider. Textiles are the product of a technological process, which can be analysed scientifically so that conclusions may be drawn about the age, the geographical location, and the economy from which they emanated, whereas clothing is more abstract and can be used to represent characters or to suggest the status of those characters within society.19 The authors of the Mabinogion, like the general reader, make no such distinction between cloth and clothing, with garment and textile being inextricably bound together. Another problem is the translation of the terms for the items, not only from one language to another but from an earlier period to a later one, as meanings can change over many centuries.

  �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    See Alaw Mai Jones, “Gwisgoedd ac Ategolion yn Llenyddiaeth yr Oesoedd Canol c. 700–c. 1600” (Ph.D diss., Aberystwyth University, 2007), in which she discusses dress and accessories in the literature of the Middle Ages. The dissertation is available online at http://hdl.handle.net/2160/499 (accessed Nov. 20, 2011). She has two further articles in Welsh, “O’r Brethyn Brith i’r Damasg ­Disglair: Tecstiliau’r Cymry yn yr Oesoedd Canol,” Cof Cenedl 24 (2009): 1–29, a discussion of Welsh textiles in the Middle Ages, and “‘Val y Gwydel am y Ffalling’: Beirdd y Bymthegfed Ganrif a’r Fantell Wyddelig,” Llên Cymru 32, no. 1 (November 2009): 85–100, in which she discusses Irish mantles and cloaks in fifteenth-century Wales.   ��������    See Heather �������������������� Rose Jones, Medieval Welsh Clothing to 1300 (Oakland, CA: Harpy, 1993); Marged Haycock, “Defnydd hyd Ddydd Brawd: Rhai Sylwadau ar Ferched ym Marddoniaeth yr Oesoedd Canol,” in Cymru a’r Cymry 2000, ed. Geraint H. Jenkins (Aberystwyth, Wales: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2001), 41–70, in which the author makes some observations on women in the poetry of the Middle Ages; Dylan Foster Evans, “Rhoi Eich Troed Ynddi: Camau Cyntaf ar Drywydd Ffasiwn yng Nghymru’r Oesoedd Canol,” Tu Chwith 14 (2000): 21–34, in which the author discusses footwear in fourteenth-century Wales; Evans, “‘Bardd arallwlad’: Dafydd ap Gwilym a theori ôldrefedigaethol,” in Llenyddiaeth Mewn Theori, vol. 1, ed. Owen Thomas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), 42–77 (esp. 56–63); T. M. Charles-Edwards, “Food, Drink and Clothing in the Laws of Court,” in The Welsh King and His Court, ed. Charles-Edwards, Morfydd E. Owen, and Paul Russell (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 319–37; and Robin Chapman Stacey, “Clothes Talk from Medieval Wales,” in Charles-Edwards, Welsh King, 338–46. Another important study which includes references to dress and materials is Peter Lord, The Visual Culture of Wales: Medieval Vision (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003).   �������������������    Sioned Davies, Crefft y Cyfarwydd (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995), 144–58.   ����������������������������    Penelope Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007), 1.

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Dress in the Mabinogion To collect my data for this article, I read through all the above-mentioned tales and recorded each individual reference to items of cloth, clothing, footwear, and accessories, together with their function. The fabric with the highest overall frequency of occurrence in these tales is pali [brocaded silk], with 48 occurrences.20 Similarly, the most popular item of clothing is llen [shawl, cloak, sheet, covering], which occurs 38 times. No other item has a higher frequency than 12. LLEN

The earliest occurrence of llen in Old Welsh is a ninth-century gloss on pallae.21 This may be the plural of palla, defined as a long and wide upper garment held together by brooches, worn by both women and men,22 or a variation of pallium, defined as a coverlet and also a Greek cloak or mantle, worn only by Romans when they resided among Greeks.23 Llen has cognates in other Celtic languages: Old Cornish len occurs as a gloss on sagum [military cloak]; Old Breton escei len is a gloss on cortina [curtain]; Old Irish lenn refers to a “cloak” or “mantle” worn by both sexes. In Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed,24 when Teyrnon Twryf Liant, lord of Gwent Is-Coed, finds a baby boy abandoned on his doorstep and presents the child to his wife, her first question is “What sort of garments are there upon the boy?” On being told that he was wrapped in a llen o bali [shawl of brocaded silk], she replies, “He is the son of gentlefolk.”25 This episode indicates clearly the technique of using appearance to present characters. The audience already knows that a royal baby has been lost, and the description of the foundling indicates that this is no ordinary child and could be the missing infant of Pwyll and his wife Rhiannon. That wrapping a highborn infant in such a garment was not an isolated incident is suggested by an episode in Math Son of Mathonwy, when a llen o bali is wrapped around a mysterious object dropped by a young woman who failed a chastity test. It is later revealed that this was her premature son.26 Llen occurs in the Mabinogion not only in connection with infants, but also to indicate a sheet on which to sit27 or a covering to place over a corpse.28 In Branwen Daughter of Llŷr, however, llen is used to indicate a magic cloak, which enables its   ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    Translations of terms in this article are my own, unless cited to a specific translation or reference.   ������������������    J. Loth, ed., Vocabulaire vieux-breton (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1884).   �����������������������������������������    Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879), s.v. “palla.”   ��������������������������    Ibid., s.v. “pallium.”   ������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 227–28.   ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 23; R. L. Thomson, ed., Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957), 19; Davies, Mabinogion, 18.   ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 77; Davies, Mabinogion, 54.   ������������������������    R. L. Thomson, ed., Owein: or, Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), 1; Davies, Mabinogion, 116.   ������������    Thomson, Owein, 14; Davies, Mabinogion, 125. Gale R. Owen-Crocker points out that the Germanic cloak could likewise be put to uses other than clothing, and that Charlemagne’s cloak doubled as a blanket; Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 109.

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Patricia Williams wearer to kill his opponents without being seen himself,29 but because of its invisibility no description of the garment is given. Arthur’s mantle in The Dream of Rhonabwy also has the virtue of granting invisibility to its wearer.30 We are given a little more information about the hero’s cloak in Culhwch and Olwen. As he rides off to Arthur’s court, Culhwch wears a llen borffor pedeir ael [purple four-cornered cloak], weighted with an aual rudeur [ruby gold ball] in every corner, each one worth a hundred cows,31 but no other details are given about its style. The knight whom Gwenhwyfar and her maid meet on their way to the hunt likewise wears a llen weighted, like Culhwch’s, with a ball of ruby gold, over his tunic and surcoat.32 The literal meaning of aual (modern Welsh afal) is “apple,” reminiscent of similar objects worn by Flann, a character in the early Irish tale “The Wooing of Becfhola”: “dá uball óir for dégabal a mongi; mét ferdornn ceachtar n-aí” [Two gold balls were at the parting of his braids, each one of them the size of a man’s fist].33 Culhwch’s four-cornered garment seems to resemble the pallium, described by Rogers as “a rectangle of fabric wrapped around the body,” whose ends Roman women, when busy, would sometimes knot together on the shoulder, but which Germanic and Celtic people would find more practical to fasten with a shoulder brooch. However, no indication is given about the way Culhwch’s cloak is fastened. In The Dream of Rhonabwy, on the other hand, one such garment is secured by a brooch on the wearer’s right shoulder.34 This resembles the rectangular cloaks, depicted on Roman sculptures of German captives, which are held together by a brooch, usually at the right shoulder, or those of male figures in late Anglo-Saxon drawings and paintings.35 The Dream of Rhonabwy also states that the llen is worn over a pais (tunic; see discussion starting on page 96) and sometimes embroidered with coloured silk, with fringes or borders the same colour as the garment itself, or in a contrasting colour.36 Much of the embroidery was probably done in the courts. It is stated that the maidens who tend on Cynon, one of Arthur’s knights, would spend their time sewing or embroidering pali (see next section),37 an activity also undertaken by queen   ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 46; Davies, Mabinogion, 33.  ��������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 11; Davies, Mabinogion, 220.  ������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 181. This may be an echo of the can mu (hundred kine) for every cantref (land division known as a hundred) of his kingdom which, according to Welsh law, had to be paid to the king as compensation for dishonouring his wife, killing his messenger, or violating his protection; Aled Rhys Wiliam, ed., Llyfr Iorwerth: A Critical Text of the Venedotian Code of Welsh Law (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1960), 75 §110; Dafydd Jenkins, The Law of Hywel Dda: Law Texts of Medieval Wales (Llandysul, Wales: Gomer, 1986), 154.  ����������������������������    Robert L. Thomson, ed., Ystorya Gereint uab Erbin (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997), 4; Davies, Mabinogion, 141.  �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    Niamh Whitfield, “Dress and Accessories in the Early Irish Tale ‘The Wooing of Becfhola,’” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 2 (2006): 23–24; translation cited to Máire Bhreathnach, “A New Edition of Tochmarc Becfhola,” Ériu 35 (1984): 73, §6. Uball, translated here as “gold balls,” literally means “apples.”  ��������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 14; Davies, Mabinogion, 222.  ������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 107–8.  ��������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 4, 5, 9; Davies, Mabinogion, 215–16, 219.  �������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 117.

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Dress in the Mabinogion Gwenhwyfar and her handmaidens at Arthur’s court at Caerlleon.38 The traditions of embroidery were clearly established in England and Wales long before the Norman conquest. Anglo-Saxon women were famed for their embroidery, a skill which was “probably practised as a domestic craft at all levels of society, and the finest work involving gold was considered suitable for great ladies.”39 The references to needlework in the Mabinogion suggest that Wales too had its share of fine embroidery, as is proved by the discovery of the Llan-gors fragments of linen, dating to the late ninth or early tenth century (fig. 5.1). These remains represent the most elaborate surviving secular garment of the period discovered in the British Isles to date. The use of silk in the fine and intricate decoration suggests that the garment was worn by an individual of very high status.40 FABRICS

Clothing was used as payment in the Welsh laws, and it is interesting to note that the Queen’s steward would receive his brethenwysc [woollen clothing] from the king and his llyeynwysc [linen clothing] from the queen.41 Since clothing was valued in the laws according to the status of the wearer or donor rather than according to its own intrinsic worth, it looks as if wool was valued more highly than linen. Robin Chapman Stacey, however, maintains there was a political significance to these gifts:42 because the queen was associated with the privacy of the ystafell [chamber] rather than with the life of the llys [court] in general, the linen garments, usually associated with underwear and therefore unseen by the general public, symbolised the apolitical nature of the queen’s gift, whereas the woollen outer garments, bequeathed by the king, proclaimed the political affiliations and obligations of the wearer. The native law of Wales is traditionally associated with Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), who was king of the greater part of Wales during the period 942–50.43 The earliest manuscripts containing law texts date from the mid-thirteenth century,44 but these must have preserved archaisms of an earlier period.45 The clothing terms recorded in the laws are at least as old as the thirteenth century, if not older, and many of them are still in common usage today.

 �������������    Thomson, Owein, 1; Davies, Mabinogion, 116.  ������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 308–9.  ����   Hero ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Granger-Taylor and Frances Pritchard, “A Fine Quality Insular Embroidery from Llan-gors Crannóg, Near Brecon,” in Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art, ed. Mark Redknap et al. (Oxford: Oxbow, 1991), 91–99.  ������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 15 §22; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 28.  �������������������������������������������    Robin Chapman Stacey, “King, Queen and Edling in the Laws of Court,” in Charles-Edwards, Welsh King, 58; Stacey, “Clothes Talk,” 341, 346.  �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    The king’s exact role in codifying the laws is not easy to determine, particularly since the Welsh chronicles are mute on this point, but Dafydd Jenkins maintains that it is not improbable that he made some significant contribution to Welsh law. Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, xiv.  ����   Huws, ������ Medieval Welsh Manuscripts, 169–76.  �������������    Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, xxiii.

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Fig. 5.1: Ninth- to tenth-century fragments of embroidered linen found at Llan-gors Lake, Breconshire, Wales. Photo: National Museum of Wales, by permission, with special thanks to Gale R. Owen-Crocker.

Pali The cloth most commonly associated with the llen is pali, from the Old French palie, which is usually translated as “brocaded silk.” Other variations are palis, paile, and paile alexandrin, because the main centre for its production was Alexandria.46 ­Medieval  ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 107.

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Dress in the Mabinogion French poets, when they wished to describe a costly garment, maintained that it was made from paile alexandrin.47 In the Mabinogion, pali (sometimes appearing in its mutated form bali) is also employed to indicate wealth and status, as this fabric is said to be used for items ranging from tunics to surcoats, from cushions to the sails of a ship. Sometimes the cloth was said to be embroidered with gold. To show his elevated status, Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, is divested of his gwisg hela [hunting gear] and clad in an eurwisc o bali [golden garment of brocaded silk] when he takes the place of Arawn king of Annwn, and Arawn’s queen is even more splendidly attired in an eurwisg o bali llathreit [golden garment of shining brocaded silk].48 Rhiannon, Pwyll’s bride, also wears a gwisc eureit llathreit o bali49 [shining golden garment of brocaded silk], but her unwelcome suitor a mere gwisg o bali50 [garment of brocaded silk], without the accompanying epithets.51 In some of the later tales in the collection pali is described as coloured, usually yellow or reddish-yellow. This extravagance is mocked in the satirical Dream of Rhonabwy, when the author says that no colour would ever last on Arthur’s mantle except its own.52 Another type of pali, to which reference is made in the later tales, is pali kaerawc, translated both as “damasked brocaded silk” and “ribbed brocaded silk.”53 The adjective kaerawc, Modern Welsh caerog, is normally associated with a caer or fortress and means “walled” or “fortified.” In connection with cloth, however, it is described in the definitive Welsh dictionary, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (henceforth GPC), as “woven with twisted thread in parallel diagonal lines from corner to corner, resembling the walls of a fort” and translated as “twilled, ribbed, interwoven, brocaded, damasked.”54 This illustrates clearly the problems involved in the interpretation of technical terms. In reality, twill, brocade, and damask are very different fabrics: twill is a kind of weave that produces fine diagonal lines, whereas brocade features a  ���������������������������    In the twelfth-century chanson de geste of Garin de Loherain, the hero’s mantle is described thus: “Et le mantel à son col li bandi, / Riche d’orfrois de paillè Alexandrin” [And the mantle hanging from his neck, / Enriched with golden embroidery of brocaded silk]; quoted in Joseph Strutt, A Complete View of the Dress and Habits of the People of England, ed. James R. Planché (London: Bohn, 1842), 43 n. 8. This, however, was more likely to be a figment of the author’s imagination than an accurate representation of a contemporary garment. I am grateful to Michèle Bastien for advice on translation from Old French.  ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 4; Davies, Mabinogion, 5.  ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 9; Davies, Mabinogion, 8.  ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 13; Davies, Mabinogion, 11.  ����   Gwisg is a generic term indicating dress of some description without specifying the exact nature of the garment. Sometimes gwisg is accompanied by an element which indicates (1) its function rather than its nature or style; for example gwisg hela [hunting gear], penwisg [headdress], lluddedwisg [travelling clothes], or (2) the material from which it is made. Gwisg derives from the same Indo-European root as the Latin vestis; cf. Old Cornish guisc (a gloss on vestis vel vestimentum vel indutum) and Breton gwisk. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1950–), s.v. “gwisg.” Henceforth this source will be abbreviated as GPC.  ��������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 11; Davies, Mabinogion, 220.  ������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 220; Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, The Mabinogion (London: J. M. Dent, 1949), 145.  ����   GPC, s.v. “caerog.”

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Patricia Williams woven-in design created from a supplemental layer of a different thread (often gold or silver), and damask is woven to produce a reversible design that does not require a distinctive additional thread. In all the tales of the Mabinogion, pali signifies wealth and dignity. When Geraint is received as a guest in a dilapidated hall, he sees an elderly woman dressed in shabby clothes, but the fact that these clothes are of brocaded silk55 identifies her as someone who is of noble birth, now in straitened circumstances. Similarly, when Peredur comes to a fortress on the edge of a desolate forest, he is invited in and offered food by a beautiful woman clad in a “henwisc o bali twll a uuassei da” [an old dress of tattered brocaded silk that had once been good].56 From that description of her apparel the audience knows immediately that this is a highborn person who has fallen on hard times. Such a situation would have a particular poignancy in a society where status was considered to be so important that Gwenhwyfar’s maid was not allowed to put a question to a certain knight, because she was not considered sufficiently highborn to address him.57 Sidan, serig, syndal Sidan, derived from Old English sīde (cf. Middle Irish síta), is, like pali, a highly prized silk fabric. The heroines in Culhwch and Olwen and The Dream of Maxen are clothed in garments of sidan.58 In addition to pali and sidan, the later tales in the Mabinogion describe garments made of serig and syndal, which are also fine silken cloths. Serig [silk, damask, silken garment]59 is from the Latin sēricus, -a, um, the adjective from Seres, a people of eastern Asia (the modern Chinese) celebrated for their silken fabrics.60 Syndal [sendal, fine silky fabric]61 is from Middle English sindal (cf. Middle Cornish sendall, Old French cendal). The earliest occurrence of serig occurs in the Gododdin, an epic poem attributed to the poet Aneirin and preserved in a thirteenth-century manuscript known as Llyfr Aneirin (The Book of Aneirin).62 The poem consists of a series of elegies to the young warriors defeated at the Battle of Catraeth, ca. 600. It would have been transmitted orally for generations before being committed to writing, possibly as early as the ninth

 �������������    Thomson, Gereint, 7; Davies, Mabinogion, 144.  �����������������������������������    Glenys Witchard Goetinck, ed., Historia Peredur vab Efrawc (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), 23; Davies, Mabinogion, 75.  �������������    Thomson, Gereint, 5; Davies, Mabinogion, 142.  ������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 18; Davies, Mabinogion, 192; Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3.  ����   GPC, s.v. “sirig,” which is an alternative form, possibly from colloquial Latin *sirica.  ���������������������    Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v. “Sericus.”  ����   GPC, s.v. “syndal.”  ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    The line reads “ardemyl meirch a seirch a seric dillad” [a multitude of horses and armour and silken clothing]; Ifor Williams, ed., Canu Aneirin (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961), line 1162. For a version in Modern Welsh together with a translation, see A. O. H. Jarman, ed., Aneirin Y Gododdin (Llandysul, Wales: Gomer, 1988), line 901.

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Dress in the Mabinogion century or—in the view of some scholars—as late as the eleventh.63 This fabric was known in Britain, therefore, from a time of great antiquity. Nevertheless the term has caused problems for translators. In The Lady of the Well, it is coupled with syndal, which also means “silk”: “A diheu oed gan Owein na welsei eiryoet niuer kyhardet a hwnnw o bali a seric a syndal.”64 Sioned Davies translated this as “And Owain was certain that he had never seen a gathering as fine as that in brocaded silk and damask and sendal,”65 whereas Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones used “brocaded silk and satin and sendal.”66 As it is characteristic of the style of medieval Welsh storytellers to insert into their tales a “run” of synonyms in this way, it is difficult to tell whether the author of this tale thought of syndal and seric as two different fabrics or two different terms for the same fabric. Owain’s bed The description of Owain’s bed in The Lady of the Well further illustrates the problem of translating textile terminology. Owain sleeps on a bed of “ysgarlat a gra a phali67 a syndal a bliant,” which in Davies’s translation is made of “scarlet cloth and ermine and brocaded silk and sendal and fine linen,”68 whereas in the Jones and Jones version, the bed was of “scarlet and grey, brocaded silk and sendal and bliant.”69 While there is no doubt that the materials which constitute Owain’s bed are luxurious, their exact nature is a source of contention. The translators are in agreement with regard to pali and syndal, which are discussed above, but differ in their interpretation of the other materials. Davies interprets ysgarlat as a noun, following the GPC definition of ysgarlad/ysgarled/ysgarllad as “scarlet (or other rich) cloth.” Jones and Jones, who did not have the benefit of the GPC definition when they produced their translation, seem to have regarded ysgarlad as an adjective. They could all be right.70 It is well established by John Munro and others that scarlet was first a cloth which could be produced in various colours. Munro maintains that this fine cloth was no more expensive to produce than other woollens, but it was the kermes dyestuff that made it extremely costly.71 Scarlet was prestigious throughout Europe; even in remote Iceland it was so precious that not even the wealthiest chieftain would buy it for himself but would receive it

 ��������������������    D. Simon Evans, Llafar a llyfr yn yr hen gyfnod: darlith goffa G. J. Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982), 17. For a general discussion on the Gododdin, including dating and bibliography, see Koch, Celtic Culture, vol. 3, s.v. “Gododdin.”  ������������    Thomson, Owein, 14.  ������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 125.  ���������������������    Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 166.  ����������������������������������    This is the aspirated form of pali after the conjunction a [and].  �������������    Thomson, Owein, 13; Davies, Mabinogion, 124; see also Davies’ note on sendal (254), which she defines as “a thin fine silk used for fine garments.”  ���������������������    Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 166.  ����   GPC (s.v. “ysgarlad”) also indicates that ysgarlad can be an adjective, meaning the colour scarlet.  ���������    John H. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Munro, “The Anti-Red Shift—To the Dark Side: Colour Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1500,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2007): 62.

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Patricia Williams “as a bequest signifying loyalty or friendship.”72 In light of this, it is little wonder that Owain sleeps on such a bed: It emphasises the opulence of the court in which he has found himself and is a forerunner of the even greater wealth and dignity which he enjoys when he weds the newly widowed countess and assumes the role of protector of her kingdom. The exact meaning of gra is also difficult to establish. It is possible that this too is a cloth, grey or undyed, but not necessarily inexpensive; however, it seems more likely that gra is a fur in this context.73 In GPC, it is described imprecisely as “a fur” or “ermine” and is said to be a borrowing from Middle English gra, “a gray fur.” GPC also compares gra to two variant forms: (1) grae, which is likewise said to be derived from Middle English gray, graye, greye and defined as “grey material or clothing; grey fur, usually of a badger skin; fur (in general)” and used adjectivally with the meaning “grey, bluish grey”; (2) grai, said to be a borrowing from Old English grǽȝ and defined as an adjective, “grey, greyish, bluish, pale,” or as a noun, “a grey (horse).” On the basis of the description of Owain’s bedclothes, gra is also defined in GPC as “scarlet” or “purple,” possibly because of its proximity to ysgarlat in the catalogue of materials which constitute his bedding. In fact, John Davies, the eminent seventeenth-century cleric and scholar, states in his Dictionarium Duplex, the Latin-Welsh dictionary he edited in 1632, that gra is “white scarlet,”74 a definition which clearly shows that Davies knew ysgarlad was a fabric, and that it could be white as well as coloured. John Munro explains this seeming paradox by pointing out that medieval French and Flemish textile manufacturers had a tripartite classification of woollens: “white” fabrics, which were to be dyed in one piece after being manufactured; “blue” ones, which were woven from wools or yarns that had already been dyed with woad; and “medley” or “striped” cloths, which would be woven from a variety of different-coloured yarns in warps and wefts.75 The final type of fabric used for Owain’s bed is bliant. This is explained in GPC as “bleaunt, cambric, lawn, fine linen” and is said to derive from Middle English blihant, which is defined in the University of Manchester Lexis of Cloth and Clothing database  ���������    Anna Zanchi, ��������������������������������������������������������������� “‘Melius Abundare Quam Deficiere’: Scarlet Clothing in Laxdœla Saga and Njáls Saga,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008): 22. See also Thor Ewing, “í litklæðum—Coloured Clothes in Medieval Scandinavian Literature and Archaeology” (paper presentation, International Saga Conference, Durham, UK, Aug. 9, 2006; available online at http://thorewing.net/articles/colouredclothing/, accessed Nov. 20, 2011), 5.  �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    Elspeth M. Veale gives examples of fur used as bedding and possibly as bedwear; Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (London: London Record Society, 2003), 15–16.  �����������������    John Davies, Antiquae Linguae Dictionarium Duplex, English Linguistics 1500–1800 99 (1632; repr. facsimile, Menston: Scolar Press, 1968). E. M. Carus-Wilson uses Froissart’s description of the king of Portugal wearing white scarlet with a vermilion cross of St. George on it as evidence that “scarlet” did not at first denote colour; see Carus-Wilson, “The English Cloth Industry in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries,” in Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies (London: Methuen, 1954), 218 n. 4.  ���������    John H. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Munro, “Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology and Industrial Organisation, c. 800–1500,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1:212–13.

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Dress in the Mabinogion as (1) “expensive fabric; possibly silk or fine linen,” (2) “garment; made from fine silk or similar material (cf. cendal),” and (3) “furnishing; bedspread (possibly made from the fine material in sense 1).”76 In Welsh, however, there is no evidence to suggest that bliant was ever a garment, only an expensive fabric, from which was made a motley collection of items: trousers, towels, a tablecloth, banners, and even a cloth to cover a bier. None of the citations in which these items occur actually distinguishes precisely what fibre bliant was. The towels and tablecloth suggest linen, but the other items could have been silk or even fine wool. Heather Rose Jones speculates that “it is also possible that the word meant a particular weight or weave of both silk and linen in Welsh contexts.”77 In all cases bright colours and costly materials indicate opulence. BODY GARMENTS

References to specific items of dress in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi are sparse: the characters, both male and female, are clad in a llen (see page 87) or in a gwisg, a generic term for dress (see note 51). In the later tales, however, more specific items of clothing are mentioned. Crys The crys in Modern Welsh is a shirt, but in Middle Welsh it seems to be an undergarment, worn by both men and women. Its Celtic cognates are Old Cornish kreis, which is a gloss on camisia [linen shirt or nightgown]; Middle Breton cres; and Old Irish criss [girdle], from Celtic *krid-su. According to GPC, its original meaning was gwregys < *gwe-grys, “belt or girdle,” a meaning which is latent in some of its uses. In relation to men, it is an undergarment and is usually linked with llawdr [trousers], both of which items are worn beneath other garments.78 It was also one of the items of clothing a noblewoman was allowed to bequeath without her husband’s permission.79 A woman’s crys must have extended well down her leg, as a smock or shift, because if a virgin was found, on the night of her marriage, to have been previously deflowered, she was disgraced by having her crys cut off as far as her genitals.80 A crys was also worn on the battlefield. In Armes Prydein, a vaticinatory poem composed ca. 900, there is a moving line about the enemy wives washing their husbands’ blood-stained crysseu [shirts].81  �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 is a five-year project based at the universities of Manchester and Westminster. Thanks to Gale Owen-Crocker, principal investigator of the project, for providing references from the Lexis database.  �����������    Jones, Medieval Welsh Clothing, 58.  �������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Goetinck, Peredur, 29.  ������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 29 §51; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 54.  ������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 26 §47; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 49.  ���������������������������������������������    Ifor Williams and Rachel Bromwich, eds., Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain, from the Book of Taliesin (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1972), 7.

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Patricia Williams In Geraint Son of Erbin, Enid is clad in a crys and an old llenlliein [linen mantle]82 when Eric first meets her. Even after rescuing her and her family from their straitened circumstances, Eric insists she wears these garments until she goes to Arthur’s court to be dressed by queen Gwenhwyfar in more splendid attire. A popular theme in Celtic literature is that the country is represented by a beautiful woman, known as the sovereignty goddess, and in order to inherit his rightful kingdom, the hero must win the goddess as his bride. Often she appears in the guise of an old hag, but if the hero is brave enough to kiss her, she is transformed into a beautiful woman. It could be that Enid is the personification of sovereignty and her poor attire suggestive of the ugly hag, who is transformed only when the queen bequeaths sovereignty upon her. Alaw Mai Edwards suggests that not only do Enid’s simple garments signify the poverty of her family and the loss of a kingdom, but they are also symbols of her sexuality and her desire to find a husband to marry her, or symbolically marry her country.83 In The Dream of Maxen, the young woman with whom the emperor Maxen falls in love also wears crysseu,84 variously translated as “shifts”85 or “vests”86 but made of white silk, secured with cayeu o rudeur [clasps of red gold] at her breast and covered by outer sumptuous garments. Pais Closely linked to crys is pais, from Latin pexa [woollen]. Its Celtic cognates are Old Cornish (?) peis, a gloss on tunica; Old Cornish peus (gruec), a gloss on toral [the valance of a couch];87 and Middle Cornish pous [coat]. In Modern Welsh, pais is a petticoat or underskirt, but in Middle Welsh it has a variety of meanings88 ranging from a “long garment or gown formerly worn by babies” to a “knight’s armour.” Other meanings given are “tunic, jacket, doublet or coat worn by a man or boy.” When Cynon in The Lady of the Well arrives at a castle, where he is attended by twenty-four beautiful maidens, he is relieved of his travelling clothes and dressed in a peis [tunic] and surcoat and cloak of yellow brocaded silk, all of which he wears over his shirt and breeches.89 From this and other descriptions in these tales, it is clear that in these contexts the pais was worn beneath a mantle or cloak or both. In The Dream of Rhonabwy, one pais extends midway down the leg of the wearer and is embroidered with red silk thread.90

 �������������    Thomson, Gereint, 7; Davies, Mabinogion, 148; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 166.  ���������������������������    Jones, “Gwisgoedd,” 30.  �������������    Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3.  ������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 104; Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 62.  ���������������������    Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 81.  ���������������������    Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v. “toral.”  ����   GPC, s.v. “pais.”  �������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 117; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 157.  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    “A phais o pali melyn ymdanaw yn gyfuch a mein y esceir, gwedy y gwniaw ac adaued o sidan coch” [A tunic of yellow brocaded silk about him above the bones of his calves, embroidered with thread of red silk]. Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 13; Davies, Mabinogion, 221; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 146.

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Dress in the Mabinogion In Peredur Son of Efrog, the author uses clothing terminology figuratively to say that Gwalchmai can achieve so much by diplomacy that he needs no more armour than a pais of fine linen.91 Camse In Culhwch and Olwen, the heroine is clothed in a camse sidan fflamgoch [robe or gown of flame-red silk] with a gordtorch rudeur [torque of gold] about the maiden’s neck, with precious pearls and red jewels.92 Camse is one of the many words in this tale which do not occur elsewhere in Middle Welsh prose but are found in later sources.93 It is derived from Old Irish caimmse, through Late Latin camisia [linen shirt or nightgown], and said to be of Gallic origin.94 The Welsh text gives no indication as to the style of this garment other than it is made of sidan and is red in colour. The editors of Culhwch and Olwen give camse the meaning “robe.”95 Even if the camse were nothing more than a simple shift, the costly material from which it is made indicates that the wearer is a highborn woman. The aristocratic milieu is further emphasised by the wearing of the jewelled torque. Rhuchen/huchen/rhuwch, brat, llopan The clothing of the lower classes is largely ignored in the Mabinogion. In Culhwch and Olwen, a shepherd is clad in a rhuchen/huchen, the basic meaning of which is a thin skin or layer, but it is used here to indicate a jerkin, jacket, or cloak. No other information is given about this garment except that it is made of skins.96 That it was a garment worn by the lower classes is confirmed by the laws; the rhuch of a mab aillt, male or female, was valued at sixty pence, while that of a taeog or his wife was worth a mere thirty pence.97 Although mab aillt and taeog are synonymous in Modern Welsh, both meaning serf or villein, the difference in the value of their garments suggests that in the Middle Ages there was a class distinction between them, the former being of higher social standing than the latter. Apart from these references, the Four Branches alone mention inferior styles of dress, and only then as a device for focusing attention on a character’s changed role. Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, is normally elegantly attired in clothes of costly fabrics, but when he is disguised as a beggar he wears bratteu and on his feet lloppanneu.98 Brat,

 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    “Hyt tra barhao genhyt ti dy tauawt a’th eireu tec, digawn vyd it o arueu peis o uliant teneu ymdanat” [While you have your tongue and fine words, a tunic of thin fine linen will be sufficient armour for you]. Goetinck, Peredur, 32; Davies, Mabinogion, 80.  ������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 18, Davies, Mabinogion, 192.  ������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, xviii.  ���������������������    Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v. “camisia.”  ������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 189.  ������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 15; Davies, Mabinogion, 190.  ������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 95 §144; Jenkins, The Law of Hywel Dda, 195.  ��������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 16, 17; Davies, Mabinogion, 13, 14.

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Patricia Williams a borrowing from Old Irish brat, is said to be the only Celtic loanword for dress in Anglo-Saxon, where it indicates a cloak, but by the fourteenth century signified an unpretentious garment.99 It has always indicated a lowly garment in Welsh and is still in common usage with the meaning “apron” or “pinafore.” Llopan is some kind of rough shoe, translated by Davies and also by Jones and Jones as “rag boots,”100 but they may have been made from crude skins. Whatever their material, the point the storyteller was trying to make is that they were inferior items of footwear. The Modern Irish cognate lópa, diminutive lóipin, indicates a vampless stocking, the leg of a stocking, worn without the shoe. FOOTWEAR

The earliest comments on Welsh items of clothing contemporary with their author that can be dated accurately are those of Giraldus Cambrensis on the completion of his journey through Wales in 1188. Commenting on the boldness, agility, and courage of young Welshmen on the battlefield, he stated that even horsemen went barefoot or wore boots of untanned leather roughly sewn together.101 He reported his meeting with a young nobleman, none other than Cynwrig ap Rhys ap Gruffuydd, the third son of the Lord Rhys (1132–97), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth in south Wales, and remarked that he was scantily clad according to the custom of his race, and that his feet and legs were bare.102 This suggests that not only the peasants went barefoot, but also sometimes the ruling classes. Nevertheless, other than llopan (see above), there are several references to footwear in the Mabinogion, under three different names: archenad, esgid, and gwintas. Archenad The earliest occurrence of this term is its plural form archenatou, which occurs as a ninth-century gloss on the Latin calcei [shoes, half-boots].103 Its Celtic cognates are Middle Breton archenat and Old Cornish orchinat, which occur as glosses on the Latin calciamentum [a shoe, a covering for the foot].104 In the Welsh laws, archenad [footwear] was offered as payment to some court officials.105 In Culhwch and Olwen, archenad occurs in the description of the eponymous hero on his journey to Arthur’s

 ������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 335. �������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 13; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 15. ���������������������������    Lewis Thorpe, trans., Gerald of Wales: The Journey through Wales / The Description of Wales (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1980), 234. �������������    Thorpe, Gerald, 178. �����������    Loth, Vocabulaire vieux-breton, 45; Alexander Falileyev, Etymological Glossary of Old Welsh (Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 2000), 10–11. �����   GPC, 2nd ed. (2006), s.v. “archenad.” �����������������������������������������������������    E.g., the mead-brewer and the watchman. Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 12 §16, 20 §37; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 23, 36.

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Dress in the Mabinogion court: It is said that the precious gold in his footgear and stirrups, from the top of his thigh to the tip of his toe, is worth three hundred cows.106 This description suggests that his footwear extended up his leg, like riding boots. In addition to “shoe,” archenad can also mean “garment, clothing,”107 and it also occurs as part of the verbal noun diarchenu, which signifies the divesting both of shoes and of clothing or armour.108 This makes it difficult to ascertain the exact meaning on occasions. When Pwyll arrives in Arawn’s court, it is obvious from the context that he goes into the hall to take off his boots, because it is only afterwards that servants come to divest him of his hunting gear.109 Similarly, when Geraint is welcomed at the dilapidated court of an elderly man, it is more likely that he is relieved of his footgear than his armour, as we know that he had none, and it is also likely that the footgear consists of riding boots, as we are told in the same sentence that his horse is then supplied with straw and corn.110 On the other hand, when Geraint and his wife, weary from their long and arduous journey, find lodgings for the night, they are said to ymdiarchenu (< the reflexive ym- + diarchenu, “divest”) before settling in their rooms.111 The probability here is that ymdiarchenu means that they take off their travelling clothes, rather than their footwear alone. In The Lady of the Well, Cynon tells of his welcome at a castle occupied by twenty-four beautiful maidens, who wait on him hand and foot. Six of them take his horse and remove his boots, another six take his weapons and polish them, six more lay a cloth and set out food, while the remaining six remove his clothing and dress him in other garments.112 It is evident from the context that the first six remove only his boots, because his clothes are taken off later. Esgid Esgid is the term used for “shoe” both in Modern Welsh and in the Third Branch of the Mabinogi. When Dyfed is completely devastated through magic, the protagonist, Manawydan, decides to go with his family to England to seek a craft by which they can sustain themselves. After failed attempts at manufacturing exotic saddles and shields, he takes up shoemaking, and with the aid of his son-in-law, Pryderi, begins to fashion shoes from the finest cordwal [Cordovan leather]. They use no other leather than this, except for the soles. Manawydan makes friends with the best goldsmiths in town and has gilded buckles made for the shoes, observing the process until he learns how to do it himself. As before, Manawydan and Pryderi become so successful that they deprive the other shoemakers of their profits. This prompts the shoemakers to take counsel

�������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 181; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 97. See note 31 above. �����   GPC, 2nd ed. (2006), s.v. “archenad.” �����   GPC, s.v. “diarchenaf.” ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 4; Davies, Mabinogion, 5. ��������������    Thomson, Gereint, 7; Davies, Mabinogion, 144; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 234–35. ��������������    Thomson, Gereint, 47; Davies, Mabinogion, 163. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 117; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 157.

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Patricia Williams and, as a result of their deliberations, they threaten to kill their competitors, unless they give up their craft. The material that Manawydan and Pryderi use for their shoes is cordwal, “Cordovan leather” or “cordwain.” In fact, “cordwainer,” from the French cordonnier, was a common English word for shoemaker, introduced after the Norman conquest in 1066 but ultimately derived from the city of Cordoba in southern Spain, which was famous for the production of leather. Manawydan does not tan the leather himself, but buys it already made.113 This type of leather was obviously well-known in Britain at the time, because nearly every shoe mentioned in the Mabinogion is described as being made of Cordovan leather. Cordovan leather is also the choice of material for the shoes mentioned in other tales. In Geraint Son of Erbin, during Arthur’s carousal on Whit Tuesday, an auburnhaired youth shod in low boots of cordwain enters the hall and reports the sighting of a white stag in the forest of Dean.114 The choice of the epithet isel [low] suggests that these shoes were very different from the archenad extending up to the thighs worn by Culhwch on his journey to Arthur’s court. A youth in The Dream of Rhonabwy wears a pair of shoes made of the ubiquitous Cordovan leather, but this time it is speckled and also resplendent with golden buckles,115 reminiscent of those fashioned by Manawydan. Gwintas Gwintas is the term used for shoes in The Lady of the Well. These are likewise made of cordwain, sometimes speckled; some fastened with a golden buckle, tied around the mynyglau,116 variously translated as “on their insteps”117 or “around the ankle,”118 while others are fastened with a golden button.119 They are worn by women as well as men. One pair of gwintas worn by Owain himself has an image of a golden lion fastening them.120 This is unlikely to be a normal shoe fastening, but a literary device forecasting Owain’s relationship with the lion later on in the story, as Davies suggests.121 It is recalled that in Chrétien’s version of the tale, he is the Chevalier au Lion [Knight of the Lion]. That shoemaking was regarded as a noble craft and the acquisition of good-quality shoes a status symbol can be inferred from an episode in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, when the magician Gwydion adopts the role of a shoemaker in order to trick his sister Aranrhod into giving her unacknowledged illegitimate son a name, �������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 38. ��������������    Thomson, Gereint, 2; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 229–30; Davies, Mabinogion, 137. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 13–14; Davies, Mabinogion, 222. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 2. ����������������������    Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 156. �������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 117. ����������    Ibid. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 16; Davies, Mabinogion, 127. �������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 255.

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Dress in the Mabinogion which she had hitherto vindictively denied him. Gwydion must have realised that only the wish to acquire something as desirable as shoes of Cordovan leather would have enticed Aranrhod to pay him a visit. LEGWEAR

Hosan, plural hosannau, is borrowed from one of the oblique cases of the Old English hosa,122 which is defined by Gale Owen-Crocker as a “covering for the lower leg and possibly the foot; probably a leather boot; worn by monks.”123 There is no evidence in Welsh that these were worn by monks, but they are cited as one of the products sold by Manawydan in the Third Branch of the Mabinogi. In Modern Welsh, hosan has developed to mean “a sock” or “stocking,” but there is no internal evidence to suggest that Manawydan and Pryderi make stockings as well as shoes. The hosannau they sell are most likely long boots. In The Dream of Rhonabwy, on the other hand, hosan is used in the sense of stockings. The audience is informed that a young squire who comes to Arthur’s court wears stockings of thin greenish-yellow brethyn [cloth] on his feet, over which he has a pair of buskins made from cordovan leather.124 Shortly afterwards, another young squire arrives, clad in stockings of fine white bwcran [buckram],125 over which he has shoes of black cordwain. A third squire arrives wearing stockings of thin twtneis126 (cloth probably named after Totnes,127 a market town at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon) and a pair of shoes made from the inevitable cordwain. The earliest occurrence of brethyn, which has the same element as Irish brat [cloak, mantle], is map brethinnou, literally “a child in cloths or coverlets” and appears as a ninth-century gloss on in cunis (literally “in cradles”).128 When Pwyll encounters a knight who is unknown to him and, at that stage, unknown to the audience as well, his hunting clothes are said to be of brethyn llwyt tei,129 translated by Jones and Jones as “brownish-grey stuff ” and by Davies as “light grey material,” where the adjective “light” qualifies the noun “cloth,” the colour of which is grey. The literal translation is “grey house cloth,” and the implication is that the knight’s hunting dress is not made of rough cloth but of a finer kind that would be worn in the court. Again the redactor has used dress as an indicator of a character’s dignity and status, thus preparing the audience for the revelation that this is no ordinary knight but a king. The second fabric, bwcram, could be a loanword from Middle English buckram or possibly Old �����   GPC, s.v. “hosan.” �������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 338. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 12; Davies, Mabinogion, 220; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 145. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 13; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 146; translated by Davies as “linen,” Mabinogion, 221. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 14. �����������������������������������������������������������    Lexis of Cloth and Clothing database, s.v. “totenais.” �����������    Loth, Vocabulaire vieux-breton, 58; Falileyev, Etymological Glossary, 109. ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 2.

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Patricia Williams French boquerant, perhaps from Bokhara in central Asia, but its derivation is uncertain. The modern buckram is a coarse cloth stiffened with gum or paste and used as an interfacing or in bookbinding, but in the Middle Ages, bokeram was fine cotton cloth, not stiff material. This would be suitable for making a hosan in the sense of “sock” or “stocking,” but not so suitable if it were a “high boot.” Thirdly, twtneis is cognate with the Middle English totenais, which is defined in the Lexis database as an inexpensive cloth donated to the poor.130 This cloth was probably made from wool, as Totnes was an important trading centre in the Middle Ages and an export centre for cloth produced from wool sheared in the hinterland.131 Of the three textiles discussed above, only one was native, the brethyn used by Manawydan in the Third Branch. The foreign fabrics are introduced in The Dream of Rhonabwy, a century or so later, which shows that Wales was not isolated at this period but in trading contact with places farther afield. Since The Dream of Rhonabwy is a satire, we cannot form an opinion about the social implications of the textiles used for the footgear of the three squires, but they are probably intended to look absurd. Other leg gear mentioned in these tales are trousers or breeches called llawdyr/ llawdr.132 The plural form, llodrau, is still in common usage in Modern Welsh. From the context we have no description of the type of garment this is, only that one character put on his llawdyr after emerging from a bath,133 and another, after being divested of his travelling clothes, was then dressed in a crys and llawdyr of fine linen.134 This suggests that they wore trousers beneath their tunics, in the manner of Anglo-Saxon men,135 but we have no means of telling whether these would have been tight-fitting or loose. Under medieval Welsh law, the beagle, or court sergeant, received as part of his payment a crys a llavder (sic) [shirt and trousers];136 the trousers were to be hep tenllyf (tenllif), interpreted by Aled Rhys Wiliam as being “without a lining”,137 but by Dafydd Jenkins as “without containing mixed fabric,”138 that is, of pure linen. It is also stated in the Vendotian (northern) law code that the beagle’s clothes139 should reach the knot of his breeches, wherever that might have been.

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    Cf. “grisetus de Totenais,” a grey cloth, recorded in the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing database, s.v. “grisetus.” �������������������������    Rosalind Northcote, Devon: Its Moorlands, Streams, and Coasts, with Illustrations after Frederick J. Widgery (London: Chatto & Windus, 1908); e-text prepared by Dave Morgan, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team, eBook no. 22485, http://www. gutenberg.org/files/22485/22485-h/22485-h.htm (accessed Nov. 20, 2011), 123. �����   GPC, s.v. “llawdr.” ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 88; Davies, Mabinogion, 61. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 117. �������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 187. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 19 §34; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 34. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 163. ��������������    Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 34 and note. ����������������������    The generic term dillad [clothes] is used here.

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Dress in the Mabinogion GLOVES

Menig (singular maneg), or gloves, are also mentioned in the Mabinogion, but it is not said what they were made of, when they were worn, or why. A single glove seems to have been used as a receptacle. For example, when Manawydan catches a mouse that had been eating his corn, he puts it in his maneg and ties the mouth of the glove with string.140 Similarly, when the shepherd Custennin receives a ring from Culhwch, he puts it in the finger of his glove for safekeeping.141 In The Dream of Rhonabwy, it is said that what could be seen of a certain young man’s wrist between his gloves and sleeves was whiter than the lily,142 which implies that the glove did not extend far up his arm. Gloves were in use in England as early as the eighth century and would have been used by falconers. Archaeological evidence shows that German gloves could be elaborate, made of leather, lined with soft cloth, and laced at the back of the hand.143 All that we can infer, however, about the maneg from the brief allusions in these texts is that it was worn on the hand; at least some were short, and some had fingers rather than being a simple hand covering, like a mitten. Nevertheless, it would seem that gloves were a highly prized possession in medieval Wales. Dafydd ap Gwilym, a fourteenth-century Welsh poet of great renown, writes a poem in praise of a pair of gloves lent to him by his patron.144 They were made of buckskin and each one contained gold and silver coins, further testimony that gloves doubled up as a purse or bag to carry objects. HEADWEAR

Most of the items of headwear mentioned in the Mabinogion relate to women, but it is not possible to tell whether they were obliged to keep their heads covered in public. The effigy of Joan, daughter of King John of England and Prince Llywelyn (The Great) of Wales in St. Mary’s Church, Beaumaris, dated to ca. 1237, depicts her wearing a headdress which is probably typical of the headwear of the period (fig. 5.2).145 The colour of a woman’s hair is an important element in descriptions of her appearance, which suggests that it was not generally hidden by headcoverings. In Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, Rhiannon, a euhemerised goddess who eventually becomes Pwyll’s wife, is said to have drawn back “the part of her headdress which should cover her face.”146 It is ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 60; Davies, Mabinogion, 42. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 16; Davies, Mabinogion, 191. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 6; Davies, Mabinogion, 217. �������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 192. ������������������������    Thomas Parry, ed., Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1952), 24–25; the poem is also available online from the Welsh Department, Swansea University, at http://www. dafyddapgwilym.net/eng/3win.htm (“Diolch am Fenig,” no. 15, accessed Nov. 20, 2011). For Dafydd ap Gwilym’s general interest in clothes, see Gwyn Thomas, Dafydd ap Gwilym: Y Gŵr wrth Gerdd (Aberystwyth, Wales: University of Wales Institute for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2003), 16–17. ������������������������������    Also reproduced in Lord, Medieval Vision, 116. ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 12.

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Patricia Williams impossible to ascertain whether this is an accurate description of the headwear of the period; it could simply be the author’s way of revealing the face of this magical character, and symbolically showing that the barrier preventing communication between the world of mortals and the Otherworld had now been lifted. Nevertheless, Giraldus Cambrensis, who claimed to give a contemporary account of what he observed on his 1188 journey through Wales, declared that the women wore flowing white veils, which stuck up in folds like a crown.147 The meaning given to penllïain in GPC is “a woman’s head-dress, head-cloth, kerchief, wimple, coif ”; later it was used to refer to “a priest’s head-dress” or “mitre”; also “a covering” or “a canopy.”148 In Culhwch and Olwen, one of the seemingly impossible tasks Culhwch has to complete before he can marry Olwen is to sow some flax seed in order to make a white veil for the bride to wear on her wedding day.149 The penngu(w)ch has a number of different meanings: “head-dress, kerchief, wimple, bonnet, hood, cowl, cap, mail cap worn under a helmet.”150 In Culhwch and Olwen, a magic character, when sad, would let his bottom lip drop down to his navel, while his top lip would become a pengu(w)ch (seemingly a hood or cowl) over his head.151 In The Lady of the Well, Owain strikes the Black Knight through his helm [helmet], pennffestin [mail-cap], and penguch, the exact meaning of which is unclear. Suggestions include “a visor, a ventail to protect the lower part of the face, a lightweight helmet, a coif.”152 In this context penguch is qualified by the adjective pwrquin,153 translated by Davies as “a hood of Burgundian cloth.”154 This corresponds exactly to the penguch bwrkwin in Ystorya Bown de Hamtwn, translated as “a cloth cap made of wool or silk from Burgundy.”155 It is also stated in Llyfr Blegywryd (The Book of Blegywryd, the southern law code), that the court’s sergeant is given a penguch three times a year,156 but it is difficult to tell from that context what the exact nature of the penguch was. According to the Welsh laws, there seems to be a hierarchical difference between a penllïain and a penngu(w)ch, the former being a garment worn by a noblewoman, the latter by a serf ’s wife. Consequently the value of the former is recorded as eight pence, the value of the latter as one penny,157 following the practice of the laws to value items of clothing according to the status of their owner. Both penllïain and penngu(w)ch

�������������    Thorpe, Gerald, 238. �����   GPC, s.v. “penllïain.” �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 23; Davies, Mabinogion, 196. �����   GPC, s.v. “penguwch, penguch.” �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 12; Davies, Mabinogion, 187–88. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 46 n. 273. ����������������    Ibid., 11. �������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 123. �������������������������    Morgan Watkin, ed., Ystorya Bown de Hamtwn (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1958), 91 n. 545–47. ����������������������������������������������    Stephen J. Williams and J. Enoch Powell, Cyfreithiau Hywel Dda yn ôl Llyfr Blegywryd (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1942), 28. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 95.

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Dress in the Mabinogion

Fig. 5.2: Relief effigy of Princess Joan, daughter of King John of England and Prince ­Llywelyn (The Great) of Wales, Church of St. Mary, Beaumaris, Anglesey, Wales, ca. 1237. Photo: ­Kathleen Wood, with thanks to Gale R. Owen-Crocker for her assistance.

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Patricia Williams may be bequeathed without the consent of the husband.158 Another item of headwear mentioned in these tales is the rhactal [frontlet, headband, chaplet, garland]. It was mostly worn by women159 but could also be worn by men,160 and in the 1588 translation of the Bible into Welsh, it was also used in the sense of “phylactery.”161 It is difficult to know whether the rhactal was functional or purely decorative. Certainly all the ones described in these tales are made of gold, and some are studded with precious jewels. That worn by Elen in The Dream of Maxen is particularly sumptuous, made of red gold studded with rubies and white gems, with pearls alternating with imperial stones.162 Another word used to indicate a headband is ysnoden, possibly derived from Old English snód (cf. Old Cornish snod, which occurs as a gloss on vitta, “a fillet or chaplet worn around the head”).163 In these tales, however, ysnoden164 or its variant cysnodyn165 is a ribbon of gold thread in a mantle. OVERGARMENTS

Mantell Mantell is a loanword from Latin mantellum, possibly through Old French or Middle English (cf. Old Cornish mantel, gloss on mantellum; Middle Breton mantel(l); and Middle Irish matal). Its meanings are given as “mantle, cloak, robe, veil.”166 According to the Welsh laws, the beagle was granted a mantell on the Kalends of March or February;167 a nobleman’s wife was allowed to bequeath, without the consent of her husband, her mantell together with her shift, her shoes, and her headdress, a privilege not accorded to the wife of a serf.168 A dark-coloured mantle was valued at twenty-four pence.169 In the fictional references, mantell is described as a decorative top garment: In The Lady of the Well, a young man with curly yellow hair clad in a mantell of yellow brocaded silk with an ysnoden eurllin [ribbon of gold thread] running through it, escorts Cynon to a nearby castle, where he receives a warm welcome and is given a

�������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 29 §51; Williams and Powell, Llyfr Blegywryd, 62. Jenkins (Law of Hywel Dda, 54) translates penllïain as “headkerchief,” penngu(w)ch as “headcloth.” ���������������    Goetinck, Peredur, 10; Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3; Thomson, Owein, 12; Davies, Mabinogion, 67, 104, 123. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 2; Davies, Mabinogion, 117. ���������������������    Isaiah 13:15–16. ��������������    Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 104. �����   GPC, s.v. “ysnoden.” ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 117. ���������������������������������    John Gwenogvryn Evans, ed., The White Book Mabinogion (Pwllheli, Wales: Private Press, 1907), 113, col. 225. �����   GPC, s.v. “mantell.” �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 19 §34; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 34. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 29 §51; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 54. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 95 §144; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 195.

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Dress in the Mabinogion mantell with an orffreis lydan [an orphrey or wide embroidered border].170 Later in the tale, Owain wears a mantell with an orphrey of gold thread.171 As in the descriptions of his sumptous bedding and his shoes with their decorative golden clasps, clothing is being used subtly as a device to indicate Owain’s superior status. Ysgîn This is a “robe, mantle, cloak, gown or (long) coat”172 and, according to the Welsh laws, the value of a king’s and queen’s ysgîn is a pound.173 Over her shifts or vests, Elen in The Dream of Maxen is clad in an ysgin of gold brocaded silk which matches her surcoat and is secured by a tacde [brooch] of red gold and a gwregys [belt] of red gold.174 This is the only occurrence of ysgîn in the Mabinogion. Swrcot Swrcot is a loanword from Middle English surcot or direct from Old French surcote. This seems to have been a medieval overcoat worn by men and women or as an outer garment worn over armour. Elen in The Dream of Maxen wears a swrcot o bali eureit [surcoat of gold-red brocaded silk] over a gown of the same length.175 This implies that the surcoat would have been full length. A young squire in The Dream of Rhonabwy wears a swrcot o pali melyn [surcoat of yellow brocaded silk],176 but as he is also armed with a sword, it probably refers to the garment worn over armour. The surcoats worn by the young squires in Geraint Son of Erbin are also likely to be part of their armour, since they too are carrying swords. These surcoats are made of yellow brocaded silk and are probably short, as reference is made to the bare legs of one of the squires and to the llen o borffor glas [cloak of blue-purple] which the other wears on top of his surcoat.177 The surcoats worn by Cynon and Owain in The Lady of the Well may not have been the topmost garment either, as each is coupled with a mantell, and since the characters are both given these surcoats as garments in which to relax after a hard day’s journey, the surcoats are unlikely to be part of their armour.178 The wearing of the surcoat depicted in the Welsh tales corresponds closely to what is known of a similar garment in medieval England. Elspeth Veale describes the surcote as an overgarment which might be “full or knee-length, sleeveless or with very full sleeves, open or closed in front, or slit at the sides.” She adds that “for outdoor wear a

��������������    Thomson, Owein, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 117. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 16; Davies, Mabinogion, 127. �����   GPC, s.v. “ysgîn.” �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 95 §144; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 195. ��������������    Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 104. ��������������    Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 104. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 12; Davies, Mabinogion, 220. ��������������    Thomson, Gereint, 2, 4; Davies, Mabinogion, 139, 141. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 3, 16; Davies, Mabinogion, 117, 127.

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Patricia Williams cloak was added or a mantle for ceremonial occasions.”179 In the absence of efficient heating methods, people would need all these layers of clothing to keep warm. Cwnsallt “Surcoat” is one of the definitions of cwnsallt given in GPC, where it is also defined as a “cloak or mantle over armour, robe, armour and housing (with regard to horses)” but no derivation is given. Attempts have been made by scholars to explain its origin, but none of their suggestions has been accepted as definitive. Morgan Watkin thought it derived from Old French corselet,180 but this was rejected by Melville Richards, who, nevertheless, did not propose an alternative.181 Watkin later suggested it was a borrowing from a variation of Old French ca(i)nsil + ,182 but R. L. Thomson rejected this,183 without suggesting any other solution. Watkin also wrote that the cwnsallt closely resembled the medieval French mantel, and that receiving this garment was a condition of acceptance to the military orders.184 In Peredur Son of Efrog, as the hero progresses in his endeavour to be a fully ordained knight, he is given arms and a cwnsallt purgoch [bright red cloak] to wear over his armour,185 together with a small yellow shield on his shoulder, so that he can do battle against a warring earl; subsequently, when he defeats the earl, it is by these attributes that he is recognised.186 Similarly, in The Lady of the Well, when Gwalchmai does battle with the Black Knight, he dons a cwnsallt of brocaded silk covering himself and his horse; but, since this was a gift from the daughter of the earl of Anjou rather than his normal cwnsallt, no one recognises him.187 As the cwnsallt was sometimes emblazoned with heraldic insignia,188 which served as badges of identification, the absence of his arms on the above-mentioned garment gave Gwalchmai an anonymity he would not have had when wearing his own. In The Dream of Rhonabwy, there is a description of a horse’s cwnsallt [housing] which is made of costly material, including syndal [silk], and is two-toned: from the pommel upward it is bright red, and from the pommel downward, bright yellow.189 In the same tale, the cwnsallt of another rider is said to be of yellow brocaded silk with blue fringed borders (godreon), while that of his horse is pure black with bright

������������    Veale, English Fur Trade, 2. �����������������������������������������������������������������������    Morgan Watkin, “The French Literary Influence in Medieval Wales”, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1919–20, 65. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 65. �������������    Watkin, Ystorya Bown, 90 n. 540–41. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 54 n. 516. �������������    Watkin, Ystorya Bown, 90 n. 540–41. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    The usual donor would have been the knight’s overlord; Morfydd E. Owen, “‘Arbennic Milwyr a Blodeu Marchogyon’: Cymdeithas Peredur,” in Canhwyll Marchogyon, ed. Sioned Davies and Peter Wynn Thomas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 103. ���������������    Goetinck, Peredur, 64–65; Davies, Mabinogion, 99. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 19; Davies, Mabinogion, 129. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 54; pers. comm., Professor N. J. A. Williams, specialist on Celtic heraldry. ���������������������������������������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 15; Davies, Mabinogion, 222.

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Dress in the Mabinogion yellow fringed borders.190 Davies and also Jones and Jones translate godreon simply as “fringes,”191 but one would imagine that in the case of equestrian dress some kind of reinforced border would be more practical than a fringe. The milieu in question, however, is one of extravagance, where practicality is not an issue. In Geraint Son of Erbin, there is a description of a cwnsallt deuhanner [mantle in two halves] worn by both horse and rider,192 but it is not clear whether it was the same garment which covered both horse and rider or whether horse and rider had separate but similar coverings. It is also difficult to know how to interpret “in two halves.” It could refer to the different parts of the garment that covered the rider and the horse respectively, in view of the fact that a riding cloak has a sort of train that covers the rump of the horse. It could refer to the different parts of the garment that covered the rider or to the different colours specified in the two halves, as Heather Rose Jones suggests.193 This explanation would be consistent with the bi-coloured coverings mentioned in The Dream of Rhonabwy, but if the reference is to two separate coverings, it is worth remembering that the horse’s cloth housing was often divided into two parts at the saddle.194 Cap(p)an According to the laws, both the queen’s chamberlain and the beagle would be given a capan as part of their payment; the chamberlain’s would be the queen’s cast-off garment, while the beagle would receive his (presumably new) on the first day of winter.195 There is a problem with translation here: Aled Rhys Wiliam, the editor of the Vendotian or northern code of medieval Welsh law, gives the meaning here as cowl or hood (which is indeed one of the meanings of the word), whereas GPC cites the same passage as evidence for understanding it as “cape, cope, cloak” and derives it from Old English cappa[n]. In the Demetian or southern code of the law, the groom of the rein receives the king’s cappan glaw [rain cappan] when he has finished with it, but whether this is a rain hood or rain coat is difficult to ascertain.196 According to the same law code, the chief groom was entitled to a cappan if there was hide attached to it,197 but again it is difficult to ascertain the exact meaning. The value of a cappan dynessyc [urban cappan] is twenty-four pence. Wiliam suggests that this is a reference to fashionable town wear as distinct from what is worn about the house,198 since it is here contrasted with pentan [hearth] wear, which is worth a mere eight pence.199

���������������������������������������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 16, Davies, Mabinogion, 223. �������������    Davies, Mabinogion, 222, 223; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 148, 149. ��������������    Thomson, Gereint, 53; Davies, Mabinogion, 177. ������������    Jones, Medieval Welsh Clothing, 33. ��������������������������    Christopher Gravett, English Medieval Knight 1200–1300 (Oxford: Osprey, 2002), 30. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 16 §25, 16 §32; Jenkins, Law of Hywel Dda, 29, 34. ��������������������������    Williams and Powell, Llyfr Blegywryd, 24. ���������������    Ibid., 19. �������������    Wiliam, Llyfr Iorwerth, 131. ���������������    Ibid., 91.

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Patricia Williams In the Mabinogion there is no doubt about the meaning of capan. Peredur sees a lady on horseback picking up a lapdog in the sleeve of her capan [cape],200 and in The Dream of Rhonabwy one of Arthur’s aides is wearing a peis [tunic] and cappan of pure black brocaded silk.201 Coupled with peis and a later reference to “sleeves,” this cappan is obviously an outer garment, but precisely what kind, we have no means of telling. It is translated by the editor of the Welsh texts and the translators as “mantle,” “cape,” and “surcoat” respectively. ACCESSORIES

The accessories mentioned in these tales are brooches or clasps, precious jewels, belts, buckles, combs, and rings. Rhiannon and Branwen, after their marriages, donate lavish gifts to visitors at their courts.202 Generosity was one of the attributes of a noble woman which the poets were expected to praise203 and, since poets would sometimes fulfil the function of storytellers, it is not astonishing that they would introduce this stereotyped picture of courtly bounty into their tales. Likewise in Culhwch and Olwen, Cei says that the greater the bounty they show, the greater will be their nobility and fame and honour.204 Owen-Crocker warns, in relation to Anglo-Saxon dress: We must immediately dissociate ourselves from modern conceptions that jewellery is almost purely ornamental and that the way it is worn is a matter of personal choice. In the Dark Ages, jewellery, although decorated, was primarily functional. Buckles secured belts and other straps; brooches were also fasteners. A brooch pin could secure clothing, either by fastening a garment to itself or by hooking an outer garment to an inner.205

This seems to be true of medieval Wales too. All the above-mentioned accessories had a function; they also acted as payment in kind, as status symbols, or sometimes as protection or recognition tokens. In The Dream of Maxen, Elen’s shifts are fastened with cayeu [clasps], and her ysgîn [gown] is secured with a taced/tacde [brooch]; she also wears a gwregys [belt], but it is not stated which item of clothing is belted. All of these accessories are made of rudeur [red gold], as is her ractal [frontlet], which is studded with rudem a gwen em [rubies and red gems], alternating with mererid [pearls] and amperodron mein [imperial stones].206 A brooch pinned to a V-necked garment is clearly visible on the effigy of Princess Joan at Beaumaris (fig. 5.2), but whether it had a practical function

���������������    Goetinck, Peredur, 68; Davies, Mabinogion, 101. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 6; Davies, Mabinogion, 217; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 141. ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 19, 37; Davies, Mabinogion, 15–16, 27. �������������������������������������������������������    Griffith John Williams and Evan John Jones, eds., Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1934), 133. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 5–6; Davies, Mabinogion, 183; Jones and Jones, Mabinogion, 99. �������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 25. ��������������    Roberts, Breudwyt Maxen Wledic, 3; Davies, Mabinogion, 104.

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Dress in the Mabinogion or was carved simply to indicate that this was an effigy of an aristocratic woman is impossible to tell. Men’s clothing too is secured by decorative fastenings. The cloak of a young squire in The Dream of Rhonabwy is held at his right shoulder by a gwaell eur [gold pin], which is said to be as thick as a warrior’s middle finger, and his shoes of speckled Cordovan leather have gwaegeu eur [golden buckles].207 This is reminiscent of the shoes fashioned by Manawydan in the Third Branch of the Mabinogi, a product which earned him the title “One of the Three Golden Shoemakers.”208 It is this reduplication of traditional themes that makes it difficult to date the items of clothing mentioned in these tales. Gold clasps and buckles are also attached to belts and sheaths of swords. Another young squire in The Dream of Rhonabwy has a sword belt of rough Cordovan leather with gilded cross-pieces and a clasp of asgwrn eliffant, literally “elephant’s bone,” or ivory, while another has a similar sword belt with a clasp of asgwrn moruil [whalebone].209 When Culhwch goes to the court of the giant Ysbaddaden to seek the hand of his daughter in marriage, he and his retinue have fine combs set in their hair.210 It is difficult to know whether it was customary for combs to be worn as hair decoration in early times. In discussing women’s headwear in the fifth and sixth centuries, Owen-Crocker says that although the many combs recovered from Anglo-Saxon contexts suggest that care of the hair was important, there is no evidence that they were actually worn in the hair as a fashion accessory.211 But combs were clearly important in the society depicted in this tale, because one of the tasks set for Culhwch to complete, in order to win his bride, was to recover a comb set between the ears of a dangerous animal.212 That these accessories were ornamented with precious jewels is the storyteller’s way of emphasising the high status of the characters he is depicting. Even the functional balls to weight down a cloak are of red gold and very valuable. The gold gordtorch [torque or collar] which Olwen wears, as a mark of her nobility, is studded with pearls and rubies.213 The golden-torqued ladies of the Isle of Britain are listed among those whom Culhwch invokes as sureties from the court,214 but the torque is more frequently associated with animals in these tales. One of the tasks Culhwch is given is to find a special dog collar,215 and the little dog wrapped in the sleeve of a horsewoman in Peredur Son of Efrog has a red-gold collar about his neck.216 Rings also feature in the Mabinogion, not as adornments but with an underlying function. In his quest for Olwen, Culhwch seeks the help of the shepherd Custennin, to ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 14; Davies, Mabinogion, 222. ���������������    Williams, Pedeir Keinc, 54; Davies, Mabinogion, 38; see also Rachel Bromwich, ed., Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), 67. ���������������    Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy, 15, 16–17; Davies, Mabinogion, 223. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 20, Davies, Mabinogion, 193. �������������������    Owen-Crocker, Dress, 78. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 25; Davies, Mabinogion, 197. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 18; Davies, Mabinogion, 192. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 13; Davies, Mabinogion, 188. �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 25; Davies, Mabinogion, 198. ���������������    Goetinck, Peredur, 68; Davies, Mabinogion, 101.

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Patricia Williams whom he gives a modrwy [ring].217 It is not clear from the context whether the function of this donation is to serve as a bribe or as a token by which the shepherd’s wife might recognise Culhwch, who is her nephew. In Peredur Son of Efrog, a knight arriving at Arthur’s court gives a thick gold ring to the man at the gate to hold his horse,218 clearly as payment. Later in the same tale, Gwalchmai is advised to take a ring as a token of recognition to the gatekeeper of a certain fort to which he seeks entry.219 The ring given to Owain in The Lady of the Well is harder to interpret. When Owain arrives in the kingdom of the lady of the well and is in extreme danger because he has killed her husband, he is befriended by a maiden called Luned, who gives him a ring and a stone to hide in his hand to afford him the protection of invisibility.220 Whether this stone was embedded as a gemstone in the ring or was a separate talisman is difficult to ascertain. Later in the narrative, when Owain has abandoned his wife and has returned to Arthur’s court, an unidentified maiden arrives and snatches the ring that was on his finger, calling him a cheat and traitor.221 The Welsh redactor makes no attempt to explain whether this ring was the one given to him earlier by Luned or whether it was a parting gift from his wife. It would appear that the snatching of the ring here is used as a plot device. It is a reminder that through the magic properties of a ring he had escaped capture as the man who had killed an earl and had won his widow as his wife. Thus it emphasises and aggravates his treachery in abandoning her. PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION

One of the main problems in discussing clothing in the Mabinogion is that it is impossible to ascertain whether the items described are those worn at the time of the final redaction of the tale in which they occur; a figment of the storyteller’s imagination, based on what he had heard from other sources; or even remembered descriptions of great antiquity transmitted orally from one generation to the next. Even Giraldus Cambrensis, who set out to describe what he observed, could not resist the temptation to compare the Welsh women’s headwear to that of the ancient Parthians, without citing any corroborative evidence to support his claim.222 Another problem is the difficulty of translation, not only from one language to another but also from one period to another. The meanings that some of these items have acquired in a later age are quite different from their earlier meanings, and loanwords deviate from the original and develop a meaning of their own; for example, the Irish borrowing brat [cloak] becomes a garment worn by a person of inferior status in Welsh. Many of the items appear to be synonymous; sidan and seric and syndal all �������������������������    Bromwich and Evans, Culhwch, 16; Davies, Mabinogion, 191. ���������������    Goetinck, Peredur, 11; Davies, Mabinogion, 68. ���������������    Goetinck, Peredur, 59; Davies, Mabinogion, 96. ��������������    Thomson, Owein, 12; Davies, Mabinogion, 123. ���������������    Thomson, Owein, 21; Davies, Mabinogion, 131. �������������    Thorpe, Gerald, 238.

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Dress in the Mabinogion mean “silk,” but it is no longer possible to determine whether there was any difference between them with regard to the nature of the fabric. Lexicographers have also given misleading definitions because they lacked knowledge about textiles. This is particularly evident in the attempts to identify many of the materials discussed above, such as gra, ysgarlat, godreon, and tenllif. CONCLUSION

Based on the descriptions in the Mabinogion, it appears that men would typically wear three layers of clothing: a crys [shirt] and llawdr [trousers] as undergarments, with a pais [tunic], and then a swrcot [surcoat] and mantell [mantle] on top, but the intended difference between a surcoat and mantle is not clear from the context. Women likewise would wear several layers; a crys [shift] fastened at the breast by a clasp, over which was worn a swrcot and an ysgîn of the same length, secured by another precious brooch. It is difficult to determine the exact meaning of ysgîn; it could be a “robe, mantle, cloak or gown,” but when it is described as the third tier of clothing, it is most likely to be a cloak. The items of clothing mentioned in these tales represent the dress of the aristocracy and are icons used to illustrate the sumptuous wealth of the courts in which they are worn. The dress of the lower classes is seldom mentioned except to indicate a change in a character’s circumstances, and it is never mentioned without an underlying purpose. In the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, the terminology is vague, and the lavishness of the garments is shown by reference to the fabrics from which they are made, whereas in the later tales loanwords are frequently used to refer to items of clothing, and the descriptions of them are more precise. Nevertheless, even the earliest tales mention foreign materials, which indicates that Wales was not isolated from the trading world and had access from an early period to fashion and fabrics which were in vogue elsewhere in Europe.

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Dressing for Success: How the Heroine’s Clothing (Un)Makes the Man in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose Kathryn Marie Talarico Jean Renart’s thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose recounts the story of the youthful German emperor Conrad, who enjoys life and does not want to settle down and marry. His minstrel tells him about Guillaume and his beautiful sister, Lïenor. Conrad falls in love at the description, calls Guillaume to court, and arranges to marry Lïenor sight unseen. A seneschal, jealous of Guillaume’s favor with the emperor, reveals a secret about the rose-shaped birthmark on Lïenor’s thigh, suggesting intimate knowledge of her. The marriage is called off, and everyone at court is greatly upset. Lïenor goes to court to prove her innocence. The seneschal is punished, and the marriage is celebrated. In his preface, Jean also claims an important innovation in his composition: the inclusion of lyric poems, skillfully interwoven into the text. But this text is fraught with hermeneutic minefields. Whether scholars debate the title, date, authorship, narrative lines, characters, language, or lyric insertions, the

This article is an expanded version of a paper presented in May 2009 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan.  ���������������������������������������������������������������������������   All references are to the following edition and translation: Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or of Guillaume de Dole (Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole), ed. and trans. Regina Psaki (New York: Garland, 1995). Parenthetical citations in the text indicate line number. While Psaki’s text follows the line numbering of Félix Lecoy’s edition, Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole (Paris: Champion, 1979), hers is a diplomatic transcription of the unique manuscript (Vatican City, Vatican Library, MS Regina 1725) and functions as a “middle ground” between a fully edited text and the manuscript itself. Because of the interpretive difficulties of this work, this edition aids scholars who seek a “less interventionist” text that is not a “tidied, deciphered, and … pre-translated and interpreted version”; Psaki, Romance of the Rose, xxx and xxix.  �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   For a discussion of the difficulties in translating and summarizing this text, see Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or Guillaume de Dole, trans. Patricia Terry and Nancy Vine Durling (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 1–15; Patricia Terry, “On the Untranslatable Surface of Guillaume de Dole,” in Jean Renart and the Art of Romance: Essays on Guillaume de Dole, ed. Nancy Vine Durling (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 142–53.

Kathryn Marie Talarico Rose rapidly eludes attempts to pin down any one, clear meaning. This study suggests another reading of these characters and the author’s plan for his romance as exemplified by the poet’s extensive use of clothing. The characters in this slippery text engage in acts typical of romance plots (for example, the search for a bride, adventures, chivalrous behavior), but they function on another level as well: The characters play with and play on both the gender and generic stereotypes of romance, creating a story that is ironic, parodic, serious, and subversive all at once. While Jean’s use of clothing and the vocabulary chosen to discuss it are extensive, the focus here is on the character of Lïenor. It is her wardrobe and her use of clothing to defend her honor, expose the lying seneschal, and precipitate the denouement that finally help to coalesce all the factors at play—factors that are present in earlier scenes of the romance and that shed light on her character. Lïenor’s use of clothing is, in other words, what Sarah-Grace Heller calls “fashion performance.” And at the end of the tale, when Lïenor goes to court to defend her honor, she gives the performance of a lifetime. The character of Lïenor crystallizes many of the problems of interpreting this complex text. Rather than a pawn in a game of sexual wagers and betrayals, she can be seen as complicit with the author, as both of them play with the gender and generic stereotypes of romance literature. Her “absence” and “displacement” are only on the surface of the plot. Lïenor’s story gathers together the disparate pieces of this crazy ���������������������������   See the following: Psaki, Romance of the Rose, xi–xiv; Rita Lejeune, “Jean Renart et le roman réaliste au XIIIe siècle,” in Le Roman jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle, ed. Jean Frappier and Reinhold R. Grimm (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1978), 400–53; John W. Baldwin, “‘Once There Was an Emperor …’: A Political Reading of the Romances of Jean Renart,” in Durling, Jean Renart, 45–82; Norris J. Lacy, “‘Amer par oïr dire’: Guillaume de Dole and the Drama of Language,” The French Review 54, no. 6 (1981): 779–87; Félix Lecoy, “Sur la date de Guillaume de Dole,” Romania 82, no. 3 (1961): 379–402; Carmela Mattioli, “Sulla datazione del Guillaume de Dole,” Cultura Neolatina 25 (1965): 91–112; Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).  �������������������������������������������������������������������������   See Regina Psaki, “Jean Renart’s Expanded Text: Lïenor and the Lyrics of Guillaume de Dole,” in Durling, Jean Renart, 122–41, for an analysis of Jean’s “challenge to the assumptions and processes involving both gender and genre as expressed in the courtly romances that preceded Guillaume de Dole” (p. 123) through an examination of the lyric insertions. My study of the author’s use of clothing further illustrates Psaki’s thesis that “the author blends a variety of mutually glossing genres and perspectives to concoct a unique romance whose primary narrative program is to challenge, deftly and playfully, the assumptions, agendas, epistemology, and ideology of the courtly romance” (p. 125).  ���������������������   Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), 9.  �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The terms “absent woman” and “displaced heroine” are used by Maureen Barry McCann Boulton and Roberta Krueger in their studies of the Rose: Maureen Barry McCann Boulton, “Lyric Insertions and the Reversal of Romance Conventions in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose or Guillaume de Dole,” in Durling, Jean Renart, 85–104; Roberta L. Krueger, “Double Jeopardy: The Appropriation of Woman in Four Old French Romances of the ‘Cycle de la Gageure,’” in Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextual Criticism, ed. Sheila Fisher and Janet Halley (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 21–50: and Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance, Cambridge Studies in French 43 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 129–55. Other ������������������������������������������������� studies of gender issues as they relate to Lïenor and the heroines of other thirteenth-­century romances include E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture, The Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Nancy A. Jones, “The Uses of Embroidery in the Romances

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose quilt text and illustrates how Jean subverts genre and gender in the narrative—all the while seeming to reinscribe her into the society he parodies and questions. This is part of his complex game of “pulling the wool over our eyes,” as Lïenor weaves a tale that then serves to unravel the threads of the fanciful story woven by the seneschal. TEXT AND TEXTILES

In references to fabrics and textiles, modern readers can recognize the echo of the Rose’s prologue, which, in addition to mentioning the lyric insertions, sets the stage for the importance of textiles, clothing, and dress accessories for all the characters. In the prologue, Jean compares his use of lyrics and music to highly valued scarlet dye used in cloth, and the parallels he draws between lyrics, textiles, and poetry should be remembered by the audience as the narrative events unfold. The lyric insertions, recognizable only to educated readers, “embroider” his tale: car aussi co[m] lenmet la g[ra]ine Es d[ra]s por avoir los et pris Einsi ail chans et sons mis En cestui romans de larose Qui est une novele chose et sest des autres si divers et brodez p[ar] lieus de biaus vers

For just as people put scarlet dye into cloth to earn praise and fame, so has this author put lyrics and music into this Romance of the Rose, which is something quite new and altogether different from the others, embroidered in places with fair verses

of Jean Renart: Gender, History, Textuality,” in Durling, Jean Renart, 13–44; Helen Solterer, “At the Bottom of Mirage, a Woman’s Body: Le Roman de la rose of Jean Renart,” in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 213–33.  7��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   In describing the way the seneschal lied to Conrad, Jean uses the expression “Sachiez quil nestoit mie fous / puis li sot bien trere p[ar] loel / la plume” (3472–74), translated by Regina Psaki as “He knew well how to pull the wool over the king’s eyes.” While the expression literally translates to “to draw the feather by/over/across the eye,” the implication is “to deceive.” This is the meaning Rose editor Félix Lecoy gives to it in his edition (Le Roman de la Rose, 222). The translation by Jean Dufournet and colleagues uses the modern French word leurrer (to deceive or delude); Jean Renart, Guillaume de Dole ou le Roman de la Rose, trans. Dufournet et al. (Paris: Champion, 1979), 71. Patricia Terry and Nancy Vine Durling (Romance of the Rose, 66) also use the idiomatic expression “pull the wool over the eyes.” Godefroy’s Dictionnaire de l’ancienne Langue Française, vol. 10 (Paris: F. Vieweg & E. Bouillon, 1902), s.v. “plume,” cites the Rose as the sole attestation of this expression in Old French and translates it as flatter, a meaning that does not convey, in context, the sense of tricking or hoodwinking someone. The more recent Old French–English Dictionary, ed. A. Hindley et al. (2000; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), s.v. “plume,” translates the expression as “deceive, hoodwink, pull wool over eyes.”  ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   For the relation of the prologue to the lyrics, see Boulton, “Lyric Insertions.” Boulton notes that, for the most part, song, singer, and theme do not fit neatly together. Two other studies of embroidery and fabric making are Caroline Jewers, “Fabric and Fabrication: Lyric and Narrative in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose,” Speculum 71, no. 4 (1996): 907–24, and Jones, “Uses of Embroidery.” While both analyze the themes of fabric, dyeing, and embroidering, Jones takes a more literal approach, whereas Jewers tends toward an ironic reading.

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Kathryn Marie Talarico Que vilains nel porroit savoir … that an uncultivated man would not recognize …   (8–15) Sest avis a chascun et samble and it will seem to everyone Q[ue] cil qui a fet les romans that he who wrote the romance Q[ui]l trovast toz le moz des chans also composed all the words of the songs, Siafierent aceuls del [con]te so well do they fit those of the story.   (26–29)

Caroline Jewers enlarges the interpretive field of the embroidery motif by examining the relationship between the intricate and detailed exchange of and emphasis on clothing and the circulation of songs in the Rose. For Jewers, “robes, mantels, and tunics are the material correlatives of the various kinds of song that adorn the text aurally as the clothes do visually. While it might seem improbable at first, Jean’s prologue plants the idea with his analogy of textual composition to cloth production.”10 According to Jewers, “Jean presents text as textile,” in an attempt “to fashion a fresh form”11 from the earlier romances of Chrétien de Troyes and lyric poetry. The basic fabric of Jean’s romance is not merely dyed: It is embroidered with songs as well, embellishing it and making it more multifaceted. The clothing in the text goes one step further: It is dyed, embroidered, and lined. The artistic and artificial elements added to clothing, even if seen only briefly, force the audience to examine what is “underneath” or “inside” that clothing. While this analogy may be applied to the technique of adding songs to romance, as Jewers suggests, it is also an indication to pay attention to what is beneath the surface of the characters. Clothing, objects, people, and words in this text are most often not what they seem to be, and appearances are often deceptive: Scarlet dye adds value to cloth (as songs do to romance); the revelation of the red rose on Lïenor’s thigh dishonors her; ruby rings can buy secrets from indiscreet mothers; expensive gifts from emperors can buy loyalty. If the prologue sets out the figurative relationship between text and textile, it is in the main body of the narrative that we see Jean’s literal preoccupation with clothing. The Rose contains sixty references to clothing and accessories (in a text that is 5,655 lines long). Table 6.1 categorizes these references: gifts given outright; rewards  ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   On the surface, the lyric insertions, like the dye in a cloth, are embellishments of the original “raw” material. But are they the only embellishments (or, to use Jean’s word, “embroidery”)? Jean also says that he wants his story to reach the ears of Milon de Nanteuil, “one of the nobles of the realm” (6–7). Unlike Philippe de Flandres or Marie de Champagne for Chrétien de Troyes, Milon is not the patron or commissioner of the text. A “cultivated” reader might catch this reference to Milon, who prefigures the arriviste tendencies of Guillaume and his family, since Milon essentially purchased or bribed his way to the hotly contested bishopric of Reims for three thousand gold marks. See Baldwin, “Once There Was an Emperor,” 50. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������   Jewers (“Fabric and Fabrication,” 920), also discusses the use of the word pene, which occurs frequently, and signifies in Old French “feather, bird, plumage, the top band on a shield, quill, pelt, and lining.” Pene as lining occurs in lines 237, 1531, 4183, 4352, 5178, and 5352. Jean uses all these meanings for the word in his text—separately and, I think, at once. His vocabulary choices often point to the polysemous nature of language, literature, and life—invitations to look for an interpretive layer beneath the surface. See Jewers, “Fabric and Fabrication,” 919–20. �����������������������������������������   Jewers, “Fabric and Fabrication,” 923.

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose Table 6.1: References to clothing and accessories in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose Type and number of references

Lines

Clothing as gift (22)

88–91, 94–95, 1128–39, 1228–32, 1676–92, 1816–21, 1825–28, 1830, 1833–34, 1871–73, 1876–90, 1914–21, 1930–31, 1956–64, 2468–70, 3344–45, 4341–49, 4503–8, 4932–33, 5489–92, 5493–99, 5516–22

Clothing as reward (5)

723, 874–75, 1841–42, 2204–9 (withheld), 4445–46

Description of clothing (6)

194–209, 232–41, 242–57, 2194–2203, 2496–99, 5324–57

General mention of elegant or ugly clothing (14)

428–32, 1530–35, 1536–39, 2538–39, 3262, 3280–83, 4066–77, 4243, 4457–58, 4549–50, 5169, 5360–61, 5364–71, 5413

Clothing and fabrics purchased, new, or already acquired (7)

1087–88, 1090–91, 1276–77, 1530–33, 1650–59, 1956–64, 5381

Clothing as polite gesture, trap, or weapon (6)

971–73, 4291–95, 4350–86, 4423–35, 4716–41, 5264–65

(sometimes withheld) for some service or act performed; adornments in their own right (beautiful or otherwise); reminders of the expense (and debt) incurred to acquire clothing and equipment; polite gestures; and, in Lïenor’s case, clothing as weapon and trap. Lengthy, static descriptions of clothing (two) are reserved for Lïenor alone—her dress and accessories for her appearance in court to clear her name, and finally, her imperial garments. Her use of clothing (as gift, trap, or weapon), however, is at odds with the use of clothing by the other characters, further indicating how she subverts the familiar signposts of earlier romances. The references to clothing as gift or reward are by far the most numerous (twentytwo and five, respectively), with Conrad and Guillaume the most generous donors. Of the thirteen clothing references involving Conrad, two mention what he is wearing (the third in that category refers to his crown), five represent his use of clothing as gift, two describe rewards, and three are his discussions of the usefulness of clothing as gift or reward.12 There are twenty-one references to Guillaume and clothing: Seven refer to gifts, two to rewards, one to a polite gesture, and eleven to what he already has or needs.13

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Conrad’s generosity is a characteristic of a good king (“m[ou]t se[con]tint com sages rois”; 47). ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Guillaume shows us the real monetary expense incurred to outfit himself properly. He says that he has most of what he needs, but for the tournament at St.-Trond, he needs a helmet (to replace one that had been lost in a previous tournament; 1647–59). The emperor Conrad readily sends him a gift of an expensive helmet (1661–92). Guillaume will write to a burgher in Liège who has advanced money to him in the past, and will order the equipment he needs (1952–64). He apparently has good credit.

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Kathryn Marie Talarico Before Lïenor’s first appearance (1002), there are three references to the opulent clothing worn by the nobles in Conrad’s court—indications of the lavish lifestyle of those who surround the emperor and the “good life” they want to preserve by making sure that Conrad marries: “Se ciz bers qui est meiudres dautres / muert sanz hoir nos somes tuit mort” [If this lord, who is better than any other, / dies without an heir, we’ll all be ruined] (126–27). From the outset, then, material objects are shown to be important signs of inner worth. But, as with so many of the actions, images, and words in this text, Jean is asking some questions as well.14 LININGS OF CHARACTER

Jean’s preoccupation with the literal and figurative surfaces and linings of clothes, words, and actions in the episodes preceding Lïenor’s first appearance provides a key to how the reader/listener might interpret the narrative schema and Lïenor’s role in it. For instance, when Conrad is first introduced, Jean states that he is valiant and accomplished, but ends by saying: “Sihai mout vilain pechie / et en este mengier a fu” [He hated base sin, and sitting at home / to eat by the fire in summer] (42–43). The juxtaposition of high moral values and the mundane detail of not liking to eat in front of the fire in summer is one of the many instances where Jean begins a phrase with a conventional idea and ends with something unexpected. Conrad is depicted as distributing lavish gifts to his nobles, knights, and ladies, since this is how he gains (buys?) their loyalty. On the literal surface, Conrad is a good and wise king, but underneath the praise, there is something a bit less idealized, such as when he clears all the “old bores” out of the tents so that he and his knights can frolic with the ladies (170–228). If the ambivalent and ironic tone of these early scenes indicates that it is necessary to look under the literal surface for other meanings, then we should do the same with the character of Lïenor. We first hear about Lïenor when Conrad asks the minstrel Jouglet for a tale to “wake him up” and to relieve his boredom (652–54). Jouglet complies with a story about a “noble and valiant knight” (661) and a lady he loved. Jouglet describes them both, but the story, like most of the lyric insertions, is not told in its entirety. All the stereotypical details of the description of the lady (695–722) are present: Her eyes sparkle like jewels; her teeth and mouth were Nature’s finest work; the color of her face was like the rose and the lily, etc.—but this could be any romance heroine, any ideal woman, since the language used is the standard encomium of feminine beauty

������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Jean’s playfulness with words, clothing, and people could also be serious material for extratextual discussion. While Lïenor’s wish to become empress is granted in the end, what are the implications of her reintegration into this more conventional female role? Is it as literal as Jean’s ending indicates? Richard Kaeuper suggests that romance (in the thirteenth century, still a relatively new genre) “is not simply a literature of celebration or agreement; it is a literature of debate, criticism, reform.” Kaeuper, “The Societal Role of Chivalry in Romance: Northwestern Europe,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 99.

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose found in romance.15 The emperor’s immediate (over)reaction to this simulacrum of a story is to reward Jouglet with a cloak: “Or tien fet il cest mantel gris / certes quil est bien emploiez” [Here, take this fur cloak / for it is certainly well-spent] (723–24). He then laments that no one so beautiful could possibly exist in reality and “toz i morrai sanz tele amie / Qen mo[n] regne na sa pareille” [I will die without ever having such a love / for there isn’t her like in my realm] (737–38). Jouglet understands the hyperbole of literature and understands as well that it is just that: literature, fiction. He tells the emperor one can always find someone as fair and noble in real life (739–43). To prove his point, Jouglet says that he knows of such a lady and her family: “et q[ue] ge nai done nesune / beaute celi q[ue] ceste nait” [and I have attributed no beauty to the other / that this one doesn’t have] (745–46). But while he seems to lavish praise on the virtues of the family, when he tells Conrad that the knight’s name is Guillaume de Dole, he adds that this is not because the town of Dole belongs to him—undermining what appears on the surface. Jouglet explains: “Quil enmaint pres aun plessie / Sapar dole plus essaucie / Sonsornon q[ue] par une vile / ce vient plus de sens q[ue] de guile” [He lives nearby, in a manor; / Dole distinguishes his surname / more than the name of a village; he does it out of good sense, not cunning] (784–87). When Jouglet finally states the lady’s name (791), Conrad soars to the heights of love (“Amors la cuit dune estencele / De cel biau non m[ou]t p[re]s del cuer” [Love struck a spark in his heart / with this beautiful name] (793–94). He demands a description. Jouglet provides one, though it is not transcribed. After falling in love with Lïenor’s name, Conrad sends for the brother rather than woo the woman. When the messenger, Nicholas, arrives at the manor and presents the emperor’s letter, Guillaume asks how the emperor is, since it has been a long time since he last saw him (984–85), an indication that Guillaume has had contact with the royal court (and Jouglet) in the past and that what is about to occur is perhaps prearranged.16 Guillaume promptly takes the letter to his mother and sister, and we see Lïenor for the first time. When Guillaume gives her the gold seal from the letter, Lïenor exclaims: “Ha! dame sedex me sekeure / Fet ele ordoi m[ou]t estre lie / Qu[an]t iai.i.roi de ma mesnie” [Oh! lady mother, so help me God, / I should certainly be happy / now that I have a king in my household] (1006–8). This ambiguous expression, “a king in my household,” is used twice in the text. On one level, the picture on the seal is a literal image of the king in the household. On another level, when Guillaume repeats her words to Conrad, the “presence” of the king is more figurative, and may be a sign

�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   These descriptions recall the stereotyped portraits found in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. See Alice M. Colby, The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature: An Example of the Stylistic Originality of Chrétien de Troyes (Geneva: Droz, 1965). �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Jouglet told the emperor that he knows this family, and when he meets Guillaume in his rooms, they greet each other as old friends: “dole ch[evalie]r a Guillame / ouest li deduiz dou roiaume / Li solaz et la g[ra]nt proece” [Dole! Knight! Oh, Guillaume! / Where is the joy of the realm, / its strength and consolation?] (1477–79).

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Kathryn Marie Talarico of the desires and aspirations of the young girl from the outskirts of Dole.17 Regina Psaki discusses Lïenor’s appearance: “Her description displaced, her name fetishized: when Lïenor herself first appears, she is not described; rather, she enters the action as though we had already seen her. . . . Within the romance, Lïenor is carefully kept from the gaze of strangers and she is kept from our gaze as well. By veiling her from us, the author problematizes rather than simply imitates the careful direction of the reader’s (listener’s) gaze in courtly romance, toward the woman as the object of vision and desire.”18 The reader/listener has, in fact, already “seen” her, because of Jouglet’s earlier description of her to Conrad. His description was, of course, at one remove, since it was the attribution of the beauty of the fictional lady of his song to the lady he knows about—Lïenor. Such beauty is apparently interchangeable within the generic norms of romance. But we must always remember that Jean is reminding us to pay attention to the lining of the narrative events. Lïenor “peeks out” from the fabric of the main narrative in unexpected ways until she turns the entire cloth inside out when she goes to court to defend her honor. The subsequent scenes describe a household busily preparing for Guillaume’s departure the following day. There is a sense that this is a family very conscious of outward appearances, of doing the correct thing in order to advance in society. Guillaume’s mother wants to make sure that her son has not only the right people to accompany him to court, but that he also has everything (clothes, gifts, etc.) he needs so that no one will say he is “povres nenuz” [poor and ill-clothed] (1088). They make sure that Nicholas is well fed and shown every courtesy, so that he gives a positive report to the emperor. There is the distinct impression here that everything is carefully planned, that no detail is too small to be overlooked by all members of the family—including Lïenor. LININGS AND PERFORMANCES

Nicholas sees Guillaume’s mother and sister for the first time when he is led to the ladies’ chamber where the women are embroidering. In light of Lïenor’s reaction to the seal on Conrad’s letter and the mother’s insistence on making sure that Guillaume is well equipped for his arrival at court, there is a certain dissonance in this episode as well. Could this be a carefully prepared scene, a staged performance that gives the impression of a “perfect” noble family that Nicholas could recount back at court? When Nicholas receives parting gifts from Lïenor and her mother (an almspurse and a clasp; 1228–29), he thanks them “five hundred” times (“.v.c. merciz”; 1233). Meanwhile, his

������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Guillaume repeats Lïenor’s exact words to Conrad: “biau doz frere orsui ge m[ou]t lie / Q[ua]nt iai. i.roi de ma mesnie” [Fair sweet brother, I am very happy / now that I have a king in my household] (3679–80). Conrad understands the figurative meaning of her words, since his discussion with Guillaume concerns the fact that Conrad cannot marry Lïenor since she is allegedly no longer a virgin. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Psaki, “Jean Renart’s Expanded Text,” 128. Her name has been either evoked or stated three times earlier, at lines 791, 794, and 920.

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose private thoughts reflect that, in fact, what he saw of the family was what they intended and that he would tell the emperor about it: et sepense cainc mes ne vit privately he thought that he had never seen Si bons enfanz netele mere such good children or such a mother, Sile savra li emperere and resolved that the emperor should know of it. (1236–38)

The scene of embroidering and singing chansons de toile is also important because it is precisely this sort of scene that Lïenor will invoke when she goes to court to clear her name. She will use the commonplaces of singing and embroidering to entrap the lying seneschal and to reveal his lie publicly. In light of Lïenor’s credible and stereotypical evocation of the chanson de toile and embroidery motifs in the last third of the text, should we look for a lining in this first scene as well?19 The image the women convey certainly meets the expectations of Nicholas (a symbol of both the traditional male audience and the fictional audience at Conrad’s court). He is shown all the right things. When Lïenor smiles at her brother and resists ever so slightly his request to sing another song, are we to see only the surface—a lovely young woman with a demure smile who reluctantly acquiesces to her brother’s request—or does her smile also indicate that the family’s earlier actions, and this current scene, are successful performances for the benefit of the messenger and that they are having their desired effect? That would seem to be the case, since there is very little in this narrative that is gratuitous, and what is is not always what it appears to be. LININGS AND SONGS

The love songs that Lïenor sings here may be a reference to Conrad and the “love from another country,”20 but while she is portrayed from a variety of angles, Lïenor is never portrayed as a woman in love—in a text that claims to speak of “arms and love” (24). For a text that puts such emphasis on the importance of songs, these two chansons de toile are the only songs Lïenor sings. On a literal level, they would seem to inscribe ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Solterer (“At the Bottom of Mirage,” 222–23) highlights the underlying tensions between the ideal lady of song and the reality of Lïenor in this scene: “These lyrics portray women who while away the time as they work, plaiting together memories and dreams of love to come. On first sight, they delineate Lienors’s position exactly. They identify her with those idealized ladies of the lyric genre … . Yet couched in this coincidence is one jarring discrepancy. … She is represented, quite literally, as an impoverished young woman for whom sewing is a necessary craft. The irony … lies less in the fact that the symbolic and the ‘real’ clash than in the fact that the discrepancy is deliberately not recognized. The various personages surrounding Lienors … insist on approaching her as an ideal woman, invented according to the chansons de toile model. … [T]his first representation of Lienors is a mise en question of the model of chanson de toile woman.” Jones (“Uses of Embroidery,” 26) refers to the importance of the credibility of such an image when Lïenor defends herself at court: “[I]t also points to the broader ideological characterization of the embroideress as inherently tempting to male eyes because of her apparent passivity and self­preoccupation. Lïenor’s credibility depends on her listeners’ unconscious acceptance of this stereotype.” ��������������������������������������   See Boulton, “Lyric Insertions,” 94.

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Kathryn Marie Talarico her fully into the realm of female passivity—a realm to which she clearly does not belong. The absence of songs for Lïenor stands in direct contrast to Conrad and his court, who find almost any occasion a reason to sing. In a text that claims to want to have its songs remembered, that presents itself as an anthology of the major forms of lyric expression, it is a stunning omission that there are no other songs for Lïenor, who ultimately resists fitting neatly into the mold of the ideal feminine persona.21 While Lïenor is a unique literary creation who defies and deconstructs the boundaries of both romance and lyric and shows them to be the inaccurate, superficial images and constructs of her society, Conrad appears trapped by them. If Lïenor has few songs to sing, Conrad has an endless supply to either sing himself or to have sung to him, in the same way that he has an endless supply of clothing and other gifts to distribute to loyal subjects. His register is that of the grand chant courtois, and his overstated emotionality tries to make literature coincide with life’s experiences. He easily accepts the commonplaces of romance and lyric: A name suffices to transport him to the heights of giddy lovesickness, and the revelation of Lïenor’s rose plunges him into the deepest despair—repeated in songs he sings. The excessively self-conscious presence of the lyrics, as self-referential decoration, also undermines their ­effectiveness, since Conrad has never seen Lïenor. She remains for him the desired, distant, and idealized lady of poetry. If romance and lyric are generically undermined and subverted in a gradual process throughout the narrative, and if text is textile, then the “old” cloth of romance is beginning to look slightly moth-eaten and the fur to smell less than sweet. When Lïenor rides to court to clear her name, however, all the generic threads will come together again, only to be undone and rewoven, lavishly re-embroidered by the skillful seamstress, Lïenor herself. LÏENOR: FROM OBJECT TO SUBJECT

We see Lïenor again when Guillaume departs for Conrad’s court. Although his mother and Lïenor are “doleful” (1289), Lïenor “plus estoit droite dune ente / et plus fresche que nule rose” [was straighter than a sapling and fresher than any rose] (1290–91). This self-assured image of Lïenor stands in opposition to the image of a passive female, bent over her sewing in the ladies’ chamber, and suggests as well that the “embroideress” image may be just that: a role played for a desired effect—to get her brother to court and to eventually have an “emperor in her household.” While the presentation of Lïenor �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   This scene has elicited much discussion: Jones (“Uses of Embroidery,” 17) describes it as reflecting “male fascination with the gynaeceum.” Boulton (“Lyric Insertions,” 95) sees it as a reflection of Conrad’s feelings rather than those of the heroine—the displacement of the “lyric je and the singer.” Burns (Courtly Love Undressed, 88–118) lays out a complex reading of these songs, where sewing and singing allow the female protagonists to become subjects in love scenarios, rather than passive love objects. Solterer (“At the Bottom of Mirage,” 222–23) argues for Lïenor’s emerging “pattern of resistance” to the “female persona … of invented women advanced by the Rose,” as seen in her straining against Guillaume’s request to sing another song.

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose in the Rose is, for the most part, fragmentary (Psaki reminds us that Lïenor is offstage for four thousand lines of the 5,655-line work), we must recall these scant and fleeting images of Lïenor in those scenes where we observe her directly in action, since they will inform our view of her when she goes to court to clear her name.22 Now if Lïenor has been an “object” for a large part of the narrative (absent, talked about, idealized, dreamt about, and defamed), in the last third of the text she reappears (3948) fully in control—the “subject” of her own narrative devices. When Guillaume’s hot-headed nephew goes to Guillaume’s home to avenge his uncle’s dishonor and is about to strike Lïenor, he trips and falls over a piece of wood and is subdued by one of the servants. Jean adds that now the nephew cannot do any great harm, except with words: “orna il pooir q[ue]il face / t[ro]p g[ra]nt mal se nest de parole” (3930–31). This statement summarizes the problematics of language in the narrative. The nephew reveals the “proof ” of the truth that he learned at court: the emperor knows about the mark of “a rose / on her right leg, / on her plump white thigh” (“la rose / Q[ue]l a devers la destre hanche / desor la cuisse grasse et blanche”; 3986–88). In contrast to her mother, who fainted after realizing her indiscretion, Lïenor springs into action without any hesitation: bele mere ainz la fin davril Fair mother, before the end of April, Q[ui] ia est mout pres de lissue which is already very near, av[ra]i ge tote a[con]seue I will have utterly exposed Sa vilonie et sa menconge his villainy and his deception. tot li ferai tenir a songe I will make him recant everything Q[ua]nquil a fet le roi cuidier he has made the king believe     (4026–31)

Jean adds the following detail: “Sele pert le g[ra]nt segnorage / Si come destre emp[er]eriz / bien les a toz morz et traiz / p[ar] son engin li seneschaus” [If she lost such a great position / as that of empress / then by his trick the seneschal / had truly betrayed and ruined them all] (4042–45). Her loss of “love” does not enter into the matter at all. Instead, “with her great good sense” (“p[ar] son g[ra]nt sens”; 4060), which heartens all around her, she declares that she will ride to court to present her own defense. She immediately gives detailed instructions to the household and the men who will accompany her and leaves with a veritable caravan of goods, including her wedding trousseau. Although the sumptuous contents are not described, Jean emphasizes the fact that this is a “wise maiden” whose wisdom will appear again:

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Psaki (“Jean Renart’s Expanded Text,” 127) notes: “Throughout the romance Lïenor is never so much present as described ‘around’—replaced by traces that represent her from the various perspectives of the characters in the romance.” This talking “around” Lïenor makes those instances when we do see her in the early part of the romance even more important. There are forty references to Lïenor in the text. Most are adjectives (sixteen) used to either praise or defame her, but a striking number (eleven) refer to her as “bele lienors,” the stereotypical epithet she assigns to herself when she reveals her true identity.

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Kathryn Marie Talarico De la soe robe demaine Two very handsome coffers Furent tuit plain dui m[ou]t bel coffre were completely filled with her clothing: onqes nule damoisele orfe never did any orphaned maiden tant nen ot ne tant bel ioel have so much, or so many fair jewels, Q[ue]l avoit ia tot son trossel for her entire trousseau was already prepared Atorne por son mariage for her marriage. onqes nen fu nule si sage There was never so wise a maiden, Si li parra et apparut as we have seen and shall see.23    (4066–73)

THE WARRIOR-HEROINE

After Lïenor’s departure (4108), Jean describes the opulent preparations for the May Day festivities in Mainz, which are contrasted with the image of a sad and pensive Lïenor who arrives in the town seeking lodging. While the town prepares for the festivities, Lïenor is making very careful preparations of her own. She is going to make use of all the “props” she has brought with her. The first step is to enlist the aid of a “clever and capable” page who will deliver the planted evidence to entrap the seneschal: a clasp, a cloth belt, an embroidered almspurse, and an emerald ring.24 Next, she gives her knights the elegant clothing they will wear to escort her to Conrad’s court: recently purchased furred robes of purple cloth, white gloves, and belts with little gold shields on them (4342–49). No detail is too small to be overlooked. These careful, elaborate preparations are the lining of the narrative fabric, and are doubled in the actual linings and embellishments of Lïenor’s own clothing as well as that of her horse’s saddlecloth: Her dark blue robe is lined with white ermine (4352); her white chemise is embroidered with flowers; and her green silk tunic is completely lined, including the body and sleeves (4357–58).25 Jean continues to remind the audience that these preparations will serve a purpose, as he interrupts the description of Lïenor’s clothing by saying that whatever the seneschal may have said, he will pay for ��������������������������������   Jean reinforces the idea that something is going to happen a few lines later when he intervenes twice, stating “a! diex co[m] venist ore miex / Q[ue] le seneschax fust a nestre” [Oh, God, it would have been better / if the seneschal had never been born!] (4092–93) and “orla [con]saut diex / Si fera il gel sai de voir” [May God help her now! / And He will, I am certain of that] (4108–9). ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   “Vos men irez auseneschal / Si porterez cest affichal / cest tiessu et ceste aumosniere / tot est brode dune maniere / et si a dedenz.i.anel / A une esmeraude mout bel” (4290–95). The emerald ring that will help save her contrasts with the ruby ring used to pry the secret of the rose from her mother. These are gifts and love tokens that would be recognizable as such by the seneschal and Conrad’s court. The page does his job well beyond what Lïenor asked, since he convinces the seneschal to tie the cloth so tightly that his skin becomes “lenestavivee de sanc” [flushed with blood] (4427). The redness of his skin recalls the other emblem of assumed/presumed guilt, Lïenor’s rose. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Her horse’s saddlecloth is a scarlet English cloth of open work that allows the ornate yellow silk lining to shine through it (“et la sambue jusq[ue]nt[er]re / dune escarlate denglet[er]re / Siert dun cendal jaune forree / lescarlate ert defferetee,” 4488–91). This is the first allusion to the descriptions of the Amazon warrior Camille and her horse in the twelfth-century Roman d’Eneas. Eighty-nine lines are devoted to Camille (3959–4048) and fifty-five to her horse (4029–84). J.-J. Salverda de Grave, ed., Eneas, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1973).

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose all the trouble he caused (4364–66). And before describing her wimple and brooch, he reminds us again, “onq[ue]s damoisele selonc ce / Quele estoit triste et dolente / Ne sot plus bel metre sentente / En li acesmer et vestir” [Considering that she was sad and sorrowful, / never did a maiden know better / how to use her skills / to dress and adorn herself] (4369–72). The details of her clothing and jewels are emphasized here, but they are also framed by her gestures, as she very deliberately arranges herself and is “arranged” by her retainers once she is on her horse. She makes sure that the rich gold brooch she wears to enhance her throat (“sa gorge parembelir”; 4373) is “set low” on her revealingly open chemise “so that her bosom appeared, far whiter / than fallen snow on a branch” (“et si quela poitrine blanche / Assez plus q[ue] nest noif sor branche”; 4378–79). Her knights arrange her robe on the horse’s back, so as not to tangle it (4517–18). Lïenor thus transforms herself into an icon of the perfect, desired, female beauty and is recognized as such by all who see her. But Jean, always at the ready to undermine or deflect facile comparisons, compares her not to other romance heroines, but rather to Aude (Oliver’s sister) and Berthe au Grand Pied (Charlemagne’s mother)—women from the epic tradition (4509–10). In fact, Lïenor is depicted here as more warrior-heroine than romance heroine, for the reader/listener at least. The townspeople (the first audience to see her fully arrayed), themselves beautifully clothed for the festivities, proclaim that if the emperor wants a wife, he should take this lady they see before them (4553–55). We see here a manifestation of the evolution in the view of Lïenor in the course of the narrative. The image that the reader/listener had from Jouglet’s initial description was in alignment with the traditional referents of romance. The reader/listener had the same anticipation of what the “real” Lïenor might be like, much as Conrad did. But Jean has been gradually separating that alignment when Lïenor is actively “on stage,” to the point now that the audience of the text sees something very different from the audience in the text. These two now-competing views of Lïenor are heightened in this last section of the narrative, where the references to earlier literature are more manifest, as the heroine finally confounds all attempts to rigidly classify her. Helen Solterer has discussed the consistent line of vision in romance literature and its ironic use in the Rose. She describes it as “characters piecing together an image of women according to their own designs”—the “assemble-it-yourself ” woman.26 I would argue that in this last section, Lïenor has constructed an “assemble-it-herself” woman. And what she has assembled will, finally, work to perfection, as Jean reminds us: “M[ou]t est bien la chose avenue / Si com el lavoit p[ro]posee” [The whole thing was turning out very well, / just as she had planned] (5022–23). When she arrives at court, so beautiful that she surpasses a merveille from the fictional Arthurian past (though the careful reader/listener knows that not all damsels who came to Arthur’s court brought something good and wonderful with them!), she

�������������������������������������������   Solterer, “At the Bottom of Mirage,” 216.

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Kathryn Marie Talarico enters with her head bowed and hot tears streaming down her face. The sight of her proves irresistible to her audience, who weeps in sympathy.27 When Conrad enters, her performance begins in earnest. The surface suggests the betrayed maiden whose virginity and treasures were stolen by the seneschal. But now there is a clear bifurcation of the lines of vision. The reader/listener knows that this is a trap, and we can enjoy the strategies Lïenor employs as she begins to pull the wool over the eyes of the assembled court. The “lining” is clear here in the military vocabulary used to describe Lïenor as Amazon warrior prepared to do battle. Once again, it is through her use of her clothing that we see her deliberately calculated gestures. As she removes her cloak, the fastening gets caught and causes her headdress to fall: le horedeis et la ventaille The defenses and the ventail Enporta ius o tot le heaume … came down with the entire helmet …     (4722–23) Si que sa crigne blonde et sore so that her fair blond hair Son biau samit inde lidore gilded the dark blue samite p[ar] espaulles et pres dou col on her shoulders and at her throat.     (4725–27)

THE FABRIC UNRAVELS

The story she recounts is a complete fabrication, but it meets the expectations of her male audience, nourished so well on the topoi of romance and lyric poetry. There is now an ironic cleavage between the line of vision of the audience in the text and that of the reader/listener. Lïenor literally, but gradually, unveils herself in this scene, but what is unveiled is in part a fiction as well—as are all associations with her throughout the text (“the beautiful Lïenor,” “the maiden with the rose,” the chatelaine from Dijon, etc.). As the supposed damsel from Dijon, she reveals “the truth” of her allegations against the seneschal. She uses what her courtly audience in the text believes to be true, only to unravel it all.28 The seneschal’s exoneration through the trial by ordeal proves that what he said was true: he never saw this woman before and he did not either rape or rob her. By proving that he had never seen her before he is, of course, admitting that �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   “Si vos di q[ue] p[or] samistie / E ni plor[er]ent plus de.c. / Leve qui des iex li descent / Ne la fesoit sembelir non” [I tell you, for love of her / over a hundred of them there wept. / The tears that fell from her eyes / only made her even more beautiful] (4642–45). The Lord of Nivelles reports to Conrad that “Neis au tens leroi artur /… Navint ausi bele aventure” [not even in the time of King Arthur / … was there such a wonderful adventure] (4681–83), a second reference to the idealized king’s court and the Arthurian literary tradition but one that asks for extratextual discussion. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   If her various identities have been incomplete and inaccurate, so too are the literary associations. In her explanation to the court, she exploits the plausibility of the image of a young girl sewing: “vostres seneschaus / … vint en.i.lieu p[ar] aventure / ou ge fesoie macousture / Si me fist m[ou]t let et out[ra]ge / Q[ui]l me toli mon pucelage / et ap[re]s … / Si ma tolue ma ceinture / et maumosniere et mon fermal” [your seneschal / … came by chance to a place / where I was doing my sewing. / He did me great harm and offense, / for he took my virginity. / And after … / he also took my belt / and my alms-purse and my brooch] (4779–87).

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose he never saw Lïenor either. Lïenor herself explains this at length (5040–93) right after revealing who she is: “Ie suis la pucele a larose / la suer a mon segnor Guill[ame]” [I am the maiden with the rose / my lord Guillaume’s sister] (5040–41). She provides the two outward signs by which her audience at court knows her and can recognize her, as well as an explanation of what happened. She also displays her anger at the seneschal for his lies about her virginity and his deception of her mother. Her explanation ends with a clear-headed refusal to accept the losses of both her honor and the queenship, and she demands the judgment of the court: Se lonor et la segnorie If the honor and the queenship de cest regne mes destinee of this realm are destined for me, ceste lasse ceste esploree this sorrowful and tearful one, Q[ua]nt ele fet na la deserte then why should I suffer the loss of it p[or] quel reson i avra perte when I have done nothing to deserve it? De ce demant ala cort droit I ask the court for judgment on this.      (5088–93)

Once again, her loss of Conrad’s love does not enter into the picture at all. In fact, her logical and levelheaded explanation is sharply and ironically contrasted with the emperor Conrad’s dreamy, romanesque reaction to the revelation of her identity when he finally puts it all together: “Estes vos ce mes cuers mamie” [Is it you, my heart, my love?] (5095).29 And Lïenor, who understands fully her audience, responds in the only language and register that Conrad and his court can possibly understand: “nen doutez mie / Ce sui ge bele lienors” [do not doubt it / I am the fair Lïenor] (5096–97). She pays lip service to the registers of both romance and lyric, but the assumptions that Conrad and his court and Jean Renart and his audience have always taken as an ontological and epistemological given have been unmasked, showing that human nature is far more complex than mere literary topoi would allow. REWEAVING THE NARRATIVE CLOTH

One of the final images of Lïenor in the romance focuses again on her clothing: her imperial wedding gown and robe, the sartorial pièces de résistance of the narrative. Her robe is also the only merveille in the text: the fabric was worked by a fairy (5324) and a queen of Puglia spent seven or eight years embroidering it “por son deduit” [for her amusement] (5327–31). There has been much critical debate concerning the meaning of Lïenor’s garments, and all positions have some validity. These multiple interpretations, which range from viewing this as the heroine’s reappropriation into and legitimization of the chivalric ethos to commentary on expanded narrative textuality or potentially dangerous female sexuality, are, collectively, accurate and, for me, represent ������������������������������������������������������������   Solterer (“At the Bottom of Mirage,” 230) notes that the “Rose prompts all readers to think twice about what they choose to see and do not see.” Conrad is an example of a character who seems to have difficulty thinking—even once.

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Kathryn Marie Talarico the deliberately polysemous meaning of the garments for the poet.30 And that is the problem we face. On the surface, the imperial garments, as merveille, seem to hark back to the traditional images of heroes and heroines in earlier romances. However, the subject of the embroidery is the history of the Trojan War. But there is perhaps another lining here as well.31 On the one hand, the garments are a mise en abyme of literary allusions as well as a means to tie together all the disparate narrative threads, genres, and perceptions of and by the characters. Psaki points out that Lïenor “joins all the versions of herself into one (admittedly illusory) presence, and the totality of perspectives offers the closest approximation of objective reality that language can hope to achieve. These competing versions converge to become one female body, which is then cloaked in the history of Troy.”32 On the other hand, there is also playfulness in Jean’s description of Lïenor’s clothing (the only example of an embroidered object in the text that tells a story), and the parts of the story Jean furnishes merit attention. What we learn about the story of Troy consists of incomplete details (much like the mostly incomplete lyric insertions). There are depictions of the birth of Helen; images of Paris and Hector, Priam, Memnon, and Achilles; the abduction of Helen and the Greek army that went out to save her. While the consequences of Helen’s abduction led to disaster, in the Rose, they do not. It appears as if the poet is exaggerating the parallels that may be drawn between the dramas of Lïenor and Conrad and those of Helen and Paris and the Greeks. More important, though, is the fact that the story of the Trojan Horse is mentioned (5344–50). This is the story of a trick played by the Greeks on the unsuspecting Trojans. Just as the Greeks won the war by virtue of a ruse, so too did Lïenor

�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   For Krueger (“Double Jeopardy,” 45), this is an example of Lïenor’s absence in the text, of her re­assimilation into the redeemed chivalric ethic: “The spunky heroine is ultimately appropriated by the male aristocracy to the project of royal lineage; she becomes, in the end, a sign legitimating Conrad and Guillaume.” Jones (“Uses of Embroidery,” 29) posits another explanation, and sees these garments standing in opposition to the image of the rose on Lïenor’s thigh: “Might we not then view the rose as the mark of the carnal (and thus dangerous) beauty of the heroine, her veiled but receptive sexuality as imagined by men, and see the robe as the emblem of her spiritual, asexual beauty and grace . . .? The preciousness of the fabric represents the economic and political power of the imperial dynasty. Instead of generating wealth through her work [i.e. her own embroidery], she now embodies her husband’s wealth.” Psaki, in “Jean Renart’s Expanded Text,” sees this scene, and the romance as a whole, as an expansion of narrativity: “Jean Renart’s ‘dismantling of narrative,’ then, is less a diminution of narrativity than an augmentation, an expansion that comments not only on the existing romance canon but on the very concept of genre and genre’s capacity to convey the multiplicity of experience” (p. 138). She further notes that in contrast to the disastrous war that ensued after the abduction of Helen of Troy, the end of the Rose “sets up a stable political continuum in which each element—emperor, bishops, lords, empress, townsfolk—accepts its assigned role. The result is political equilibrium and social tranquility, reflected in the merciful sentence Lïenor extends to the criminal seneschal” (p. 136). ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Immediately after the description of the war is the description of the lining of Lïenor’s robe: “lapene niert grise ne vaire / Ainz ert soef fleranz et fine / de noirs sebelins et dermine / tot ondoiant de lun enlautre” [The lining was neither squirrel nor miniver, / but of black sable and ermine, sweet-scented and fine, / alternating with one another] (5353–55). ��������������������������������������������   Psaki, “Jean Renart’s Expanded Text,” 137.

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Clothing in Jean Renart’s Rose reclaim her status as a worthy bride by the skillful trick she played on the seneschal and the members of Conrad’s court. Lïenor is encased in an imperial robe of superlative beauty and workmanship, and her own physical beauty garners more admiration from the assembled court than her clothing: “mes chas[cun]s prise plus sa chiere / et sa biaute q[ue] son harnues” [but everyone admired her face / and her beauty more than her apparel] (5360–61). Although she stands as an icon of ideal feminine beauty, is Jean also suggesting that this idealized vision is also only an illusion? Helen of Troy was a passive victim in the purest sense of the term. Though victimized, Lïenor is most certainly not passive. Both women may represent an image of the danger of female sexuality to the patriarchal status quo, but Lïenor, inside her opulent gown, has demonstrated that regardless of what external constraints and false, fanciful, or “embroidered” images may be present, there is an “inside,” a lining, that contains a multiplicity of meanings to be teased out by the cultivated reader. Now Guillaume de Dole is the title most often given to this work.33 And if the number of verses in which a character appears is directly proportional to his status as hero, then this is certainly Guillaume’s story. But the wily and clever Jean Renart is suggesting that while Guillaume’s exploits and Conrad’s “doleful” lovesickness occupy the bulk of the narrative, they are but the outer cloak—dyed and richly embroidered to be sure, but still only the outside, the surface. What gives weight, form, and solidity to the cloth is the lining—the simultaneous absence/presence and displacement/centrality of Lïenor. She may not occupy center stage, but we always sense her presence—like the glimpses of the opulent linings of the clothing—until she skillfully turns the whole garment inside out to remind us that the lining is far more interesting and complex than romance or lyric could ever have either contained or imagined.

�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Claude Lachet has suggested that because of what he calls Lïenor’s omnipresence in the text, Guillaume de Dole should be renamed Le Roman de Liénor. Lachet, “Présence de Liénor dans le Roman de la Rose de Jean Renart,” in “Et c’est la fin pour quoy nous sommes ensemble”: Hommage à Jean Dufournet, ed. Jean-Claude Aubailly (Paris: Champion, 1993), 2:813–25, at 825.

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Anomaly or Sole Survivor? The Impruneta Cushion and Early Italian “Patchwork” Lisa Evans

About half an hour’s drive south of Florence lies the commune of Impruneta, a quiet town that barely rates a mention in tourist guidebooks. Since Impruneta has a long history of providing the clay used in Renaissance ceramic sculpture, the local authorities are doing their best to publicize their town by employing modern technology. The town’s bilingual Web site offers links to nearby agriturismo farms and olive oil producers, a report on “the traceability of Impruneta terra-cotta,” advertisements for nearby hotels and B&Bs, videos on the use of terra cotta, a map of the commune, and a seven-hundred-year timeline of the terra cotta industry. The Web site also includes a history of the cult of Our Lady of Impruneta, a miraculous image venerated from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. The painting, heavily retouched in the 1750s, resides in the Basilica of Santa Maria dell’ Impruneta, known as the Collegiata, and the museum attached to the church houses an unexpectedly fine collection of illuminated manuscripts, embroidered vestments, ex votos, and reliquaries donated by grateful pilgrims. Despite these riches, the average tourist might feel justified in giving Impruneta a miss. It is somewhat surprising to learn that the museum is home to an artifact rarer and more notable than anything featured on the Web site: the funerary cushion of Bishop Antonio di Bellincione degli Agli.

This article is an expanded and revised version of a paper presented in May 2008 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance: Craig Felton, Simone Gugliotta, Anne Halpern, Gaye Ingram, Selena Kaplan, Chris Laning, Anita Loscalzo, Gabor Lukacs, Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani, L’Tanya Robinson, Susanna Conti Scarpelli, Caryl Schulz, Lucia Sinisi, Nancy Spies, and Kimberly Stewart.  �����������������������������������������������������������������   Fabbriche di Toscana—Impruneta, http://www.fabbricaimpruneta.it (accessed ������������������������� Aug. 19, 2011).  ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani, “The Treasury of Santa Maria dell’Impruneta,” in Museo del Tesoro di Santa Maria dell’Impruneta: Guida alla visita del museo e alla scoperta del territorio, ed. Caterina ­Caneva (Florence: Polistampa, 2005), 152–94, at 155. Among the choice items in the museum collection are a silver altar cross attributed to Lorenzo Ghiberti and a beautifully embroidered altar cloth.  ���������������   Ibid., 152–53.

Lisa Evans Bishop Agli, parish priest of Impruneta from 1439 to his death in 1477, was buried in the Collegiata at his own request. His tomb remained sealed and undisturbed until 1944, when the church was damaged by Allied bombs in World War II. Local authorities who checked the tomb soon after the war discovered an astonishing cushion of silk and wool stitched together in complex star and lozenge patterns, barely a foot square, supporting his head. It is one of the most unusual pieces of early European needlework, as its reported provenance would place it among the earliest known examples of decorative, nonfunctional piecing. The cushion raises many questions, such as who made it, when it was made, whether it was made specifically for the Bishop’s tomb, and how it was constructed. Above all, the cushion is so unusual that it compels one to ask whether similar textiles might have been produced around the same time and in the same area as the cushion. This paper will attempt to answer these questions by taking a closer look at the cushion itself, the man who owned it, and the milieu that produced it. It will also investigate whether the Impruneta cushion is indeed unique, or if similar articles were made in southern Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ANTONIO DEGLI AGLI: PIOUS HUMANIST

It is best to start with the man who owned the cushion. Antonio degli Agli was born in 1399 to an old Florentine family connected to the famous Medici, bankers and patrons of the early Renaissance. A later biographer claimed that he was “extremely learned in Greek and in Latin, and [was] a man of great honesty.” A look at his career confirms that although Agli was born in comparatively humble circumstances, his reputation for learning and good character was well earned. The Agli family had declined in status and wealth by the time of Antonio’s birth, to the point that the family had to accept charity from a local miller during the future bishop’s youth. Antonio himself was originally trained as an accountant and a scribe, not a churchman, and had to pay for his education in the newly rediscovered Greek and Latin classics on his own, with no help from his impoverished parents. Despite this unpromising start, Agli showed enough intelligence and ambition that Medici patriarch Cosimo, called il Vecchio for his service to the Florentine Republic, endowed a canonry for him in 1429 at San Lorenzo, the Medici family’s preferred church. There he became close friends with Antonio Pierozzi, a reforming archbishop later canonized as St. Antoninus, and eventually was appointed in turn to  ������������   Ibid., 165.  ���������������   Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 41.  �������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 165.  ������������   Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 106.  ��������   Field, Platonic Academy, 160.  ����������������   James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 2:456.

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Early Italian “Patchwork” the bishoprics of Fiesole and Volterra.10 Between 1447 and 1455 he compiled a critical manuscript of 288 saints’ lives that attempted to reconcile piety with scholarship, eventually dedicating the completed work to Pope Nicholas V.11 Pope Eugene V was so impressed by Agli that he appointed him as a tutor to his nephew Pietro Barbo, later Pope Paul II.12 Even as he rose in the church hierarchy, Agli showed a remarkable ability to maintain his place in the secular world. He may have repaid the Medici for his position at San Lorenzo by keeping Cosimo il Vecchio informed of the latest news during Cosimo’s 1433–34 exile from Florence.13 He later participated in the vernacular, and very secular, Coronario Certame poetry competition of 1441, and wrote a dialogue on the creation of the world starring Plato, Pythagoras, and the legendary philosopher/ alchemist Hermes Trismegistus.14 Most notably, Agli served as mentor and friend to the great humanist Marsilio Ficino, head of the Medici-sponsored Platonic Academy,15 despite official unease over Ficino’s reliance on Plato and the Greek philosophers rather than the Bible for enlightenment.16 These connections to both the religious and the secular elite of Tuscany stood Impruneta in good stead after Agli was appointed to the Collegiata in 1439. Although his assignment may have been at least partially a reward for his loyalty to the Medici, he seems to have cared deeply about the town and its church, with his tenure marking a “golden age” during the long domination of the local Buondelmonti family.17 He devoted much time and effort to reconstructing the Collegiata in the new classical style, including hiring artistic luminaries such as terra-cotta sculptor Luca della Robbia and the architect Michelozzo, designer of the fine new Medici palazzo in Florence.18 Perhaps the greatest mark of Bishop Agli’s affection for Impruneta was his selection of the Collegiata for his tomb rather than either of his sees.19 One of his works argued that life was better for a Christian in the countryside, and he may have wished to rest in Impruneta for this very reason.20 The Bishop’s will requested that his niece Deianira supervise his burial arrangements, and modern authorities have assumed

�������������������   Marsilio Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino (New York: Gingko Press, 1985), 221. ��������������������������   Alison Knowles Frazier, Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 66–67. ������������������������������������������������������������������������   Magnolia Scudieri, Maria Sframeli, and Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro di Santa Maria all’Impruneta II: I Codici Miniati; L’Arredo Sepolcrale del Vescovo degli Agli (Florence: Becocci, 1990), 54. ��������   Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, 182. �������   Ibid. ����������   Ficino, Letters, 24–25. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Alison Frazier, “Katherine’s Place in a Renaissance Collection: Evidence from Antonio degli Agli,” in St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), 221–40, at 236. ����������������������������������������   Scudieri, Sframeli, and Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro, 54. �����������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 153–54. �������������   Ibid., 165. ���������   Field, Platonic Academy, 200.

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Lisa Evans that it was almost certainly Deianira who had the pieced cushion placed beneath her uncle’s head in his sarcophagus. THE REMARKABLE CUSHION OF BISHOP AGLI

As noted above, the cushion was first discovered after World War II. The Collegiata had been extensively damaged during an Allied air raid in 1944,21 and though Bishop Agli’s tomb had survived, the lid of the sarcophagus had been jarred loose when a bomb destroyed the roof of the nave. After the war, church authorities charged with repairing the sanctuary decided to inspect the Bishop’s remains before resealing the tomb. Investigators were stunned to find the brightly colored pillow beneath the Bishop’s head and removed it to ensure its survival.22 Although the tightly sealed sarcophagus had preserved the cushion reasonably well, some of the silks and wools, as well as the linen pillow form underlying the piecing, had deteriorated enough that the cushion had to be stabilized and the linen sections replaced.23 A more comprehensive restoration was conducted in 1990 under the direction of Maria Grazia Vaccari of the textile department of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, an autonomous agency of the Tuscan cultural ministry charged with restoring works of art.24 Cushions, both large and small, were common household objects in the Italian Renaissance that enhanced a room at relatively little expense. The smaller ones were known as origliere (literally “ear pieces” because they were originally used as bed pillows), while larger square examples were called carelli.25 Both sorts were commonly made of a plain linen “pillow form” stuffed with down or feathers, and a separate, decorative cover. Origliere were sometimes used to support a book to prevent damage to the spine,26 while larger cushions could be used as emergency seating for guests.27 Elaborate pillows were also common in burials of the rich, with numerous examples of tomb monuments depicting the deceased with his or her head resting on cushions made of Spanish silk brocades, or decorated with applied bands, embroidery, or even quilting.28

��������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 155. �������������   Ibid., 166. ����������������������������������   J. L. Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” in L’architettura civile in Toscana: il Rinascimento, ed. Amerigo ����������������� Restucci (­Siena: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, 1997), 405–64, at 430. I am grateful to ����������������� Lucia Sinisi and Simone Gugliotta for their help in translating sections of this chapter. ����������������������������������������   Scudieri, Sframeli, and Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro, 62. Later restorers speculated that some stabilization was done by Signor A. Clignon in 1947, although they have no records giving the exact date. �����������������������������   Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” 427. ���������������������   Ibid. Botticelli’s Madonna of the Book, now in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, is a good example of this use. Silvia Malaguzzi, Botticelli: The Artist and His Work (Florence: Guinti, 2003), 40. ������������������   Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–1600 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 173. ������������������������������������������������������������������   There are numerous examples of such cushions in Julian Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

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Early Italian “Patchwork” The Impruneta cushion is a particularly fine example of an origliera.29 It seems to have been well used during the Bishop’s lifetime, as it was not in perfect condition at the time of his death,30 which raises the possibility that it may have had some personal meaning beyond simply being decorative. The cushion is made of rich and precious materials, but its true value to the Bishop might have been wholly sentimental, particularly if it were made by Deianira or another female relative.31 St. Antoninus, the pious reformer who had been a close friend of the young Antonio degli Agli, had condemned ostentatious decoration and ornament in the church,32 and it is possible that the Bishop favored the little cushion because it used otherwise useless scraps to produce something simultaneously functional and beautiful, honoring both his Christian and his humanist beliefs. The cushion is currently displayed in a climate-controlled vitrine on the first floor of the Collegiata museum in a small, dimly lit room just off the gallery containing the church’s collection of illuminated manuscripts. It rests on a sheet of clear acrylic over a small mirror, enabling visitors to see both the front and back. Sharing the vitrine is a partially intact netted veil worked in an IHS monogram that was found covering Bishop Agli’s face. The front of the cushion (fig. 7.1) is entirely composed of pieces of silk sewn into octagonal designs that break down into nine stars of eight points apiece, three each in three rows. The back (fig. 7.2) is pieced of wool in concentric rows of on-point squares, one color to a row. Both front and back use strong colors and sharp geometric forms to produce a circular or concentric effect, especially on the back; the sense of motion is evident even today, and the design must have all but pulsated when the cushion was new and the colors fresh. The front uses almost thirty separate types of silk, including plain weaves, damasks, lampas weaves, satins, and velvets.33 These include red satins; plain silks in pale pink, faded reddish tan, medium blue, dark green, and a near-chartreuse; ink blue, red, pink, and black velvets; a few pieces of black satin; and one or two pieces of what appears to be an intentional purple. Velvet, plain silk, and satin predominate. The reddish tans in the central star and paler pinks in two corner sections contain small embroidered circles that may originally have been intended as eyelets or buttonholes, possible evidence that the maker used pieces of old clothing.34 The overall effect is dazzling, and the high quality of the fabrics speaks to the sophisticated, elegant taste of a cultured and well-off family.35 Unfortunately, the use of rich fabrics was as much a curse as a blessing; in addition to the wear and tear one might expect in a five-hundred–year-old textile, restorers found that the cushion had ��������������������������������������   Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” plates 11–12. �������������   Ibid., 430. ����������������������������������������   Scudieri, Sframeli, and Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro, 58. �������������������   Rembrandt Duits, Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting: A Study in Material Culture (London: Pindar, 2008), 223. ��������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 166. ����������������������������������������   Scudieri, Sframeli, and Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro, 60. �������   Ibid.

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Fig. 7.1: The front of the cushion found in the 1477 tomb of Bishop Antonio degli Agli in Impruneta, Italy (Museo del Tesoro Della Basilica di Santa Maria All’Impruneta). Photo: Art Resource, by permission.

been repaired at least once before Bishop Agli’s death, probably due to the delicate silks splitting along the seams under normal use. The most noticeable repair was made with coarse thread that is painfully apparent against the fine silks and velvets.36 The piecing of the cushion front uses squares, diamonds, and triangles to give the appearance of circles encasing stars, with slightly rounded triangles connecting the circles to each other. Although the colors in each individual star may appear to be somewhat random, the overall arrangement is symmetrical,37 with opposing sections mirroring each other. Small circles of contrasting fabric cover the center of each star where the points meet. The central star is similar, with the addition of four small areas

�����������������������������   Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” 430. �������   Ibid.

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Early Italian “Patchwork”

Fig. 7.2: The back of the Impruneta cushion. Photo: Art Resource, by permission.

of cut velvet pieced in a checkerboard pattern with slightly curved edges connecting it to the corner stars. Although the pattern may seem bewildering, it is fairly straightforward when broken down into its component elements (fig. 7.3). The stars that dominate the composition are made up of 45-degree diamonds set on point, with the areas between adjacent points filled in with pieced “checkerboards.”38 The space between the checkerboards is in turn bridged by shallow, slightly curved triangles that turn the stars into nine near-circular octagons. The central star is connected to the eight ­surrounding

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Although these sections appear to be squares, they are actually slightly elongated at the outer corners to allow the pillow top to lie flat.

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Fig. 7.3: Diagram of the design on the front of the Impruneta cushion. Drawing: Heather Gray.

stars with four small concave squares each pieced of nine bits of alternating black and faded red cloth. The pieces used to create the cushion front range from diamonds approximately 1.5 inches long (almost 4 cm) to tiny squares the size of an adult’s fingernail. Although the small size of many of the pieces may have necessitated the use of templates of heavy paper or the equivalent to stabilize the design and ensure crisp piecing, no trace of such templates remains in the cushion as it exists today.39 The seams are reinforced by couched cording, possibly to strengthen the more fragile fabrics and prevent fraying. The couching does not penetrate to the linen underlayer. The side of the cushion is the only section that is not pieced. It is a single strip of shot silk, slightly over an inch wide, with a bright red warp and greenish-yellow and ������������������������������������   “Cuscino del vescovo degli Agli,” OPD Restauro 4 (1992), 140–44, at 142. I am indebted to Simone Gugliotta for her translation of this conservation report.

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Early Italian “Patchwork”

Fig. 7.4: Diagram of the design on the back of the Impruneta cushion. Drawing: Heather Gray.

white weft.40 There is no evidence of decorative tassels at the corners, and no piping along the seams joining the side to the front and the back. The back of the cushion is pieced in a simple but striking design of wool squares set on point in twelve concentric rows that once again give the appearance of circularity even though the cushion itself is square (fig. 7.4).41 Each square is approximately one inch on the diagonal. The center square is yellow, with the rows radiating outward as follows: white, green, light blue, pink, white, black, a faded green, blue, a badly deteriorated white, red, and a gray that might have begun as blue and faded. The outer edge of the design is filled out by green triangles, and the whole composition is bordered

����������������������������������������   Scudieri, Sframeli, and Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro, 60. The cushion is lit so that the weft threads appear to be a brilliant apple green. �����������������������������   Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” 430.

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Lisa Evans by a narrow strip of bright red wool that makes it the same size as the cushion front.42 There is much evidence of wear, although not as much as on the front of the cushion,43 and the linen pillow form shows through in several places. Narrow cording of several colors, including red, blue, black, and white, is couched over the seams—possibly to reinforce the stitching, possibly for added decoration. Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani, who designed the cushion’s display at the Collegiata museum, stated that these wools are domestiche (“home woven”).44 However, the even colors of the dyes (especially the blues and the blacks) and good quality of the wool are more typical of professional work. This is not a surprise, as the Florentine wool guild was a key player in the European textile trade.45 Fine wool was readily available in fifteenth-century Florence, especially to a family connected to the ruling Medici. Although Bishop Agli’s female relatives may have learned to do fine needlework in accordance with the contemporary belief that decorative stitchery was an excellent occupation for an upper-class woman,46 there would have been little reason for them to weave or dye their own wool when they lived in the wool capital of southern Europe. A QUESTION OF PROVENANCE

None of these details answers the question of who made the cushion, or more importantly, when. The Impruneta cushion is so unlike other surviving fifteenth-century textiles that it is logical to investigate whether it could have been made at a later time and placed in Bishop Agli’s tomb as a substitute for an earlier pillow that disintegrated, or if it actually is the unique patchwork forerunner it appears to be. The presumed answer to the first question—who made the cushion—is Agli’s niece Deianira herself. Silks of the quality used on the front of the cushion were too precious to discard,47 and Deianira almost certainly would have accumulated a wide selection of scraps from her own wardrobe and household textiles. However, owning the scraps does not necessarily mean that Deianira or another female Agli relative had either the knowledge of geometry needed to draft such a precise, small-scale pattern, or the skill to piece the tiny squares of delicate silk in the checkerboard areas. The precision demanded by the work and the high level of craftsmanship hint at perhaps more experience with this sort of task than an amateur would have possessed.48 ����������������������������������������   Scudieri, Sframeli, and Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro, 61–62. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   This may be because this area did not directly touch Bishop Agli’s body and thus was not damaged by decomposition. See below. ���������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 166. �����������������������������������������������������������   Francesco Franceschi, “The Economy: Work and Wealth,” in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1300– 1550, ed. John M. Najemy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 124–44, at 129–30. ������������   Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 80. ���������������   Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300– 1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 15. ������������   Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 84.

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Early Italian “Patchwork” If the cushion were indeed professionally made and not pieced by an Agli relative, one is compelled to ask why it uses so many fabrics. The obvious explanation is that it could have been intended to use up a tailor’s scraps, but it is also possible that the maker used new fabrics. In the absence of a similar cushion or a detailed description from a fifteenth-century household inventory, it is impossible to settle this question. If any part of the cushion originated in a scrap bag, it is most probably the fabrics with small circular marks that may have begun as lacing holes. The question of age is more problematic. Proto Pisani, who prepared the cushion for display in the early 1980s, suggested that it dates from the early years of the fifteenth century,49 as does the conservation team from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.50 However, the historian J. L. Santoro proposed that it might have been made as early as the late fourteenth century, based on the worn condition of certain of the silks and the visible repair on the front.51 Both Proto Pisani and Santoro noted that the patterns are reminiscent of the geometric mosaics in Florentine landmarks such as the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi.52 Unfortunately, neither of these opinions takes into account the possible role of Bishop Agli’s niece Deianira in designing or making the cushion. More important, neither settles the question of whether the cushion is actually a product of the early Renaissance. The Collegiata maintains that Bishop Agli’s tomb was not opened in the centuries between his death in 1477 and the bombing of the church in 1944, which would give the cushion a terminal date of 1477. However, the front of the cushion bears an uncomfortable resemblance to English pieced silk coverlets of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These coverlets, among the earliest documented examples of European patchwork, were almost all made using the paper template method believed by the conservation team at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure to have been used by the maker of the cushion.53 Many of these coverlets incorporate fabrics at least fifty years older than their date of manufacture, some with unpicked seams and other signs of wear consistent with having been part of an earlier garment.54 This is suspiciously similar to the possible lacing holes in the Impruneta cushion. The Impruneta cushion is an extraordinary survivor, regardless of its age. However, if it is indeed to be considered an early example of patchwork and not a later work that was somehow placed in an ancient tomb, it is necessary to determine if anything similar, either in technique or design, was made prior to 1477 in or around the Italian peninsula.

��������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 166. �����������������������������������������   “Cuscino del vescovo degli Agli,” 141. �����������������������������   Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” 130. ������������������������������������������������������������   Proto Pisani, “Treasury,” 166; Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” 430. �������������������������������������������   “Cuscino del vescovo degli Agli,” 141–42. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Bridget Long, “The Blossoming of Patchwork: A Study of Cotton and Linen Patchwork at the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Centuries,” Quilt Studies 7 (2006), 25–54, at 26.

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Lisa Evans ARTISTIC EVIDENCE: RELIGIOUS WORKS

Geometric designs in stonework and fresco from the early Renaissance are common in Florence. The Cosmatesque style of elaborate geometrical mosaics influenced architects and stonemasons throughout Tuscany, most notably in the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal at San Miniato al Monte in Florence.55 Some are famous, such as the floor mosaics in the Baptistery of San Giovanni that mimic the patterns of imported Middle Eastern carpets.56 Some are almost unnoticeable, like the tiny eight-pointed star ornamentation in the frescoes in a fourteenth-century sacristy in the Santa Maria Novella monastic complex.57 Many of these designs are star patterns close enough to those in the Impruneta cushion as to suggest a common source. However, similarity in pattern does not necessarily prove a common source. Nor does it tell us whether such geometric patterns were used in textiles, and whether these textiles might have indeed been pieced. For further clues, we must examine visual representations of cloth in early Renaissance art. The Renaissance was a time of increasing realism in painting and sculpture, so it is logical to turn to Florence’s great artistic legacy for any trace of possibly pieced textiles. Religious art in particular would seem to be a rich source of evidence for early textiles, as devotional pieces often depict costly silks, providing visual evidence of cloth that might not have survived. This is particularly true of the so-called cloths of honor seen in early Renaissance images of the Madonna. The textile historian Rebecca Martin defines a cloth of honor, also known as a cloth of estate, as “a curtain of precious fabric suspended behind a saint as a sign of veneration.”58 Many appear in depictions of the Virgin and Child seated on a throne surrounded by angels, saints, and the painting’s donors. The usual choice of fabric in these works was silk brocade, cut velvet, or another precious textile, but a handful of these cloths depict geometric patterns that look as though they might have been constructed from several different types of textiles to produce the design. The earliest example found in the course of this study appears in a tiny painting in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (fig. 7.5). The Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, John the Baptist, and Angels is identified only as being from

��������   Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, 106. By coincidence, Antonio degli Agli helped select the artisans responsible for the chapel’s mosaic decorations. ��������������������   Annamaria Guisti, The Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence (Florence: Mandragora, 2000), 17. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The sacristy is now the library at the Official Perfumery and Apothecary of Santa Maria Novella. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Donna M. Cottrell, “Unraveling the Mystery of Jan van Eyck’s Cloths of Honor: The Ghent Altarpiece,” in Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images, ed. Désirée Koslin and Janet Snyder (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 173–94, at 173–75.

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Fig. 7.5: Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, John the Baptist, and Angels, Tuscany, ­thirteenth century, tempera on panel, 34.3 x 24.4 centimeters (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.60). Photo: National Gallery of Art, by permission.

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Lisa Evans thirteenth-century Tuscany.59 Although dispute continues to as whether it may have originally been a study for a larger work, scholars who examined it in the 1930s agreed on its most striking feature: the cloth of honor behind the Madonna. What the art historian Roberto Longhi called “the stupendous, decorative invention of the throne drapery with black crosses on a white field,”60 and another expert called “a curious ornamental design,”61 is a cloth of honor of red quatrefoils separated by motifs of eight alternating black and white triangles. At first glance the triangles seem to form a variation of a Maltese cross. However, careful examination of the image tells a different tale. The black-and-white motifs are not crosses, but what heraldry would call a gyronny pattern (fig. 7.6). Moreover, if the cloth of honor is drawn out in full, it seems to be a textile that deliberately alternates gyronny sections and quatrefoils in a definite, regular pattern. The resemblance to modern patchwork is striking, and unmistakable.62 Longhi’s observation as to this cloth of honor’s “inventiveness” leads to the question of whether there are other Italian paintings showing such geometric textiles. The answer is a qualified yes, although nothing has surfaced that is precisely like the cloth of honor behind the National Gallery’s Madonna. A small cluster of paintings from the early fourteenth century, almost all associated with Taddeo Gaddi and his circle, depict geometric cloths of honor. Gaddi, a popular fresco artist who was trained by Cimabue’s student Giotto, in turn worked in Giotto’s monumental, realistic style until his death in the 1360s. The best known of these paintings is Gaddi’s fresco of The Marriage of the Virgin, painted between 1328 and 1338 in Capella Baroncelli in Santa Croce, Florence, as part of a fresco sequence showing the life of the Virgin. This lively scene depicts the wedding of the young, beautiful Mary to the much older Joseph almost as a genre scene; women watch with interest from a balcony behind the bride, children gossip, the High Priest wears the vestments of an archbishop, and Joseph is surrounded by friends primed to give him a mattinata, or widower’s charivari, complete with a ritual

������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   The painting was previously dated to between 1275 and 1290 and attributed to followers of the Trecento master Cimabue, but the National Gallery has recently changed the attribution; Anne Halpern, National Gallery of Art, e-mail message to author, Aug. 3, 2011, referencing Miklos Boskovits, Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth to Fourteenth Century: National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue, forthcoming. I am indebted to Anne Halpern for her assistance in viewing this painting and the documents associated with it in February 2007. The following section draws heavily upon these documents, as well as on my personal examination of the painting. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Letter of Roberto Longhi to Samuel Kress, 1936, in the Department of Curatorial Records, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., accession No. 1952.5.60. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Letter of Raimond von Marle to Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Sept. 4, 1935, in the Department of Curatorial Records, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., accession No. 1952.5.60. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   In modern patchwork, such an effect would be achieved either through basting all the pieces to a thin paper foundation and whip-stitching the edges together to achieve a crisp seam, or by adding small curved triangles to the outer edges of the black-and-white sections to ensure that they would fit neatly into the quatrefoils.

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Fig. 7.6: Diagram of the design on the cloth of honor depicted in the National Gallery ­Madonna. Drawing: Heather Gray.

slap of congratulations. There is even a band of three trumpets and a portative organ poised to serenade the happy couple at the extreme left of the scene.63 Another homely detail is a large geometric textile of red, gold, green, and white hanging from a loggia behind the Virgin. This softly draped cloth is positioned to serve as a de facto cloth of honor, as well as a design element that draws the eye away from the brass band back to the Virgin. Unlike the usual gold brocade or cut velvet, this cloth sports a curious pattern of alternating green and gold stars set between white squares and five-sided red shapes that seem intended to form a cross pattern, all repeating in ways that once again recall piecing. If anything, the cloth is even more notable than the relatively stark cloth of honor in the National Gallery’s painting, as its presence in an otherwise realistic scene compels the viewer to regard it as a bit of local color and not simply a mark of wealth or status.

����������������   Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1982), 28–29.

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Lisa Evans More interesting still, the Marriage of the Virgin is only one of several works associated with Gaddi to include similar cloths of honor in geometric patterns. A goldand-green version appears in a 1330s Coronation of the Virgin by Gaddi’s workshop64 and in an early-fourteenth-century Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Zenobius by the master himself. There is also a geometric cloth of honor of red and black squares on a reliquary cupboard Gaddi painted for Santa Croce around the time he executed The Marriage of the Virgin.65 These small paintings lack the detail of The Marriage of the Virgin, but the geometric nature of the textiles is still evident. ARTISTIC EVIDENCE: SECULAR WORKS

In addition to these religious paintings, there are also several secular wall frescoes from the fourteenth century showing what appear to be pieced textiles. The best known of these are found in Palazzo Davanzati, originally built for the Davizzi family in the second half of the fourteenth century.66 Its decorative frescoes, restored in 1905,67 offer a fascinating glimpse of how such fabrics might have been used in a domestic setting, as well as possible clues to how they were constructed. The Florentine elite decorated their homes, especially the public areas, in the latest style. The prevailing fashion dictated that rooms have a painted frieze or decorative band of plaster or fresco near the ceiling and whitewashed walls below. The plain areas were originally hung with the finest cloth available, with the walls left bare only when the owners were not in residence.68 The wall hangings, called spalliere or capoletti depending on whether they were intended to be hung horizontally or vertically, were suspended from iron hooks and changed according to the season, with velvet and wool for winter and painted linen or fine silk for the summer.69 Several areas on the upper floors in the Palazzo Davanzati boast frescoes seemingly intended to depict geometrically patterned spalliere. Two, the famous Salon of the Parrots (Sala di Pappagalli) and a short connecting hallway, are on the second floor. The hallway leads from a large public chamber to the Salon of the Parrots. Usually overlooked in favor of the more elaborate frescoes in other parts of the palazzo, it is painted in red and green hexagons and darker green squares. Each shape is delineated ����������������   Ibid., 242–43. ��������������������   Giorgio Bonsanti, The Galleria della Accademia Florence: Guide to the Gallery and Complete Catalogue (Florence: Becocci/Scala, 1987), 62–63. ��������������������������   Louis Conrad Rosenberg, The Davanzati Palace, Florence, Italy: A Restored Palace of the Fourteenth Century, Measured and Drawn, Together with a Short Descriptive Text (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1922), III. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Ibid., V. Art historian Anne Dunlop states that the wall frescoes were heavily repainted during the restoration. However, photographs taken in the late nineteenth century clearly show the geometric patterns, so it may be that the restorers based their work on existing fragments. Anne Dunlop, Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 34. ������������   Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 44. ������������   Ibid., 48.

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Early Italian “Patchwork” by thin dark lines set between narrow white stripes. It is not clear if this is actually modeled on a textile or a tile pattern, but the colors are identical to those used in the adjoining Salon of the Parrots. The small space of the hall and the large scale of the designs create a striking, almost claustrophic transition between the sunlit public chamber and the more private sala. The Salon of the Parrots frescoes explicitly mimic a red-and-green spalliera of winter-weight fabric lined with miniver fur, including draping details and turnedback sections that show the “lining.”70 The design consists of alternating red and green squares set on point and outlined by narrow white rectangles and small red squares, with the eponymous parrots and small sprigs of greenery painted on the larger squares and the outline rectangles (fig. 7.7). “Embroidered” borders show couched goldwork and passementerie. Areas near the floor and in the corners appear to show a glimpse of the wall behind the “spalliera,” as if the hangings await a change of season to be replaced by another set. Palazzo Davanzati is not unique. Frescoes mimicking cloth hangings and furnishings are common in early-fourteenth-century Italian buildings, ranging from a painted spalliera that resembles Byzantine silk brocade to a bench “covered” in squirrel fur in the Lower Church of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.71 One room at Sabbionara d’Avio decorated around the time of the Palazzo Davanzati even depicts similar miniver hangings, minus the geometric layer.72 TEXTILES OR DECORATION?

It is evident from these decorative frescoes and religious paintings (especially the National Gallery’s Madonna) that geometric textiles resembling the Impruneta cushion were not unknown in Renaissance Florence. It is easy to see how such textiles could have inspired the maker of the Impruneta cushion, and tempting to conclude that because they could be pieced, they actually were. However, this is far from clear. As realistic as these textiles may appear, Renaissance painters did not always show actual fabrics in their work. Stock techniques of brushwork, gilding, and even stenciling were often employed to create convincing “brocades” to fit a particular theme.73 Location, the identity or intent of the patron, the nature of a commission—all influenced the design of textiles in painting more than whether the textile actually existed.74 Although we cannot know if this were the case for the Gaddi fresco or the National Gallery’s Madonna, it must be kept in mind.

����������������������   Luciano Berti, ed., Il Museo di Palazzo Davanzati a Firenze (Florence: Electa Editrice, 1972), plate 18. ����������   Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 59–61. The “squirrel fur” bench is attributed to one of the Lorenzetti brothers, best known for their Effects of Good and Bad Government frescoes in Siena. ����������������   Ibid., 124–25. ���������   Duits, Gold Brocade, 43–44. ����������   Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters, 21.

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Lisa Evans

Fig. 7.7: Diagram of the pattern on the late-fourteenth-century wall frescoes from the Salon of the Parrots, Palazzo Davanzati, Florence. Drawing: Heather Gray.

Even if it is assumed that these paintings and frescoes show actual textiles, the question remains: Were these textiles pieced, or were they made with another technique, such as weaving or appliqué? Although piecing cloth into decorative patterns seems logical today, there is little hard evidence for such work in the Renaissance. Only one written reference prior to 1500 has come to light, in the twelfth-century Breton poem La Lai del Desire, where “a quilt of two sorts of silk in a checkboard pattern, well-made and rich,” adorns a bridal bed.75 Surviving examples are almost as scarce and are confined almost exclusively to heraldic items such as the fine set of Habsburg heraldic tabards in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna,76 or royal furnishings such as the Anjou Textile discovered recently in Budapest.77 Textile scholarship veers between the statement that there is no proof of decorative European piecing prior to 1700 save a few pieces of Scandinavian wool ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Janine Janniere, “Filling in Quilt History: A Sixteenth Century French Patchwork Banner,” Quilt Journal 3, no. 1 (1994), 1–6, at 1, quoting Averil Colby’s translation. ����������������������   Ottfried Neubecker, Heraldry: Sources, Symbols, and Meaning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 24– 25. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Judit B. Perjés, Katalin E. Nagy, and Márta Tóth, “Conservation of Silk Finds Dating to the Anjou Period (1301–1387),” in Conserving Textiles: Studies in Honour of Ágnes Timár-Balázsy, ed. István Éri, ICCROM Conservation Studies 7 (Rome: ICCROM, 2009), 1–20, at 1–2. See below for a more detailed discussion.

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Early Italian “Patchwork” inlay,78 and the equally blunt assertion that pieced work is an ancient technique that has never completely died out.79 Unfortunately, neither side offers much in the way of definitive proof. Appliqué can be dismissed almost immediately. Surviving examples of medieval European appliqué typically involved figural, heraldic, or floral motifs rather than geometric patterns. Moreover, appliquéd designs were usually outlined with couched silk cording or thin strips of gilt leather.80 There is no trace of such cording about the black-and-white motifs in the National Gallery’s Madonna, or in any of the Gaddi paintings. There are straight lines about the geometric shapes in the Palazzo Davanzati frescoes, but as there is no depiction of the couching threads that would have secured an outline cord to the cloth, these are likely outlines left by the artist when the pattern was drawn onto the plaster. Woven cloth of some sort is more probable, most likely silk brocade. Renaissance Italy was renowned for its brocades and cut velvets by the early fifteenth century, especially in northern city-states like Lucca, Venice, Genoa, and Florence itself,81 although these brocades were typically woven in floreate or animal designs rather than geometric ones.82 However, Italy was only one source of silk brocade in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Spain had been a major source of European silks since the Moorish conquest. Thanks to the influence of Islamic design, Spanish silks were far more elaborate than the usual Italian brocade and were much more likely to be woven in geometric patterns.83 Star patterns, interlacing, zigzags, trapezoids, squares—Spanish weavers could, and did, create astonishingly complex, detailed nonfigural textiles. Spanish brocades were both an inspiration and a rival to Italian work, to the point that it can be difficult to determine whether later pieces were woven in Spain, Italy proper, or Sicily by the fifteenth century.84 Further, the similarity of the geometric textiles in most of the fourteenth-century Italian religious paintings makes them suspect as a precursor to the Impruneta cushion. Comparison with contemporary textile samples strongly suggests that the geometric cloths of honor in the works of Taddeo Gaddi and his followers were actually Spanish brocades. The Sienese master Simone Martini had begun to use geometric silks, some similar to the hanging in Gaddi’s Marriage of the Virgin, to produce the illusion of depth in his paintings a few decades before Gaddi began work in Santa Croce.85 Florentine �����������������������������������������������������������������������   Natalie Rothstein and Santina M. Levey, “Furnishings, 1500–1780,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), I: 631–58, at 651. �����������������������������   Santoro, “Il Tessuti,” 427. ������������������������   Schnuppe von Gwinner, The History of the Patchwork Quilt (West Chester, PA: Schiffer 1988), 58–59. ����������������   Agnes Geijer, A History of Textile Art (London: Philip Wilson, 1979), 14. ����������������   Ibid., 146–47. ����������������������   Florence Lewis May, Silk Textiles of Spain (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1957), treats this subject in exhaustive detail. �������������   Ibid., 174. ����������   Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters, 69–70.

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Lisa Evans Bernardo Daddi, active during the same period as Taddeo Gaddi, used the same Spanish brocade in almost all his paintings, with only minor changes in color.86 AN UNEXPECTED PRECURSOR

In light of the above, the artistic evidence for pieced textiles similar to the Impruneta cushion must be considered questionable at best. Certainly the painted cloths of honor and spalliere could have been pieced, but those in the Gaddi paintings in particular are more likely to have been based on woven textiles. Even the less elaborate, and seemingly more realistic, Palazzo Davanzati frescoes may be nothing more than an early-twentieth-century restorer’s idea of what looked medieval. The one known exception came to light comparatively recently, and in an unlikely place: an archaeological dig in Budapest. The Anjou Textile, a silk patchwork hanging depicting the Hungarian and Angevin coats of arms, was found encased in a solid block of mud in Well No. 8 on the site of the old Tekeli Palace.87 The textile, pieced and appliquéd entirely of silk taffeta sometime before 1390,88 is in surprisingly good condition due to the anaerobic environment in the well, although it had to be wet-cleaned and disinfected before it could be properly examined.89 Physical analysis of the Anjou Textile disclosed that it had originally been quilted, although the batting and backing had been removed prior to its ending up in the well. There was no evidence of paper templates being used to support either the pieced or the appliquéd sections. The piecing itself was done with right sides together like modern patchwork.90 The composition (fig. 7.8), which alternates the red-and-white arms of the Hungarian Arpad dynasty and the gold fleurs-de-lis on blue of the Neapolitan branch of the House of Anjou, is strikingly similar to a cloth of honor visible on the Great Seal made in 1331 for King Charles Robert of Hungary.91 The designer of the seal, Petrus Simonis Gallicus, was originally from Siena, Florence’s great rival in the early fourteenth century. Charles Robert not only employed an Italian goldsmith but ordered 80 feet of red, white, and blue silks from Naples to make banners for his court,92 leading to speculation that Gallicus designed the Anjou Textile from these precious imported silks sometime in the early fourteenth century. Regardless of whether it was actually made for Charles Robert, the Anjou Textile’s medieval origin is not in doubt. Well No. 8 was filled in sometime between 1390 and ���������������   Ibid., 76–77. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Perjés, Nagy, and Tóth, “Conservation of Silk Finds,” 4. The textile was discovered in five sections. Reassembled, it is 204 cm by 110 cm (about 80 by 43 inches). ����������������������   Dorottya Nyékhelyi, Középkori Kútlelet a Budavári Szent György Téren (Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2003); 89–103 (English abstract), at 94–96. I am indebted to Gabor Lukacs for translation of certain terms in the Hungarian section of this work. ������������������������������������������������������������   Perjés, Nagy, and Tóth, “Conservation of Silk Finds,” 1–2. ���������   Ibid., 9–10. ����� ���������������   Ibid., 18–19. �������������   Nyékhelyi, Középkori Kútlelet, 97.

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Early Italian “Patchwork”

Fig. 7.8: Diagram of the pattern on the Anjou Textile, a fourteenth-century silk patchwork excavated in Budapest, Hungary. Drawing: Heather Gray.

1427, based on the dates of coins found on the bottom.93 If the textile were indeed designed by an Italian, or made by Italian artisans working at the Hungarian court, it is strong evidence that what we would now call patchwork was known and made in Italy at least a century before Antonio degli Agli’s death. SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE: THE ANSWER?

The question of the cushion’s age could have been settled once and for all by scientific tests such as carbon-14 dating during the 1990 restoration. However, the conservators decided against extensive scientific analysis because such tests would have required

���������   Ibid., 94–96. ������

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Lisa Evans the sacrifice of a large area of the pieced sections.94 As they had no compelling reason to question the Collegiata’s story of the cushion’s discovery at the time of the conservation, they decided to preserve the cushion for future generations rather than risk ruining the complex design to prove what the Collegiata and the conservators already believed was fact. However, there is one piece of scientific evidence that would seem to support the cushion’s claimed age and origins. Conservators found extensive staining and deterioration of the silk areas directly beneath Bishop Agli’s head, caused by what they delicately referred to as “organic traces” of decomposition.95 Moreover, the damage was not confined to the cushion. The netted veil found over Bishop Agli’s face was similarly damaged by bodily fluids,96 with several sections missing entirely. ANOMALY OR SURVIVOR?

It seems clear that the Impruneta cushion is not the anomaly conventional wisdom would indicate. Geometric patterns in stone were common in the years before its owner’s death, in the churches where he worshipped and the palazzos built by his patrons. Similar patterns were found in textiles just before and during his lifetime, whether imported from Spain, woven in Italy, or pieced in Hungary or Naples. The concept of geometric cloth was familiar enough to the Florentine elite that Deianira degli Agli, or whoever actually pieced the cushion, would have needed only to look around her for inspiration. Most of all, the deterioration of the Bishop’s grave goods from “organic traces” argues that the cushion was buried with him in 1477, not placed in the tomb around 1700. Tuscany is not a cool place, and it is not likely that Bishop Agli would still have been decomposing more than two centuries after his death. The Impruneta cushion may resemble the English patchworks of the early eighteenth century, but resemblance is not proof, especially in light of damage caused by the fluids from a decaying body. Unless records emerge stating clearly that the Bishop’s tomb was opened sometime in the eighteenth century and the origliera and the veil replaced, the Impruneta cushion should be regarded as exactly what it claims to be: a fifteenth-century piece of patchwork with a coincidental resemblance to later work.

���������������������������������������������������������������   Maria Grazia Vaccari, e-mail message to author, May 26, 2009. �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani, e-mail message to author, June 3, 2009. The exact words are “tracce organiche.” �������   Ibid.

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Recent Books of Interest Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture in France: Appearance, Materials, and ­Significance, by Janet E. Snyder (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). ISBN 9781409400653. 326 pages, 223 illustrations (20 in color). One could say the costume history of the twelfth century was written by the intricately carved figures gracing the portal columns of early Gothic churches such as Chartres, via the etchings of E. E. Viollet-le-Duc and Quicherat. Ubiquity led to skepticism: Were these “real” bliauts, or imagined finery intended to evoke ages past and lands biblical? Are the pleats merely stylized conventions of limestone carving? Could those long braids possibly represent real hairstyles? Janet Snyder takes on these questions armed with intimate knowledge of the carvings as well as study of the historical context in this beautiful effort to revise the understanding of representation in Northern French sculpture ca. 1140–70. She argues for acknowledging the verisimilitude of the carved details of dress. Ymagiers (her preferred term for the sculptors) presented recognizable garment forms and exotic textiles to create “meaningful fictions.” Rather than portraits of actual historical personages, the column figures were types: propaganda for political stability representing the peers of the realm—whose election was bypassed in Louis VI’s rush to consecrate his son (see chapter 2, “Structures of Power: The Support of the Peers”)—welcoming the king at the church door. Snyder’s elaboration of these “types” according to dress is quite useful, likewise the appendix listing how they figure in 26 different groupings at 18 churches. The “Grande Dame” wears the cote; the “Norman Ladies” feature close-fitted bodices, bias drapery, and gored skirts; the “Courtly Lady” sports the “startling new fashion” of the bliaut gironé, with a bodice displaying crosswise folds and a separate skirt finely pleated into a low waistband, a style now verified by Scandinavian archeological finds (discussed along with other textiles and their provenance in chapter 4). A great variety of coiffures appear, a third with no veil; the head expressed fashion. Costume details on the women represent rank, marital status, and fertility. Snyder also differentiates details for “chamberlains,” “dignitaries,” “chevaliers,” “clerics,” “associates,” and “seigneurs,” and discusses the royal dalmatic that sets the “monarch” apart from these peers as ­subdeacon of the

Recent Books of Interest Church, layered over his secular bliaut. Chapter 3 studies shifts in textile commerce, arguing that Greek and Syrian silks and tiraz bands of 1130–60 suggested wealth and power but also access to the Holy Land; the heavier woolens represented ca. 1165–1210 reflected the success of fairs and northern economic growth. The reader interested in twelfth-century dress will covet the volume: Its numerous illustrations focused on dress details allow comparisons of exemplars of a particular style. At times the black-and-white photographs may frustrate, but for that matter so do the sculptures themselves, abused by the intervening 850 years. — Sarah-Grace Heller, Ohio State University Europäische Stickereien 1250–1650 [European Embroideries 1250–1650], edited by Uta-Christiane Bergemann (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2010). ISBN 9783795423995. 399 pages, 455 illustrations (354 in colour). This sumptuously illustrated volume is the third in a series of catalogs of the Deutsches Textilmuseum, a collection originally put together in the late nineteenth century as a teaching collection for students of the school of Textile Engineering, Krefeld, Germany. Because the collection’s purpose was to provide historic exemplars of materials and techniques, many items are fragments rather than complete objects. The catalog presents 233 pieces, the great majority post-1500, but the earlier period is represented in every category: gold and silk embroidery, appliqué work, whitework and drawn thread work on various types of ground fabric, counted thread embroidery following pre-printed or charted patterns on linen and canvas, and a few pieces which are not easy to categorize, embroidered in a free style. Preceding the catalog is detailed discussion of the uses of embroidery throughout the period for dress and adornment, for soft furnishings among all ranks of society (with an emphasis on their role in distinguishing those ranks), and for liturgical vestments and furnishings for the church. This is followed by equally detailed discussion of workers—private or domestic, in convents, and in professional workshops—and the changing relationships between them. These are not always obvious; for example, even as professional workshops grew in number and some embroiderers, notably those working in gold and silk, were organized into guilds, embroidery remained a worthy occupation for high-ranking women, and work in convents also increased to supply the particular needs of the church. Embroiderers were usually women, but men appear to have supplanted women in the guild-controlled crafts—i.e., in the high-status gold and silk work—while women were pushed into wool and linen embroidery, including whitework, especially for underwear and household linen. The shifting relationship between painters and embroiderers is also explored, in production of what would now be called mixed-media works as well as in the field of design. A chapter is devoted to tools and materials, working practices, and the development of designs, patterns, and sample books; another chapter focuses on trade. These also repay study. The illustrations include examples of printed designs and other pattern layouts, and of embroiders at work at different techniques. A useful glossary of stitch types, in German but supported by drawings, is very helpful to understanding 156

Recent Books of Interest the text, which is also completely in German save for an English summary on pages 373–75. — Elizabeth Coatsworth, Manchester Metropolitan University The Guicciardini “Quilt”: Conservation of the Deeds of Tristan, edited by ­Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani, Marco Ciatti, Susanna Conti, and Maria Grazia Vaccari (­Florence: Edizioni Firenze, 2010). ISBN 978-8879704939. 136 pages, 138 ­illustrations (71 in color). Discovered in the late nineteenth century and acquired by the Bargello Museum in Florence in 1927, the Guicciardini quilt is a fragment of a trapunto quilt believed to have been made in the 1390s. It depicts scenes from the legend of Tristan and Isolt, and is similar in technique and iconography to a second quilt in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. This book is both a comprehensive account of recent conservation work on the quilt and an effort to place the object in its proper context in medieval decorative art and needlework. It consists of an introductory section, an art historical section, and a technical section. This last section is the most interesting. It analyzes the Gucciardini quilt as both historical artifact and needlework, with essays and photographs covering all stages of conservation, construction techniques, and materials used. A series of color closeups of the quilt will be of particular interest to textile archaeologists as well as quilt historians. One essay describes efforts to find a suitable storage facility for the quilt, whose age and padded structure present unique problems. Particularly valuable to modern quilt historians are essays detailing the work of two teams of needleworkers to make exact copies of the quilts at the Bargello and the V&A. The Bargello team closely copied the technique used by their quilt’s makers, while a French team working for the V&A used the corded boutis technique preferred by Provençal quilters. Less successful is the art historical section, which contains essays on the quilt’s history, its iconography, and its significance both as a needlework and as an interpretation of a popular medieval legend. The best of these draws on American quilt historian Kathryn Berenson’s extensive knowledge of white quilted needlework, as well as much original research. The essays by Italian scholars are less compelling; Maria Grazia Vaccari devotes too much attention to defending the Bargello’s earlier handling of its quilt, as detailed by Susan Young in a 1993 article, while Maria Stragapede’s description of the quilt’s iconography relies heavily on Pio Rajna’s 1913 monograph. It is also disconcerting to see the misuse of the word “quilt” in Stragapede’s essay to mean a large piece of embroidery rather than a layered, padded needlework. These flaws are minor compared to the overall value of this book, which is arguably the most extensive work on any single quilt in the literature. That it succeeds best as a record of the technical work on the quilt rather than the quilt as decorative object largely reflects the lack of source material on early quilted needlework. — Lisa Evans, Easthampton, Massachusetts

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Recent Books of Interest Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands 1325–1515, by Anne H. van Buren with the assistance of Roger S. Wieck (London: Giles, 2011). ISBN 978-1904832904. 435 pages, 300 illustrations (all in color). This massive and gorgeous volume represents nearly three decades of work by Anne van Buren, an art historian with an interest in depictions of dress. After her death in 2008, her colleague Roger Wieck edited the manuscript and carried it through to publication. The result is far more than a survey of fashion; it demonstrates a refreshingly scientific approach to the use of artwork for costume study. Van Buren based her analysis on a set of securely datable artworks portraying figures in secular dress from a defined geographical area. Such a chronological record, she explained, can be used for three purposes: to develop a history of dress, to provide tools for dating other artworks, and to offer avenues for art interpretation. Van Buren chose 1325 as her starting point to embrace the “fashion revolution” of the 1330s; the study sample extends to the end of the Valois dynasty in 1515. She focused on France and the Netherlands, but she underscored France’s primacy as fashion leader, stating “there is no evidence that the Burgundian court ever initiated a new fashion.” As an art historian, Van Buren brought valuable insight too often missing from studies of clothing in art. She recognized artists’ deliberate use of outdated or exotic clothing to indicate historical, foreign, or symbolic characters; she noted the dating issues specific to each artistic medium; she stressed the need to consider the purposes for which an artwork was created; and she acknowledged the delay between the time a fashion was introduced and its appearance in art. Both the text and the glossary offer useful quotations from contemporary descriptions. Here, however, we begin to see the author’s weak areas. Her translations employ some puzzling word choices; she also drew heavily from the work of costume historians of previous generations, repeating assumptions and definitions questioned by today’s researchers. These issues hint at the author’s limited familiarity with recent costume scholarship; indeed, her extensive bibliography includes only a handful of studies on clothing from the past 30 years. Moreover, despite the scientific approach, the costume discussion is often disappointing. The descriptions are marred by the occasional misidentification of layers, details, or materials (for example, mistaking folds in a fur border for dagging). Overall, it is clear that Van Buren wrote from the perspective of a manuscript specialist, and her chief purpose was the third she listed—to use dress as a tool for the study of art, not the other way around. Even so, Van Buren performed a major service simply by assembling this compilation of dated costume images and textual references. Readers who are more interested in clothing history than in art analysis would be wise to follow the author’s encouragement to apply her tools to their own investigations, drawing their own conclusions from the abundant source material here, or following the same rigorous method for other regions and periods. — Robin Netherton, editor

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Recent Books of Interest Moda a Firenze 1540-1580: Lo stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici [Cosimo I de Medici’s Style], by Roberta Orsi Landini, with a contribution by Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols (Florence: Mauro Pagliai, 2011). ISBN 978-8856400991. 310 pages, 200 illustrations (most in color). This beautiful book is the much-anticipated companion to Orsi Landini’s earlier volume on the style of Cosimo’s wife, Eleonora of Toledo (Moda a Firenze 1540–1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la sua influenza, 2005). It is, if possible, an even more sumptuous work. But, like its counterpart, it is not just another pretty face. In many ways, Cosimo’s book follows the form of Eleonora’s. An English translation parallels the Italian text. Echoing its predecessor’s approach to Eleonora, it begins with an introduction to Cosimo himself, while the following chapters discuss the various components of dress. It features an examination of extant garments, lavish illustration with many less-than-familiar images (including details of the garments), a glossary, and a wardrobe account drawn from contemporary documents. This book, however, differs—as it must given the central character—in that it focuses on Cosimo in his role as the ruling figure of Florence, examining his carefully crafted style as it relates to his public persona. The first chapter, titled “Cosimo as Seen by his Contemporaries,” consists of quotations from those contemporaries, thereby setting the tone for the entire volume. An additional brief but thorough chapter covers robes of state and the robe of Grand Master of the Holy Military Order of Saint Stephen, which was found in Cosimo’s tomb. Having discussed Florentine textile production, tailors, and embroiderers in Eleonora’s book, here Orsi Landini expands with chapters on court suppliers and artisans as well as textile embellishment, the latter broken down into “Usual and Unusual Textile Techniques” (Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols’ contribution) along with sections on cords, fringes, gold lace, passementerie, hand-looped braid, spinette, and buttons. Throughout, this work sustains the same high standards put forth in the previous text. Those who appreciated that work will not be disappointed here. This reader, though, was left with one final question: Can we anticipate that the author will make this a trilogy with an investigation into the dress of Cosimo’s and Eleonora’s children? — Tawny Sherrill, California State University, Long Beach Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England, by Susan Frye (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0812242386. 302 pages, 52 illustrations (21 in color). In Pens and Needles, Susan Frye traces the complex and wide-ranging intersections between the ways in which early modern women fashioned themselves via text and via textile. Frye’s work is clearly indebted to Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, by Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, and Pens and Needles is similar in style. In the first chapter, Frye assesses the strategies that Elizabeth Tudor, Bess of Hardwick, and Mary Stuart used to assert their identities and their relationships with various others, with special reference to the political situations they inhabited and 159

Recent Books of Interest created. Translations, letters, emblems, ciphers, embroideries, dress, and furnishing textiles are all considered as part of the densely packed iconography that these powerful women produced to portray themselves and one another. Chapter Two discusses the works of three female artisans: Levina Teerlinc, Jane Segar, and Esther Inglis. Though interesting, this section is primarily concerned with images and text, with only a few references to textiles. In contrast, the third chapter explores the material culture of domestic needlework, especially samplers and embroidered pictures. Frye is particularly concerned with women’s agency in the narratives that needleworkers chose to depict, many of which include biblical “Women Worthies,” such as Judith, Susanna, and Esther. In Chapter Four, Frye again changes angles and analyzes women’s relationships to textiles via the texts of various plays, especially Othello and Cymbeline. She focuses on the eroticization of textiles and textile work, the conflation of textiles and women’s bodies, and men’s interpretation of both. The final chapter turns to a female author, Mary Sidney Wroth, and her lengthy prose romance Urania. Frye considers the various ways in which Wroth used textile and color imagery in her narrative and explores the context of her family, some of whom were also authors. Throughout, Frye is careful to define terms and provide relevant context, both theoretical and historical, making the book accessible to various audiences. While her strength is clearly literary criticism, her extensive research into fields related to her inquiry results not only in a multifaceted exploration of the topic but also copious footnotes suggesting sources for more information. At times the literary criticism shoulders aside the textile strand of the argument, and in places her reliance on others for information on topics outside her expertise leads her astray, but on the whole this is a welcome addition to the growing field of historical dress theory. — Melanie Schuessler, Eastern Michigan University

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Contents of Previous Volumes

Vol. 1 (2005)

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

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

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

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

Heidi M. Sherman From Flax to Linen in the Medieval Rus Lands Anna Zanchi “Melius Abundare Quam Deficere”: Scarlet Clothing in   Laxdæla Saga and Njáls Saga Lucia Sinisi The Wandering Wimple Mark Chambers and From Head to Hand to Arm: The Lexicological History Gale R. Owen-Crocker   of “Cuff ” Lena Hammarlund, Visual Textiles: A Study of Appearance and Visual Heini Kirjavainen,   Impression in Archaeological Textiles Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen, and Marianne Vedeler 162

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 163

Contents of Previous Volumes Fripperers and the Used Clothing Trade in Late Kate Kelsey Staples   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

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Contents

BRIGITTE HAAS-GEBHARD AND BRITT NOWAK-BÖCK The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials 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”

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 NY14620-2731 (US)

www.boydellandbrewer.com

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

Cover: Gold brooch inlaid with garnet, malachite, glass, and pearls, diameter 5.7 centimeters, from the Unterhaching burial ground in Bavaria, ca. 500. Photo: Britt Nowak-Böck.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8

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Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker