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Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15

MEDIEVAL

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Contents CLOTHING
GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER Old Rags, New Responses:
Medieval Dress and Textiles
MAREN CLEGG HYER Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures
AND
of Anglo-Saxon England
ELIZABETH M. SWEDO Unfolding Identities:The Intertextual Roles of Clothing
in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga
TEXTILES
HUGH M. THOMAS Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John
of England, 1199–1216
TINA ANDERLINI Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use
in Western Medieval Europe
ALEJANDRA CONCHA SAHLI Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire,
and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders
JOANNE W. ANDERSON The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels:
Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art

MONICA [Link] is Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the University

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

Cover image: Detail of cope in opus ciprense (end of the thirteenth century; Museo della
Cattedrale, Anagni). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma. & Owen-Crocker
Editors Wright, Netherton

• 15•
Edited by
Monica L. Wright, Robin Netherton
and Gale R. Owen-Crocker
 Medieval
Clothing and Textiles

Volume 15
 Medieval
Clothing and Textiles

ISSN 1744-5787

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

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

Volume 15

edited by

MONICA L. WRIGHT

ROBIN NETHERTON

GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER

THE BOYDELL PRESS

 © Contributors 2019
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2019

The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978-1-78327-412-3

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: [Link]

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Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

 Contents

Illustrations page vi
Tables viii
Contributors ix
Preface xi

1 Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles 1

  Gale R. Owen-Crocker

2 Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon 33

  England
  Maren Clegg Hyer

3 Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the 53

  Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga
  Elizabeth M. Swedo

4 Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216 79

  Hugh M. Thomas

5 Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western 101
   Medieval Europe
  Tina Anderlini

6 Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for 137
   Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders
  Alejandra Concha Sahli

7 The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in 157
   Late Medieval Art
  Joanne W. Anderson

Recent Books of Interest 183

Contents of Previous Volumes 197

v
 Illustrations

Old Rags, New Responses

Fig. 1.1 Mantle of King Roger II of Sicily 3
Fig. 1.2 Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry 4
Fig. 1.3 Detail of shroud from St. Bees, Cumbria, England 6
Fig. 1.4 Shoes associated with St. Germanus 8
Fig. 1.5 Shoe associated with St. Dizier 8
Fig. 1.6 Sock from York, England 10
Fig. 1.7 Garment from Herjolsfsnes, Greenland 12
Fig. 1.8 Hood from Orkney, Scotland 22
Fig. 1.9 Alb associated with Emperor Barbarossa 26
Fig. 1.10 Vestments associated with Bishop Augustin Kažotić of 27
Lucera, Italy

Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe

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

vi
 Illustrations

Fig. 5.15 Tomb effigy of Heinrich II, Maria Laach Abbey, Germany      131
Figs. 5.16–5.19 Details of the effigy in fig. 5.15 132–135

Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art

Fig. 7.1 Annunciation, Sankt Magdalena, Rentsch 158
Fig. 7.2 Detail of the loom in fig. 7.1 158
Fig. 7.3 Ground plan, Dominican Church, Bozen 162
Fig. 7.4 St. John Chapel, Dominican Church, Bozen 164
Fig. 7.5 Giotto’s Annunciation to Anna, Arena Chapel, Padua 166
Fig. 7.6 Annunciation to Anna, Dominican Church, Bozen     167
Fig. 7.7 Giotto’s Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Arena 168
Chapel, Padua
Fig. 7.8 Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Dominican 169
Church, Bozen
Fig. 7.9 Illustration from the Meditatione de la Vita del Nostro 170
Signore Ihesu Christo
Fig. 7.10 Detail of Procession after the Marriage of the Virgin, 174
Dominican Church, Bozen

The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons
listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every
effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any
omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement
in subsequent editions.

vii
 Tables

Clothing at King John’s Court

Table 4.1 Prices of fabrics recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216 84
Table 4.2 Prices of fur panels recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216 87

viii
 Contributors

MONICA L. WRIGHT (Editor) is the Granger and Debaillon Professor of French and
Medieval Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her publications include
the book Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century Romance (2010) and many
articles on the use of clothing in medieval French literature. She has a chapter on
literary representations of clothing in literature for the “Medieval Age” volume of the
six-volume Cultural History of Dress and Fashion (2016). Her most recent article in
Medieval Clothing and Textiles (in volume 14) examined the French literary sources
for the term bliaut.

ROBIN NETHERTON (Editor) is a costume historian specializing in Western Euro-

pean clothing of the Middle Ages and its interpretation by artists and historians. Since
1982, she has given lectures and workshops on practical aspects of medieval dress and
on costume as an approach to social history, art history, and literature. Her published
articles have addressed such topics as fourteenth-century sleeve embellishments, the
cut of Norman tunics, and medieval Greenlanders’ interpretation of European female
fashion. A journalist by training, she also works as a professional editor.

GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER (Editor) is Professor Emerita of the University of

­Manchester. Her recent publications on dress and textiles include Clothing the Past:
Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe, with
­Elizabeth Coatsworth (2018); The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450,
a database available at [Link] Medieval Dress
and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook, with Louise Sylvester and Mark
­Chambers (2014); Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450,
­ oatsworth and Maria Hayward (2012); and The Bayeux Tapestry:
with Elizabeth C
Collected Papers (2012).

TINA ANDERLINI holds a Ph.D. in Art History and is an associate researcher at the
Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale de Poitiers. After completing
a dissertation on Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s influences, she has focused on medieval
art and costume and the connections between them. Since 2010, she has frequently
contributed to the magazines Moyen Âge, Antiquité, and Historia, Histoire et Images
Médiévales. Her academic publications include Le Costume Médiéval au XIIIe Siècle
(2014) and articles in Medieval Clothing and Textiles and selected conference proceed-
ings on the Middle Ages and the Pre-Raphaelites.

ix
 Contributors

JOANNE W. ANDERSON is Lecturer in Thirteenth- to Seventeenth-Century H ­ istory of

Art at the Warburg Institute in London. She is the author of Moving with the Magdalen:
Late Medieval Art and Devotion in the Alps (2019). Her research interests include art
in the landscape, workshop practice, and patronage in the medieval and early modern
periods. She also works on exhibition history in the twentieth century.

ALEJANDRA CONCHA SAHLI holds a doctorate in Medieval and Early Modern

History from University College London. She studies the function of clothing as a
form of social code during the Middle Ages. She focuses, in particular, on the role
of religious habits in the construction of the collective identities of religious orders
in the late Middle Ages and is currently preparing a book on this topic. She works at
the Chilean Ministry of Education and teaches Early and Medieval Church History
at Universidad Católica de Chile’s Faculty of Theology.

MAREN CLEGG HYER is Professor of English at Valdosta State University. She

specializes in researching textiles and material culture in the literary imagery of
Anglo-Saxon England. Her recent publications include Water and the Environment
in the Anglo-Saxon World, with Della Hooke (2017), and Sense and Feeling in Daily
Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, with Gale R. Owen-Crocker (forthcoming), both in
the series Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World; and Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays
in Honour of Gale R. Owen-Crocker, with Jill Frederick (2016).

ELIZABETH M. SWEDO is Associate Professor of Medieval and Early Modern

­European History at Western Oregon University. She specializes in Icelandic religious
culture in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, including implementation of
ecclesiastical reforms, interactions between laity and clergy, practiced religion, and
material culture. Her current research projects explore continental and Icelandic
perceptions of as well as devotional responses to natural disasters.

HUGH M. THOMAS is Professor of History at the University of Miami and Director

of the Center for the Humanities there. His scholarly specialty is the social and cultural
history of England from the Norman Conquest to the early thirteenth century. He
has published four books, the most recent of which is The Secular Clergy in England,
1066–1216 (2014). His current project is a social and cultural history of the court of
King John of England, 1199–1216.

x
 Preface

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

xi
 Preface

and the penitents. She concludes that by dressing in habits, members of these extra-­
religious groups alternately enjoyed privileges and risked accusations of heresy.
Joanne W. Anderson concludes the volume with an analysis of a representation
of the Annunciation in Tyrol, Italy, in which the Virgin’s loom is depicted strung with
a partially completed heraldic textile. Anderson asserts that the Virgin’s creation of
the textile both represents and elaborates the emerging noble identity of the patron’s
family by evoking the rich ties to family and community created through strategic
marriage and iconographic imagery.
Joining our board this year is Professor Sarah-Grace Heller, author of two articles
for our journal (in volumes 5 and 11) and Fashion in Medieval France (2007) and editor
of A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age (2016). She is Associate
Professor of French at Ohio State University, where she served as director of the Center
for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She has published widely on sumptuary law,
fashion in medieval literature, and the semiotics of culture.
Professor Monica L. Wright became lead editor for the current volume as founding
editors Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker began a phased withdrawal of
editorial duties. Monica heartily thanks Gale and Robin for their guidance and men-
torship throughout the process of preparing volume 15. Monica will be joined by a
new collaborator in 2020, and Robin and Gale will join the journal’s editorial board
while remaining General Editors of the affiliated book series Medieval and Renaissance
Clothing and Textiles (see below).
As always, we thank our board members and the many other scholars who have
generously devoted their time and expertise to review article submissions and consult
with authors.
We continue to consider for publication in this journal both independent submis-
sions and papers read at sessions sponsored by DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation,
and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) at the international congresses held
annually in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Leeds, England. Proposals from potential
conference speakers should be sent to robin@[Link] (for Kalamazoo) or gale.
owencrocker@[Link] (for Leeds). Potential authors for Medieval Clothing and
Textiles should read our author guidelines at [Link]
pdf, and send a 300-word synopsis to mlwright@[Link].
Authors of larger studies interested in submitting a monograph or collabora-
tive book manuscript for our subsidia series, Medieval and Renaissance Clothing
and T­ extiles, should apply using the publication proposal form on the website of
our publisher, Boydell & Brewer, at ­[Link]
submit_proposal.asp. We encourage potential authors to discuss their ideas with the
General Editors, Robin Netherton (robin@[Link]) and Gale Owen-Crocker
([Link]@[Link]), before making a formal proposal.

xii
 Old Rags, New Responses:
Medieval Dress and Textiles

Gale R. Owen-Crocker

As the founder editors of Medieval Clothing and Textiles make a phased withdrawal
and a new team takes over, it is an appropriate time to consider the ways in which our
subject has developed, not just in the fifteen exciting years of our editorship but in the
last half-century (coinciding with my own career); the current state of the art, including
its historiography; and potential new directions. I make no claim to be encyclopaedic:
My view inevitably reflects my own research experience and what I have learned from
editing submissions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles and other collaborative volumes.
I begin with artefacts, commencing at the higher end of the social ladder and the
later Middle Ages with surviving complete or near-complete garments, and continuing
(by way of explaining the gender imbalances of our evidence) to the earlier materi-
al remains of textile and dress accessories from furnished graves in pre- and early
­Christian cemeteries and the organic remains (literally “rags”) from medieval occu-
pation sites. I then consider representations of dress and textile in art and text before
going on to examine theoretical approaches to the subject, giving particular emphasis
to the usefulness of “object biography,”1 which privileges study of the long-term life of
artefacts, including their reuse, modification, preservation, and display, an approach
I have found particularly useful in my recent work in collaboration with Elizabeth
Coatsworth.2 In following the continued existence of medieval textiles I consider why

An earlier, and more autobiographical, version of this paper was delivered as the opening lecture
of the “Text-Textile-Texture” collegium at Stanford University in May 2017, under the title “From
Dissertation to Database; and from ‘Costume,’ via Cloth, to ‘Dress and Textiles.’”

   1 See below, pp. 20–23.

   2 Elizabeth Coatsworth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from
Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Several items discussed
in this paper appear in this book, with high-quality images, discussion, and bibliographies: the
mantle and eagle dalmatic of the Holy Roman Empire; the buskins of Clement II; the Durham
stole and maniple; the Ailbecunda belt; the shoes of saints Dizier and Germanus; two gowns
of Eleanor, queen of Aragon; Greenland garments; the York hood and sock; a headdress from
a Frisian terp; Bryggen shoes; the Orkney hood; the cloth-of-gold gown in Uppsala; Garçia
d’Medici’s doublet. Where appropriate, original sources are cited in the present paper, but
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

SURVIVING MEDIEVAL TEXTILES: SOURCES AND TYPES

Textiles are organic: They rot. They burn easily. They fade. Medieval textile was pro-
duced by labour-intensive methods, making it precious. Therefore it was extensively
reused, sold on the secondhand market, handed down the social or familial hierarchy,
repaired, remade, and often recycled into an artefact different from its original iden-
tity. This intensive use meant that much medieval cloth ended up as rags, fated to be
burned or discarded, when it was sometimes used in landfill or, in the late Middle
Ages, collected for paper-making. The nonspecialist might therefore suppose that little
or nothing remains of medieval textile. However, the opposite is true.
There are in fact many surviving medieval textiles, some complete or almost whole,
thanks to skilful modern conservators and restorers. Many have simply been kept
for hundreds of years, usually in church or royal treasuries. Ecclesiastical v­ estments

where sources are numerous or obscure, or where the book contains a synthesis or information
not available elsewhere, I have cited the book.
   3 At that time—1968—“costume” was understood to mean “dress style.” The term has since
become largely confined to the more specialised meaning of a dress style deliberately created
in imitation of another period or place for the stage, re-enactment, or other performance.
   4 In my own Anglo-Saxon area there are annual interdisciplinary bibliographies in past volumes
of Anglo-Saxon England and still currently in Old English Newsletter. A subject-specific
bibliography is Elizabeth Coatsworth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Medieval Textiles of the British
Isles AD 450–1100: An Annotated Bibliography, BAR British Series 445 (Oxford: Archaeopress,
2007). Recent online bibliographies are Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, “Textiles,” in
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Medieval Studies, 2012, [Link]
com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/[Link], accessed June 29,
2018; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, “Dress,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Medieval
Studies, 2014, [Link]
[Link], accessed June 29, 2018; and Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker,
“Medieval Textiles,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Art History, 2018, [Link]
[Link]/view/document/obo-9780199920105/obo-9780199920105-0130.
xml, accessed Jan. 10, 2019. There are annual bibliographies in the journal Costume.
2
 Old Rags, New Responses

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

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

  5 For a helpful list of relics and chronology, see “Imperial Regalia,” Wikipedia, https://
[Link]/wiki/Imperial_Regalia, accessed Feb. 20, 2018.
   6 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 19–20, 22, 71–72, 85–88, 233–34.
3
4
Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

the Tapestry, with its bright colours and animated figures, draws over 400,000 visitors
each year. It is probably the most famous surviving medieval textile.7
Numerous medieval cloths have been recovered from tombs, where airtight
conditions have preserved some fibres while others have been damaged or destroyed
completely by the rotting of the corpse and other destructive circumstances.
Many of these textiles are garments; other surviving cloth items include coffin
linings, bedding, and shrouds. Since elaborate tombs and burial in clothes
which symbolised the importance of their office were normally the prerogative
of only royalty and distinguished ecclesiastics, surviving material is predom-
inantly silk and associated corpses predominantly male. Some discoveries
present a time capsule of the burial date, such as the magnificent silk vestments
of Pope Clement II, who died in 1047, preserved in Bamberg, Germany. 8 In
other cases, such as the shrines of Charlemagne in Aachen, Germany, and St.
Cuthbert, in Durham, England, tombs were opened and their contents aug-
mented over centuries of veneration, resulting in the eventual excavation of
strata of precious textiles of various eras. Sometimes the probable occasion of
the presentation of additional textiles is known: The gold-embroidered stole
and maniple found in the shrine of St. Cuthbert originate from early-tenth-­
century Wessex, according to both the inscriptions upon them and their art
style. They were very likely given by King Æthelstan, whose visit to the shrine of
the seventh-century saint in 934 is documented in an eleventh-century history
(formerly attributed to Symeon of Durham), with details of the king’s donation
which included a stole with maniple. 9 The Elephant Silk found in the tomb of
Charlemagne, who had died in 814, was, according to its inscription, woven in
a Constantinople workshop and dates to the eleventh century. It was certainly
a royal gift, but whether presented at the opening of Charlemagne’s tomb in
1100 (by Holy Roman Emperor Otto III whose mother and fiancée were both
Byzantine), added at his canonisation in 1165 (by Holy Roman Emperor F ­ rederick
I), or given at the completion of Charlemagne’s shrine in 1215 (by Frederick II,
later Holy Roman Emperor) is uncertain.10

  7 For a comprehensive bibliography, see Shirley Ann Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry; Bayeux,
Médiathèque Municipale: MS 1: A Sourcebook, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 9
(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013).
  8 Sigrid Müller-Christensen, Das Grab des Papstes Clemens II. im Dom zu Bamberg (Munich: F.
Bruckmann, 1960); Gregor Kollmorgen, “Catholic Bamberg: The Vestments of Pope Clement
II and Other Treasures from the Diocesan Museum,” New Liturgical Movement, May 29, 2009,
[Link]
accessed Dec. 20, 2018; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 18, 295–96.
   9 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 327–30.
10 Anna Maria Muthesius, “Silk, Power and Diplomacy in Byzantium,” in Textiles in Daily Life:
Proceedings of the Third Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, September 24–26,
1992 (Earleville, MD: Textile Society of America, 1993), available online at Textile Society of
America Symposium Proceedings, [Link] accessed July
31, 2018; Muthesius, Studies in Byzantine, Islamic, and Near Eastern Silk Weaving (London:
Pindar, 2008), 42.
5
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

The Elephant Silk was not tailored into a garment and was effectively a shroud.
There are many such remains of magnificent textiles from Christian tombs.11
­L esser-known survivals, relatively simple in terms of textile but unique, and
therefore special in terms of cultural history, are two linen shrouds, from a tomb
that probably belonged to a local knight fatally injured in Prussia on the Northern
Crusade of the Teutonic Knights in 1368 and buried at St. Bees, Cumbria, England.
Both shrouds were constructed of several pieces, two fringed (fig. 1.3), treated with
preservative, and the whole corpse tied up like a parcel with knotted cord.12
Many surviving textiles have been preserved because of a real or supposed con-
nection with a once-celebrated person. Fragments of high-quality textiles have been
found wrapping bones or other relics of now-unidentifiable saints. Marian textile

11 Robin Fleming, “Acquiring, Flaunting, and Destroying Silk in Late Anglo-Saxon England,”
Early Medieval Europe 15, no. 2 (2007): 127–58.
12 Deidre O’Sullivan, “St. Bee’s Man—and What 14th Century Shrouds Actually Looked Like”
(lecture, London, Oct. 20, 1993), [Link] accessed Feb.
20, 2018; I. W. McAndrew, J. M. Todd, and Chris Robson, St Bees Man (St. Bees, UK: Parochial
Church Council, 2016).
6
 Old Rags, New Responses

relics were popular in the Middle Ages and many survive today, including the silk
veil in Chartres, France,13 and a camel hair girdle in Prato, Italy.14 A ninth-century
ecclesiastical girdle, preserved in Augsburg, Germany, probably owes its survival to
the fact that it was used to support textile remains believed to derive from the belt of
the Virgin Mary. In fact the supposed relic (part of which is stitched to the Carolingian
girdle and part contained in a silver and glass reliquary attached to it), is centuries
later than the supporting girdle. Today, interest in the composite object focuses not
on the spurious religious association but on the material objects. Both textiles are
tablet-woven. The supporting belt is monochrome, with a skilfully worked inscrip-
tion, only readable because the differently angled threads of the lettering reflect the
light differently from the background. The inscription includes a repeated Christian
invocation and a female name, “Ailbecund[a].” The person is unknown, but the name,
probably from East Frankia, is relevant both for establishing the origin of the band and
to questions of female workmanship and patronage.15 The attached band attributed to
the Virgin Mary is twelfth- to fourteenth-century, multicoloured, skilfully depicting
stylised animals and birds. It may be Islamic.16
Some garment-relics, shown by modern research to be chronologically incom-
patible with the saint to whom they are traditionally attributed, may have been linked
to that saint erroneously through the desire to own relics, or perhaps because they
were utilised in religious services associated with that person. Examples include the
embroidered liturgical shoes now displayed at the Musée Jurassien d’Art et d’His-
toire in Delémont, Switzerland, once preserved in the relic collection at Moutiers-­
Grandval Abbey and passed from there to the Church of St. Martin in Delémont.
The c­ ampagi-type shoes (fig. 1.4), associated with the seventh-century St. Germanus,
Abbot of Moutiers-Grandval, could be contemporary with the saint, since they are of
an early European Christian style, bearing a family resemblance to undated shoes from
Irish peat bogs and those illustrated in the eighth- to ninth-century Book of Kells; but
the sandalia-type shoes (fig. 1.5) attributed to an obscure eighth-century bishop, St.
Dizier (Desiderius), are probably from the twelfth or early thirteenth century, dated on
stylistic grounds from sculptures and by comparison with datable archaeological finds.17
A considerable amount of research has been done on silk textiles which survive
in western Europe in various states, from fragments to whole cloths and garments,
almost entirely from the Christian period, encompassing the technical details of

13 “Marian Relics,” Textile Relics: Research Guide, Feb. 8, 2011, [Link]

textilerelics/2011/02/08/marian-relics, accessed Feb. 20, 2018.
14 Cordelia Warr, Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215–1545 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2010), 35–50.
15 Valerie L. Garver, “Weaving Words in Silk: Women and Inscribed Bands in the Carolingian
World,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 (2010): 33–56, at 37–40 and 51–56.
16 Sigrid Müller-Christensen, “Zwei Fragmente eines Zingulums. Aus dem Dom zu Augsburg,” in
Müller-Christensen, ed., Sakrale Gewänder des Mittelalters (Munich: Hirmer, 1955), 14; Müller-
Christensen, Suevia Sacra: Frühe Kunst in Schwaben (Augsburg: Städtliche Kunstsammlungen,
1973), 136–37.
17 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 380–85.
7
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

8
 Old Rags, New Responses

the weaving, the origin and interpretation of motifs, and the cultural significance of
silk.18 The surviving garments and textiles from Christian tombs, like the dress items
surviving in treasuries, are predominantly male-associated and ecclesiastical. Copes
and chasubles exist in considerable quantities, sometimes wool but mostly silk. Linen
albs are less common, silk dalmatics and tunicles rarer still. Stoles, maniples, episco-
pal gloves, buskins, and shoes survive in small quantities. Textile remains associated
with females are few and predominantly royal, but each unique in the evidence of
dress which it yields. The richly dressed corpse of a woman found in the cathedral of
Saint-Denis, France, is identified, by the inscription on her ring (Arnegundis, and an
abbreviation of Regina), as Aregund, wife of Clotair I, king of the Franks, who died ca.
580. Her clothes were certainly of royal quality. She wore a long silk coat, dyed purple
with expensive shellfish dye, with a front opening decorated with tablet weaving and
cuffs with tablet weaving and gold embroidery, over a wool garment and possibly a
linen one. She wore a silk veil on her head, stockings, cross-garters, and shoes. Over
her purple coat was a luxurious garment of fine wool and beaver hair.19 Textile relics of
Bathilde, wife of the Merovingian Frankish king Clovis II, later queen regent, nun, and
eventually saint, were preserved in her abbey of Chelles, France, along with those of
Abbess Bertille. Bathilde died in 680, Bertille ca. 704. Garments attributed to Bathilde
include a linen “chasuble” embroidered in silk with depictions of two necklaces, one
supporting pendants and a pectoral cross (the queen had abrogated jewellery in her
lifetime); a fringed, silk, semicircular mantle; a voluminous linen overgown; a linen
shawl; and a long silk ribbon that still binds the remains of her long, once-blonde hair.
A silk tunic with silk tablet-woven decoration on the cuff is attributed to Bertille.20
Eleanor, queen of Aragon, who died in 1244, was buried in Burgos, Spain, in the royal
mausoleum of her birth family, the rulers of Castile and León, wearing a gold-brocaded
green silk gown, tightly laced up the left side and long enough to trail on the floor; a
sideless overgown; and a semicircular mantle. Beneath, she wore a linen blouse, and
she had a headdress of muslin, silk, and gold.21
There is, in contrast, a predominance of female evidence for the earlier medieval
period in the form of grave-goods from pagan and early Christian burials. This is

18 See particularly Anna Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving AD 400 to AD 1200 (Vienna:
Fassbaender, 1997); Muthesius, Studies in Silk in Byzantium (London: Pindar, 2004); Muthesius,
“Silk, Power”; and Muthesius, Byzantine, Islamic, and Near Eastern Silk Weaving.
19 Sophie Desrosiers and Antoinette Rast-Eicher, “Luxurious Merovingian Textiles Excavated
from Burials in the Saint Denis Basilica, France in the 6th–7th Century,” in Textiles and Politics:
Textile Society of America 13th Biennial Symposium Proceedings, Washington, DC, September
18–September 22, 2012 (n.p.: Textile Society of America, 2012), available online at Textile
Society of America Symposium Proceedings, [Link]
accessed Feb. 20, 2018.
20 Jean-Pierre Laporte, Le Trésor des Saints de Chelles (Chelles, France: Société Archéologique
et Historique de Chelles, 1988); Jean-Pierre Laporte and Raymond Boyer, Trésors de Chelles:
Sépultures et Reliques de la Reine Bathilde et de l’Abbesse Bertille (Chelles, France: Société
Archéologique et Historique; Amis du Musée, 1991).
21 Manuel Gómez-Moreno, El Pantéon Real de las Huelgas de Burgos (Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Cientificas Instituto Diego Velazquez, 1946), 23–24; Concha Herrero
9
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

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

Carretero, Museo de Telas Medievales: Monasterio de Santa María la Real de Huelgas (Madrid:
Patrimonio Nacional, 1988), 47, 52–53; Vestiduras Ricas: El Monasterio de las Huelgas y su
Época 1170–1340: Del 16 de Marzo al 19 de Junio de 2005, Palacio Real de Madrid, exhibition
catalogue (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2005), 171–73.
22 See for example, for Anglo-Saxon dress, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England:
Revised and Enlarged Edition (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004); and Penelope Walton Rogers,
Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450–700, CBA Research Report 145
(York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007). For Scandinavian dress, the groundbreaking
Agnes Geijer, Birka III: Die Texilfunde aus den Gräbern (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1938);
Inge Hägg, “Viking Women’s Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archaeological Methods,” in
Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed.
N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting (London: Heinemann, 1983), 316–50; and Thor Ewing, Viking
Clothing (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2006).
10
 Old Rags, New Responses

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

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

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

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

12
 Old Rags, New Responses

colony of Denmark, analysis of the surviving clothes demonstrates complex tailoring

and detailed trimming of garments and that they were once smartly coloured.31

IMAGE AND WORD

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

31 Poul Nörlund [Nørlund], Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes: An Archaeological and Historical

Study, Meddelelser om Grønland 67 (Copenhagen: Kommissionen for Videnskabelige
Undersøgelser i Grønland, 1924); Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse
Greenland (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2004); Robin Netherton, “The View
from Herjolfsnes: Greenland’s Translation of the European Fitted Fashion,” Medieval Clothing
and Textiles 4 (2008): 143–71.
32 The present author plans a volume about soft furnishings provisionally titled Cushioning the
Past in collaboration with Elizabeth Coatsworth.
33 The Bedford Hours (London, British Library, MS Add. 18850), fols. 256v, 257v, viewable online
at [Link] accessed Feb. 18, 2018.
13
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

34 Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Chantilly, France, Musée Condé, MS 65); for the calendar
images, see “Labors of the Months from the Très Riches Heures,” The Public Domain Review,
[Link]
heures, accessed Feb. 19, 2018.
35 Owen-Crocker, Dress, 182.
14
 Old Rags, New Responses

a “tippet” or “cornet.”36 Bliaut could refer to both a textile and an item of dress, but its
nature remains obscure; the term does not refer to the particular costume depicted
on column sculptures at Chartres, with which it has been confidently identified since
the nineteenth century.37
In a recent five-year research project, the present author and colleagues at the
universities of Manchester and Westminster attempted to document all the dress and
textile vocabulary of the British Isles from the beginning of written records up to
1450.38 Britain is linguistically complex, not only because Old and Middle English are
Germanic languages, whereas Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Cornish are Celtic,
and Latin and French are Romance, but because multilingualism existed from an early
stage: Clerics were required to read and write Latin as well as English. Scandinavian
settlers, and conquerors, brought their own language(s). Norman French was intro-
duced to England even before the Norman Conquest, since Edward “the Confessor”
had spent years of exile in Normandy, and became the language of the court following
the Conquest. Add to this the further influence of merchants, diplomats, and other
visitors, bringing Frisian, French, and Italian terminology for dress and textiles, and the
result is a rich mix. Middle English accountants often used what linguists call “code-
switching,” moving smoothly between English, Latin, and French within a single entry.
A word may change its usage over time: kirtle, Old English cyrtel, was probably
derived from Old Norse kyrtill; Latin curtus (“short”) probably lay behind it. In Old
English it was used both for the short tunic of a man and the longer main gown of
a woman, but by the Middle English period referred only to a woman’s garment,
worn over the shift but under the cloak. In Modern English it signifies a woman’s
undergarment. Other words might have a wide range of meanings in different con-
texts: Pall, in its many forms and in the Germanic, Celtic, and Romance languages
in use in the British Isles, was variously used of a beautiful textile (often nonspecific,
sometimes satin, brocade, or expensively dyed); a rich covering for an ecclesiastical
object—sometimes in this sense used figuratively; a secular garment—cloak, mantle,
or tunic—sometimes rich; a pallium, the narrow vestment which was the insignia of
archbishops and popes; and an ecclesiastical chasuble.
It is important that scholars adopt accurate and precise terminology of our own
era to describe medieval textiles, and it is desirable that there should be consistency
between authors. To this end, vocabularies of technical terms in nine languages are

36 Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Liripipe,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c.
450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden:
Brill, 2012), 329.
37 Monica L. Wright, “The Bliaut: An Examination of the Evidence in French Literary Sources,”
Medieval Clothing and Textiles 14 (2018): 61–79.
38 The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain project was directed by Gale R. Owen-Crocker
with Louise Sylvester and Cordelia Warr, and completed with the research assistance of Mark
Chambers, Stuart Rutten, and Mark Zumbuhl; administrative assistance of Brian Schneider;
specialist Celtic language assistance of Michael Hayes and Patricia Williams; and input from
Emira Bouhafna, Anne Kirkham, and several undergraduates of Smith College, Northampton,
Mass., gaining work experience as honorary fellows. Pamela Walker was the project’s Ph.D.
student. The database is freely available at [Link]
15
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

published by the Centre International d’Etude des Textiles Anciens (CIETA)39 and up-
dated in their bulletins. Also useful are the specialist works by Dorothy Burnham and
Anne Morrell, the latter specifically relevant for archaeological and historic textiles.40

THEORISING DRESS AND TEXTILES

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

39 Available at [Link] accessed June 28, 2018.

40 Dorothy K. Burnham, A Textile Terminology: Warp and Weft (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1981); Anne Morrell, The ATN (Archaeological Textiles Newsletter) Guide to Structural
Sewing: Terms and Techniques, ATN Occasional Paper Series 3 (Leiden: Archaeological Textiles
Newsletter, 1989).
41 Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983).
42 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 1990).
43 See, for example, Maren Clegg Hyer, “Textiles and Textile Imagery in the Exeter Book,” Medieval
Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 29–39; Monica L. Wright, Weaving Narrative: Clothing in
Twelfth-Century French Romance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).
44 Andrea Denny-Brown, Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval
England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012).
45 Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert, eds., Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and Their
Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).
46 For example, pre-Christian graves in Western Europe are often found to have been provided
with bedding, grave-goods wrapped in textile, and covers for the base of the grave, recently
demonstrated for the Netherlands in Brandenburgh, Clothes Make the Man, 199. Precious
silks were often used as shrouds in the graves of important persons; see Fleming, “Acquiring,
Displaying, and Destroying Silk”; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Textiles in Christian Graves,” in
Kulturhistoriske Studier i Centralitet—Archaeological & Historical Studies in Centrality 2
(forthcoming). Rich silks were used to line coffins and knitted silk cushions to furnish them
in thirteenth-century royal burials at Burgos; see Gómez-Moreno, El Pantéon Real; Herrero
Carretero, Museo de Telas Medievales.
16
 Old Rags, New Responses

as it is to small-scale non-industrial societies which are the concern of professional

anthropologists.47
The concept of fashion—what it was and where it began—has become prominent
in discussions of medieval dress. Stella Mary Newton and Françoise Piponnier argued
for a beginning in the mid-fourteenth century.48 Sarah-Grace Heller advocated the
twelfth.49 Heller identified a number of defining criteria, which include a desire for
constant change, shared—or resisted—by many individuals in a given society; the
introduction of a subtly new, promising social identity and personal satisfaction; re-
jection of the past; criticism of decayed mores; conspicuous consumption and waste;
theatricality; and a sense of the right to pursue pleasure.
While it is clear that we have no evidence for some of these criteria from the
earlier periods, scholars are now recognising “fashion” much earlier. Stefanie Hoss
convincingly presents changes in Roman military belt equipment as independent
of technical requirements, rather subject to changes in fashion.50 The present author
would argue that “fashion” can be found in the medieval period much earlier than the
eras on which Heller and Newton/Pipponier focus: There were two sweeping changes
in women’s dress in Anglo-Saxon England, at the turn of the sixth/seventh centuries
and again at the tenth century, which involved in the first instance a change in types
of brooch and the ways they were worn, and the second the adoption of a voluminous
headdress and the disappearance of jewellery from the public appearance of women,
as least as depicted in manuscript illuminations.51 The latter at least was unlikely to
have been in pursuit of pleasure; it may well have been inspired by Christian art,52
though the voluminous headdress may have constituted conspicuous consumption of
textile. Elizabeth Coatsworth notes: “Recognition of the social importance of clothing
by people who worked for their living is evident from the formal wedding gifts docu-
mented in marriage contracts of the children of leading citizens as early as the eleventh
century,”53 citing recent work on the records of medieval Bari, Italy.54 Moralists and
satirists confirm the shocking nature of some innovations, including writers from the
late seventh/early eighth century onwards attacking women for extreme headdresses

47 Christopher Y. Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 57.
48 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980); Françoise Piponnier, “Une Revolution dans le Costume
Masculine au XIVe Siècle,” in Le Vêtement: Histoire, Archéologie et Symbolique Vestimentaires
au Moyen Age, ed. Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 225–36.
49 Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007).
50 Stefanie Hoss, “The Roman Military Belt: A Status Symbol and Object of Fashion,” in Dress
and Society: Contributions from Archaeology, ed. Toby F. Martin and Rosie Weetch (Oxford:
Oxbow, 2017), 94–113, reviewed in this volume, p. 187.
51 Owen-Crocker, Dress, chaps. 4 and 6.
52 Specifically by the dissemination in Western Europe of images of the Virgin Mary in a Middle
Eastern headdress; Owen-Crocker, Dress, 220.
53 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 27.
54 Antonietta Amati Canta, “Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9
(2013): 1–43; Lucia Sinisi, “The Marriage of the Year (1028),” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9
(2013): 44–54.
17
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

and men being vehemently abused in the twelfth century for extreme shoes55 and
in the fourteenth for skin-tight, genital-revealing hose, particularly offensive when
coloured mi-parti!56
Magnificent dress and soft furnishings were tools in the propaganda of rulers from
at least the eleventh century. Their clothing and the theatres in which they made their
public appearances were orchestrated with splendid textiles to demonstrate power.57
Cloth was exploited by the Church as well as secular authorities.58 The sumptuous
furnishings which greeted Eleonora, princess of Naples, as the guest of the Pope in
Rome in 1473 are testament to what Jane Bridgeman calls “soft diplomacy and the
propaganda of material luxury and gift giving.”59 In the early Renaissance the Medici
family cultivated rich dress and other textiles to create a public image of authority and
wealth that went beyond death.60
In the great households from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance, dress
proclaimed hierarchy; the quantity of fabric granted for the clothing and the choice of
fur used to trim it made obvious the relative status of each person.61 The recognition
that fashionable clothes were desirable and very visible status symbols clearly spread
below the ruling classes: German accountants Matthäus and Veit Konrad Schwarz
had their wardrobes recorded in a series of portraits covering the years 1497 to 1561;
some of their garments are astonishing in both their intricacy and the extreme nature
of their styles.62
Research today looks beyond images of aristocrats who wore fine dress and lived
among elaborate furnishings. It is less concerned than earlier works with establishing

55 Owen-Crocker, Dress, 134–37; Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-
Crocker, eds., Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge,
UK: Boydell, 2014), chap. 4.
56 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed.
(Oxford: University Press, 1990), X, 300–1, translated by Owen-Crocker in Coatsworth and
Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 274.
57 Stephen Rigby, “Political Thought,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia,
422–26.
58 Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring, eds., Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the
Middle Ages (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014); Maureen Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue
and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).
59 Jane Bridgeman, “‘Bene in ordene et bene ornata’: Eleonora d’Aragona’s Description of Her
Suite of Rooms in a Roman Palace of the Late Fifteenth Century,” Medieval Clothing and
Textiles 13 (2017), 107–15, at 115.
60 Eve Borsook, “Art and Politics at the Medici Court I: The Funeral of Cosimo I de’ Medici,”
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistoriscen Institutes in Florenz 12, no. 1/2 (1965): 31–54; Roberta Orsi
Landini and Bruna Niccoli, Moda a Firenze 1540–1580: Lo Stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la Sua
Influenza (Florence: Mauro Pagliai, 2005); Roberta Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540–1580:
Lo Stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici (Florence: Mauro Pagliai, 2011).
61 Frédérique Lachaud, “Dress and Social Status in England Before the Sumptuary Laws,” in
Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002); Melanie Schuessler Bond, Dressing the Scottish Court, 1543–
1553 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2019).
62 Ulinka Rublack and Maria Hayward, eds., The First Book of Fashion: The Book of Clothes of
Matthäus and Veit Konrad Schwarz of Augsburg (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
18
 Old Rags, New Responses

norms; instead, there are a number of studies of “Otherness,” demonstrating that art-
ists used certain kinds of textiles and garments conventionally. Certain headdresses
indicated “foreignness,” Eastern exoticism;63 jagged and particoloured garments
identified entertainers and minstrels, sometimes pagans and evil figures;64 stripes and
other patterned garments, bright colours, skin-tight clothing, and women’s trains were
used to indicate reprehensible behaviour, particularly in religious artworks.65 However,
it is important to recognise that in artworks these details are semiotic, signs planted
by artists and recognised by viewers, yet fashions such as stripes, dags, mi-parti, and
trains were in fact in common use. Ruth Mellinkoff notes:

Tight-fitting clothing was frequently condemned—and equally often worn. Members

of all classes of society were remarkably capable of ignoring not only criticism of trendy
fashions but also the sumptuary regulations outlawing them. The criticism of pious
moralists and other conservatives is faithfully mirrored, however, in religious art, where
enemies of the faith are repeatedly depicted in brightly coloured, skintight clothes.66

Recent focus on dress in relation to the body means that dress study is no longer
confined to artefacts of fibre or leather worn as clothing and the fasteners, jewel-
lery, and other appendages and items classed as “dress accessories.” It can include
refinements of the body itself 67 in ways that vary according to time, place, culture,
and fashion: hairstyle and the shaping or removal of body hair;68 cultivation of long,
shaped fingernails such as the sharpened talons which Aldhelm condemns in the late
seventh century;69 changing the appearance of the skin temporarily with cosmetics70

63 John Block Friedman, “The Art of the Exotic: Robinet Testard’s Turbans and Turban-like
Coiffure,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008): 173–91.
64 John Block Friedman, “The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist
Writers,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 121–38; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Fools in the
Bayeux Tapestry,” Text 42 (2015): 4–11, at 5.
65 Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric, trans. Jody
Gladding (New York: Washington Square, 2003); Friedman, “Iconography”; Ruth Mellinkoff,
Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993); Cordelia Warr, “The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and
Visual Culture in the Camposanto Last Judgment,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 11 (2015):
99–117.
66 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 39.
67 Martin and Weetch, Dress and Society, 1–2.
68 Penny H. Jolly, “Pubics and Privates: Body Hair in Late Medieval Art,” in The Meanings of
Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. Sherry C. M. Lindquist (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 183–206;
John Block Friedman, “Eyebrows, Hairlines, and Hairs ‘Less in Sight’: Female Depilation in
Late Medieval Europe,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 14 (2018): 81–111; Roberta Milliken,
ed., A Cultural History of Hair in the Middle Ages (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
69 Aldhelm, De Virginitate, LVIII. See Rudolf Ehwald, ed., Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919), 318; Michael
Lapidge and Michael Herren, eds., Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009),
128.
70 Probably in use in England and on the Continent as early as the sixth century if the identification
of a few dress accessories as cosmetic brushes is correct; Owen-Crocker, Dress, 68 and note
120. See also Aldhelm, De Virginitate, XVII, in Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 246, and Lapidge and
19
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

OBJECT BIOGRAPHY AND AFTERLIFE

The theory of “object biography” formulated by Igor Kopytoff and originally

applied to anthropology, proposes that objects, as well as human beings, may be
seen as having life stories:

Herren, Prose Works, 73; Montserrat Cabré, “Cosmetics,” in Women and Gender in Medieval
Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret C. Schaus (New York: Routledge, 2006), 173–74.
71 Penelope Walton, “Textiles,” in English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products,
ed. John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (London: Hambledon, 1991), 319–54; Coatsworth and
Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past; Eva Andersson Strand and Sarah-Grace Heller, “Production
and Distribution,” in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age, ed. Sarah-
Grace Heller (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 29–52.
72 Luttrell Psalter (London, British Library, MS Add. 42130), respectively folios 193r, 60r, 166v;
viewable online at [Link] accessed Feb. 19, 2018.
73 Of particular note are a group of copies of the Tacuinum Sanitatis illustrated in northern Italy
in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, notably Vienna, Austrian National Library,
MS s. n. 2644; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1673; Rome,
Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 4182; Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université, MS 1041; and Rouen,
Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 3054 (formerly Leber 1088). Some illustrations from these are
viewable at [Link] accessed Feb.
21, 2018. For additional images, see Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook:
Tacuinum Sanitatis (New York: George Braziller, 1976).
74 Nürnberger Hausbücher (Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderbücherstiftungen)
(Nuremberg, Germany, Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°), viewable online at http://
20
 Old Rags, New Responses

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

The theory was subsequently used by prehistoric and, later, medieval archaeol-
ogists. It is particularly appropriate for dress and textile studies: firstly, because
many excavated dress accessories were manifestly old when buried, sometimes
broken beyond practical use; some probably heirlooms; some, particularly bag/
amulet collections and finds from settlement sites, probably curated—that is,
collected and retained for some purpose (memorialisation, healing)—by their
last medieval owners;76 and secondly, because textile is particularly liable to be
remade, repaired, and recycled. Alexandra Lester-Makin has recently applied ob-
ject biography theory to selected early medieval embroideries,77 and this approach
is implicitly used throughout the recent study of surviving garments by Coatsworth
and Owen-Crocker.78
This approach is particularly fruitful for stray finds, textiles discovered with no
context at all, or with none recorded. It may be possible to reconstruct a biography of
the textile from evidence presented by the material remains themselves. Its compo-
nents and techniques may have stories to tell. A case in point is the wool hood found
in a peat bog in Mainland, Orkney Isles, Scotland (fig. 1.8). The body of the hood is
made from a piece of undyed woollen cloth which, before its long exposure to peat,
was reddish-brown. The wool, of hairy medium texture, was probably from local sheep
and probably spun by four different spinners, since the fibre varied in thickness. It
was woven in an irregular chevron twill, each change of direction corresponding to a

[Link], accessed Feb. 18, 2018. Textile-related occupations include

carding wool, dyeing, weaving, teaselling, shearing, and embroidering silk. There are tailors
and cloth merchants working in their shops, distaff-makers, a man making wired wool cards,
and others making implements for teaselling and needles. Packers and merchants use the
end product. Manufacturers of dress accessories include those making and selling hats, and
those making buttons, leather bags, fabric purses, laces with metal aiglets, metal buckles, and
wooden clogs. Unfortunately the two gold-spinners are not shown at work, though one holds
up a spool of his shiny product.
75 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91, at 66–67.
76 Alexandra Knox, “Middle Anglo-Saxon Dress Accessories in Life and Death: Expressions of a
Worldview,” in Martin and Weetch, Dress and Society, 114–29.
77 Alexandra M. Makin, “Embroidery and Its Context in the British Isles and Ireland during the
Early Medieval Period (AD 450–1100)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 2016), 40–45;
Alexandra Lester-Makin, The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: The Sacred and Secular Power
of Embroidery, Ancient Textiles Series (Oxford: Oxbow, forthcoming).
78 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past.
21
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

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

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

79 Ibid., 32–34.
80 Ibid., 15; also Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Survival, Recovery, Restoration, Recreation: The Afterlife
of Medieval Garments,” in Refashioning Medieval and Early Modern Dress, ed. Maren Clegg
Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, forthcoming).
81 Maren Clegg Hyer, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined Textiles in Anglo-
Saxon England,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8 (2012): 49–62.
82 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 210–14.
83 Manuel A. Castiñeiras, The Creation Tapestry, trans. Amanda Dawn Blackley (Girona, Spain:
Catedral de Girona, 2011), 79–85.
23
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

that year. Over the course of seven months, the elbow had been clumsily patched and
the beautiful garment had been treated brutally when thirty-one additional eyelet
holes (for lacing the doublet to the breeches) were stabbed, higher up the garment
than the original ones which were carefully finished.84 Such alterations give insight into
ad hoc repairs and adaptations, carried out no doubt in the Medici case by household
servants, and lower down the social chain, by female servants and family members.
New clothes, or rather clothes made of new cloth, were a luxury some never
enjoyed. Fripperers dealt in secondhand clothing, as either their main business or
a sideline. Clearly some lived on the fringe of the law, trading stolen goods or op-
erating forbidden evening markets.85 Botchers repaired and remade old clothes for
the secondhand market,86 a trade that was still carried out in the slums of London in
Victorian times.87
Particularly fruitful object biography and afterlife study have been applied to the
Bayeux Tapestry. The 1982–83 examination included both scientific studies and close
observation of the back of the Tapestry, including its repairs and patches, remains of
hanging loops, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century lining,88 and its sixteenth-century
backing strip, now bearing the inked scene numbers which postdate the lining.89 Nine-
teenth-century restoration employed synthetically dyed threads of a different torsion
and thickness from those used in the original embroidery. They include a bright red
and threads now almost colourless. Embroidery stitches that pass through a patch must
be restoration. It is important that scholars seeking both to appreciate the art and to
interpret the narrative of the Tapestry pay attention to what has been restored, which is
sometimes only possible by looking at the recently published photographs of the back90
and checking against drawings made before the restoration.91 Alterations include the
ingenious choice of chain stitch for a ship’s rope—it indicates the texture of a rope

84 Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women
c1560–1620 (London: Macmillan, 1985), 53–54; Arnold, “Cut and Construction,” in Moda alla
Corte dei Medici: Gli Abiti Restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia (Florence: Centro Di,
1993), 49–73, at 49–50; Orsi Landini and Niccoli, Moda a Firenze, 59–61.
85 Kate Kelsey Staples, “Fripperers and the Used Clothing Trade in Late Medieval London,”
Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 (2010): 151–71; Kate Kelsey Staples, “Fripperers,” in Owen-
Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 212–13; Kate Kelsey Staples, “Con-artists or
Entrepreneurs? Fripperers and Market Space in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Paris,”
Journal of Medieval History 43, no. 2 (2017): 228–54.
86 Kate Kelsey Staples, “Botcher,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia,
92–93.
87 See George Gissing’s novel The Nether World, published 1889.
88 Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzeman, “The Technical Study of the Bayeux
Embroidery,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History: Proceedings of the
Cerisy Colloquium (1999), ed. Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy, and François Neveux (Caen, France:
Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004), 83–109.
89 Gabriel Vial, “The Bayeux Embroidery and Its Backing Strip,” in Bouet, Levy, and Neveux,
Bayeux Tapestry, 111–16.
90 See “Tapisserie de Bayeux,” L’Agence Photo, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, [Link]
[Link]/Package/2C6NU05WWFF8, accessed Feb. 21, 2018.
91 See the drawings of the Tapestry published in 1729–30 by Bernard de Montfaucon and the
hand-coloured drawings made by Charles Stothard in 1816–18, reproduced in Martin Foys,
24
 Old Rags, New Responses

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

The Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition: Online and CD-ROM (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, Digital
Scholarly Editions, 2003, 2013).
92 The arrow in the eye is dismissed in Martin K. Foys, “Pulling the Arrow Out: The Legend of
Harold’s Death and the Bayeux Tapestry,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed.
Foys, Eileen Overby, and Dan Terkla (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2009), 158–75, with the
reconstruction of the material object explained at 168–70.
93 George Beech, “Could Philip the Good of Burgundy Have Owned the Bayeux Tapestry in
1430?” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83, no. 2 (April 2005): 355–65; George Beech,
“An ‘Old’ Conquest of England Tapestry (possibly the Bayeux), Owned by the Rulers of France,
England and Burgundy (1396–1450),” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83, no. 4 (October
2005): 1017–27.
94 Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (London: Chatto and
Windus, 2006), sections 3 and 5; Shirley Ann Brown, “Decoding Operation Matilda: The
Bayeux Tapestry, the Nazis, and German Pan-Nationalism,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New
Approaches, ed. Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Dan Terkla (Oxford: Oxbow,
2011), 17–26.
95 Unpublished lecture with video by Sylvette Lemagnen, formerly Curator of the Bayeux
Tapestry, Oxford, 2016.
96 Makin, “Embroidery,” 190–210 and figs. 62–82.
25
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

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

26
 Old Rags, New Responses

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

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

97 Information from Maartje de Jong, Museum Catharijneconvent.

98 Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 182–84.
99 Ibid., 193–96.
27
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

techniques—knitted silk, woven silk, silk patchwork—present their own challenges.

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

CURRENT INTEREST, GAPS, AND IMBALANCES

Reconstruction of medieval and Renaissance garments has become popular in

the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sometimes in relation to the hobby of re-­
enactment, sometimes not, and ranging from the thoroughly scholarly, using hand-
made materials and historic methods, to some more dubious approximations worn by
amateur enthusiasts. Janet Arnold’s pioneering research101 and the organization The
Tudor Tailor102 represent responsible and influential work.
Some reconstructors have to work from images, when historic artefacts do not
survive. Others are fortunate enough to have access to the fragile original items. Recent
work of particular note includes Tasha Kelly’s 2012 reconstruction of the pourpoint of
Charles VI of France, which she dates tentatively to 1378–79,103 and Cynthia Jackson’s

100 Summarised in Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Llan-Gors Decorated Garment,” in Owen-Crocker,

Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 338–40.
101 Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 1: Englishwomen’s Dresses and their Construction 1660–1860
(London: Wace, 1964); Arnold, Patterns of Fashion c1560–1620.
102 Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davis, The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century
Dress (London: Batsford, 2006).
103 Tasha D. Kelly, “The Tailoring of the Pourpoint of King Charles VI of France Revealed,”
­Waffen- und Kostumkunde 55, no. 2 (2013): 153–80. The original is in the Musée des Beaux-
28
 Old Rags, New Responses

ongoing reconstruction of the sixteenth-century Broderers’ Crown,104 both of which

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

Arts, Chartres, France. Additional information from Tasha Kelly to Gale Owen-Crocker,
unpublished email.
104 Unpublished emails from Cynthia Jackson to Gale Owen-Crocker.
105 A Stitch in Time, BBC4, broadcast Jan. 31, 2018. The original is no longer accessible, but
the reconstruction was made in consultation with Lisa Monnas, the most recent scholar to
examine the garment. The original is in Canterbury Cathedral, England.
106 Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing.
107 Ibid., 142–45; Coatsworth and Owen-Crocker, Clothing the Past, 286–88.
108 Lisa Monnas, “Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10
(2014): 25–57.
109 Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Cushioning Medieval Life: Domestic Textiles in Anglo-Saxon
England,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2007): 1–12.
110 John Schofield, Medieval London Houses (1995; repr., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2003).
111 Hollie L. S. Morgan, Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations,
and Realities (York, UK; York Medieval Press, 2017), chap. 1.
112 Nicola Costaras and Christina Young, eds., Setting the Scene: European Painted Cloths from the
Fourteenth to the Twenty-First Century (London: Archetype, 2014); Susan E. James, “Domestic
Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England: Imagery, Placement, and Ownership,” Medieval
Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 139–60.
113 See, for example, Adolfo Salvatore Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993); Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
online catalogue, [Link] accessed Feb. 5, 2018.
29
 Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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

POSSIBLE FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Although similar patterns of dress accessories in female graves have made it possible
to reconstruct the burial garments for early Anglo-Saxon England, Merovingian
Frankia, and Viking Scandinavia, the subject is certainly not closed. No two graves
with grave-goods have identical artefacts and positioning, and there must have been a
great deal of individuality about the arrangement of dress. Contemporary male dress
is much less understood. However, archaeology continually provides new evidence.
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, for example, are being discovered at a rapid rate.116 A chance
survival of organic remains, especially in an unusual position, might provide evidence
for a garment not previously known to exist. Penelope Walton Rogers’s recognition of
bands lying vertically in seventh-century male graves led to her deduction that certain
men of this period were wearing a “warrior jacket” with a wrap-over front, previously
attested only in metalwork art in England; and that gold brocaded bands in princely
Anglo-Saxon male graves at Prittlewell and Taplow as well as a minstrel’s grave in
Cologne, Germany, may have derived from such garments.117
There is more concern now than in the past to relate grave-goods to the body with
which they were found, and techniques such as DNA testing and collagen testing of
bones for pregnancy and lactation can tell us much more about the people who were
buried with these items. Hopefully we may in the future establish family relationships
in cemeteries and learn more about the relationship between dress and life cycle than
we do at present.
From the later medieval period, there are many tombs in churches which have
not been opened and will probably not be opened unless structural repairs to the
surrounding building demand it or ethical attitudes change. Some of these may

114 Demonstrated by conferences such as the Stanford University collegium which gave rise to this
paper and the Fordham University Conference “Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle
Ages,” March 17–18, 2018. Historic dress is now studied in degree-level courses at a number of
institutions in Britain and North America.
115 Clare Woodthorpe Browne, Glyn Davies, and M. A. Michael, eds., English Medieval Embroidery:
Opus Anglicanum (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).
116 Pers. comm. from Catherine Hills, Cambridge University, May 27, 2017.
117 Rogers, Cloth and Clothing, 210–16.
30
 Old Rags, New Responses

contain garments. However, non-intrusive methods are developing. Cameras can be

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

118 Clotilde Boust, Anne Maigret, and Jérôme Rumolo, “Étude par Imagerie Scientifique de la
Tapisserie de Bayeux,” in L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux: Naissance, Composition et
Style d’un Chef-d’Œuvre Médiéval: Colloque International Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux
22–25 Septembre 2016, ed. Sylvette Lemagnen, Shirley Ann Brown, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker
(Bayeux, France: Point de Vues / Ville de Bayeux, forthcoming), 333–41, English summary at
341.
119 Widely published in the press after it was included in the 2017 report of the Portable Antiquities
Scheme.
120 Discussed in Owen-Crocker, Dress, 69 and note 126.
121 Information from Ana Cabrera Lafuente.
122 Information from Professor Tony Freeman.
31
 Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of
Anglo-Saxon England

Maren Clegg Hyer

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

A version of this article was delivered as an address at the “Text–Textile–Texture” collegium at

­Stanford University in May 2017.
 Maren Clegg Hyer

LATIN WORDPLAY: TEXERE, TEXTUM, AND ORDIOR

Textual-textile metaphors are embedded in the Latin lexicon inherited by the

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

“WORDWEAVING” IN OLD ENGLISH POETRY

Writing in about the ninth century, Cynewulf is one of the few named Anglo-Saxon
poets whose work has survived until today.5 He wrote at least four lengthy poems,

1 The conflation of linguistic composition and weaving in Greek texts can be found as early as
Pindar and perhaps Homer; see Pindar, Olympian Odes, Pythian Odes, ed. and trans. William
H. Race, Loeb Classical Library 56 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 113,
lines 86–87; John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro, The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 113. For non-Indo-European languages,
see Scheid and Svenbro, Zeus, 111 and 204–5 n. 1; H. Moisl, “Celto-Germanic *Watu-/Wotu-
and Early Germanic Poetry,” Notes and Queries 225 (1980): 98–99.
2 Jan Hendrik Hessels, ed., An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the
Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1890),
B151, 25; S230, 107. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
3 Thomas Wright and Richard P. Wülcker, eds., Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (2nd
ed., 1884; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 188.8, 188.9, and 188.3.
4 Ibid., 492.17.
5 Throughout this chapter, I refer to the poet of Elene as “Cynewulf ” in keeping with long- ­­
standing scholarly tradition. However, not all scholars accept Cynewulf ’s authorship of the
entire work. For an overview of the controversy, see Jason R. Puskar, “Hwa þas fitte fegde?
Questioning Cynewulf ’s Claim of Authorship,” English Studies 92 (2011): 1–19. For the full
text of Elene, consult The Vercelli Book, ed. George Philip Krapp, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records
2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 66–102.
34
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

signing each one in runic code. In a famous passage from one of these poems, Elene,
he explains the process of his work in creating the poem:

wordcræftum wæf ond wundrum læs,

þragum þreodude ond geþanc reodode
nihtes nearwe. (lines 1237–39a)
[I wove with wordcraft and selected marvels, deliberated at times, and searched
out ideas carefully through the night.]

He conceives of his ability to complete such work as a divinely inspired gift:

     gife unscynde
mægencyning amæt ond on gemynd begeat,
torht ontynde, tidum gerymde,
bancofan onband, breostlocan onwand,
leoðucræft onleac. (lines 1246b–50a)
[the Mighty King bestowed a glorious gift and anointed the intellect, revealed
a brightness, prolonged the hours, unbound bodily frame, unwound the mind,
unlocked poetic skill.]

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

MATERIAL CULTURE AND METAPHOR

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

35
 Maren Clegg Hyer

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

6 Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Woven Works: Making and Using Textiles,” in
The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Gale
R. Owen-Crocker (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2011), 157–84.
7 Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, Revised and Enlarged Edition
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 279–80. See also her article “Aldhelm,” in Encyclopedia
of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth
Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 31–34.
8 As an Anglo-Saxon maxim states, for example, “fæmne æt hyre bordan geriseð” [a woman
belongs at her embroidery]. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter
Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 156–63, at
159, line 63.
9 William Stubbs, ed., Memorials of Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Rerum
Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 63 (1875; repr., Wiesbaden, Germany: Kraus, 1965),
20–21.
36
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

of a poet/singer, called a scop or “shaper” in Old English. Dunstan is a creator of both

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

10 A particularly good example can be found in the borders of the page known as “David Victor”
in the eighth-century Durham Cassiodorus (Durham, UK, Cathedral Library, MS B. II. 30,
fol. 172v): Among the other interlaced patterns is a distinct twill weave. The image can be
viewed at the Durham Priory Library’s digital collections website: [Link]
[Link]?manifest=t2mrn3011371&canvas=t2tcr56n1104 (accessed Aug. 1, 2018).
37
 Maren Clegg Hyer

OLD ENGLISH POETICS

The material culture of textiles among the Anglo-Saxons thus provides a rich set of
connections that would make a metaphor like “wordweaving” resonate powerfully for
a poet’s audiences. But a second element must by extension also be true. The metaphor
of “wordweaving” would need to resonate in the world of text, or “word,” as noted
above. More specifically, if Old English poetic composition itself were not similar to
the process of weaving, then the metaphor of “wordweaving” would have been disso-
nant or perplexing to Anglo-Saxon writers and their audiences—and it would have
required extensive explanation to avoid falling flat. The component elements of Old
English poetic style, then, must be accurately described as “woven” in order to explain
the connection of the second element—“weaving”—to the first—“word.”
As it happens, both the poetics themselves and descriptions in Old English of
the scop’s creative process more than meet such a requirement. An apt example with
which to begin is one of the earliest examples of traditional Old English poetry extant,
“Cædmon’s Hymn.” It is a poem that, according to Bede, was constructed orally by
divine inspiration to a former cowherd turned monk, and eventually written down:

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard,

meotodes meahte and his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;
þa middangeard moncynnes weard,
ece drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.11
[Now must we praise the Protector of heaven-kingdom,
the might of the Measurer and His inner thought,
the work of the Glory-Father, as He for each of the wonders,
the eternal Lord, created a beginning.
He first shaped for the sons of earth
heaven as a roof, the Holy Shaper;
then middle-earth, mankind’s Guardian,
the eternal Lord, afterwards He made
the earth for men, almighty Lord.]

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

11 “Cædmon’s Hymn,” in The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, Anglo-
Saxon Poetic Records 6 (New York: Columbia University Press; 1942), 106.
38
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

expressions that link the body of Old English poems within, but also to one another.
Thus, the expression moncynnes weard appears within the poetic translation into Old
English of Genesis (lines 860 and 904), as well as in “Cædmon’s Hymn”; meotodes
meahte appears within and among four other poems for eight times total (Genesis 62;
“Solomon and Saturn” 3, 61, 98, 127, and 134; Elene 121; and “Resurrection” 19). The
expression heofonrices weard creates links within and across even more texts, with at
least 23 total occurrences in 12 other poetic texts in Old English (Genesis 442, 477, 543,
637; Exodus 140; Daniel 4, 9, 139; Andreas 17, 18; “Dream of the Rood” 56; Elene 76,
136, 197; “Guthlac” 187, 237; Juliana 59; Metrical Psalms 657, 679, 753; ­Menologium 1;
“Judgment Day” II 15; and “For Unfruitful Land” 11).12 Another prominent feature of
Old English poetry is variation, or repetition of ideas with slightly varying emphases.
This feature is obvious in “Cædmon’s Hymn,” as the interlinked descriptions for God,
for example, interweave details together into a texture composed of his many divine
characteristics.
The techniques identified are not unique to “Cædmon’s Hymn.” A passage from
Beowulf highlights the same type of poetic design:

       Hwilum cyninges þegn,

guma gilphlæden, gidda gemyndig,
se ðe eal fela ealdgesegena
worn gemunde, word oþer fand
soðe gebunden; secg eft ongan
sið Beowulfes snyttrum styrian,
ond on sped wrecan spel gerade,
wordum wrixlan. (lines 867b–74a)13
[At times a thane of the king, an exultant warrior mindful of poems/songs, one
who remembered a great many of the ancient traditions, arranged other words
properly bound; the man then began wisely to rehearse Beowulf ’s undertaking,
and fluently to tell the adapted story, to vary words.]

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

12 In each instance, the citations were located through The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus,
ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey, John Price Wilkin, and Xin Xiang (Toronto: Dictionary of
Old English Project 2009), [Link] and reflect naming
traditions and lines cited there.
13 All citations from Beowulf are drawn from Robert E. Bjork, R. D. Fulk, and John D. Niles, eds.,
Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2008). I have not used the macrons and other pronunciation guides for letters used there, but
have adopted the text in all other respects, including variants and lineation.
39
 Maren Clegg Hyer

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

14 Ashley Crandell Amos et al., eds., Dictionary of Old English, fasc. B (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), s.v. “(ge)bindan, A.2.”
15 In his extensive analysis, for example, Andy Orchard documents many of the common
formulae found in Elene and a wide assortment of other Old English texts. Andy Orchard,
“Both Style and Substance: The Case for Cynewulf,” in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. Catherine E.
Karkov and George Hardin Brown (Albany: State University of New York, 2003), 271–305.
16 See, for example, the additive accretion of epithets describing Constantine (11–14a) or the
profoundly beautiful variations on words for a sailing ship (243–46a).
40
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

A number of scholars have observed these interlinked or interwoven patterns,

and some have suggested additional layers of “interweaving” within the design of Old
English poetry. James C. Addison proposes that “interwoven” or “interlace” alliterative
poetics may extend beyond interwoven words and images of individual alliterative
lines, stretching across entire sections of poetry interconnected by sounds and related
ideas.17 He demonstrates that the first, third, and seventh lines of “The Battle of Brun-
anburh” “exhibit the interlace of theme, semantics, and sound”:18

Æþelstan cyning, eorla dryhten (line 1)

[Athelstan king, lord of earls]
…
Eadmund æþeling, ealdorlangne tir (line 3)
[Eadmund prince, eternal glory]
…
afaran Eadweardes, swa him geæþele wæs (line 7)
[sons of Edward, as was natural for them]19

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

17 James C. Addison, “Aural Interlace in ‘The Battle of Brunanburh,’” Language and Style: An
International Journal 15 (1982): 267–76, at 267.
18 Ibid., 268.
19 Addison quotes from “The Battle of Brunanburh,” in Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, 16–
20. The translation here is his.
20 Addison, “Aural Interlace,” 270. He includes analysis of an interesting second group of lines:
“Sceotta leoda and scipflotan” (11), “secga swate, siðþan sunne up” (13), “sah to setle. Þær læg
secg mænig” (17), and “ofer scild scoten, swilce Scittisc eac” (19). The interlinear, interlaced
alliteration of sc and s words is obvious. Sceotta and Scittisc set off this section of the poem in
an alliterative envelope of sorts, words “similar in both etymology and sound.”
21 Ibid., 267.
41
 Maren Clegg Hyer

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

22 John Leyerle, “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf,” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 (Oct.
1967): 1–17, at 1.
23 See Beowulf, lines 1202–14, 2354–68, 2501–9, and 2913–21.
24 Leyerle, “Interlace,” 7–8.
25 Ibid., 13. Such evidence leads Leyerle to argue emphatically, “There are no digressions in
Beowulf” because of the “interwoven coherence of the episodes.”
26 Gale R. Owen-Crocker (in a private communication) has pointed out that to today’s
craftpersons and textile scholars there is a distinction between “weaving,” which involves the
insertion of a weft between the warp threads, and “braiding” or “interlace,” which requires no
weft and is constructed only by the manipulation of warp threads; but this verbal distinction
might not have existed in the poet’s time.
42
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

“wordweavers” imagined when using “weaving” as a word to describe their work in

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

LATIN AND ANGLO-LATIN TRADITION

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

27 Pauline E. Head, Representation and Design: Tracing a Hermeneutics of Old English Poetry
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 161.
28 Aldhelm, Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Rudolf Ehwald, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores
Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919). Job: Aldhelm, Opera, 63, lines 15–16; translation
from Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren, eds., Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge: D. S.
43
 Maren Clegg Hyer

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

Brewer, 1979), 35. Daniel: Aldhelm, Opera, 251, line 7; translation from Lapidge and Herren,
Prose Works, 77. For additional discussion of Aldhelm’s use of “wordweaving,” its possible
sources, and its descendants, see Maren Clegg Hyer, “Text, Textile, Context: Aldhelm and
Wordweaving as Metaphor in Old English,” in Textiles, Text, Intertext: Essays in Honour of Gale
R. Owen-Crocker, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer and Jill Frederick (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2016),
121–38, and Hyer, “Woven Words and Spider’s Webs,” chap. 5 in Weaving Wife and Spinning
Whorl: Textiles and Textile Imagery in Anglo-Saxon England, forthcoming.
29 Aldhelm, Opera, 77, lines 19–21; translation from Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier,
Aldhelm: The Poetic Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 191.
30 Jerome, Santi Eusebii Hieronymi, Stridonensis Presbyteri Opera Omnia, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne,
Patrologia Latina 28, 2nd ed. (Paris: Migne, 1890), col. 1141. An image roughly similar to
Aldhelm’s examples is found in Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Prudentius, ed. and trans. H. J.
Thomson, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 398 (1949; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1979), 154, lines 208–9, but woven crowns are ubiquitous features in Greek and Latin
poetry.
31 Pindar, Odes, 1.28–29, 1.115, lines 86–87.
32 According to Scheid and Svenbro, Bacchylides and other choral poets use weaving as a
metaphor for their lyric poetic songs; they argue the metaphor may begin even earlier, in the
works of Homer, although Homer describes the crafty weaving of spoken political speeches by
Odysseus and his companions, rather than poetic weaving. Scheid and Svenbro, Zeus, 21, 117,
and 119, and 113, respectively.
33 Ibid., 141–55.
34 “Epistulae ad familiares: ad M. Varronem et ceteros,” in Cicero, The Letters to His Friends, ed.
and trans. W. Glynn Williams, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 26 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1965), 262. The translation here is mine.
35 “Orator,” in Cicero, Brutus: Orator, trans. and ed. G. L. Hendrickson and H. M. Hubbell, Loeb
Classical Library 342 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 352. The translation
44
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

Cicero’s influence on Aldhelm is not documentable, but subsequent writers in the

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

is mine. The examples listed here are a small collection of the broader picture. For further
examples and for other Latin period authors discussed below, see Hyer, “Text, Textile, Context,”
121–38, and Hyer, “Woven Words.”
36 Jerome, Hieronymi, col. 597.
37 Isidore, for example, does not use texere when discussing composition, preferring componere
throughout his discussions of poetics, poetry, or poets in the Etymologiae. See Isidore of
Seville, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum: Libri XX, ed. Wallace Martin
Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), book 1, chaps. 39 and 40, and book 8, chap. 7, most
particularly.
38 Venantius Fortunatus, Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati, Presbyteri Italici: Opera Poetica,
ed. Friedrich Leo, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 4 (Berlin:
Weidmann, 1881), 137, lines 21–22; translation from Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus:
Personal and Political Poems (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), 41.
39 That the poem’s “wordweaving” commemorates the death of a woman is compelling, since
women and weaving were connected in the world of Fortunatus and his predecessors, as well
as in the world of the Anglo-Saxons across the period.
40 Fortunatus, Opera Poetica, 100, lines 9–10; translation from George, Fortunatus, 15.
45
 Maren Clegg Hyer

metaphor moreover that resonated with his own native textile tradition (a tradition he
very often draws on for many of his metaphorical ideas), his native poetic tradition,
and his inherited (and perhaps blended) Latin poetic tradition. If Aldhelm inherited
a metaphor with a powerful literary cachet and applied it to his own work, he appears
to have added cachet of his own to the metaphor as it passes over time to later writers
well-known to have been influenced, in turn, by him.
In discussing rhetoric a century later, another Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin, uses a similar
metaphor, advising Charlemagne to memorize arguments “inveneris et disposueris et
oratione vestieris” [invented and arranged and clothed in words],41 a reference which
John Leyerle argues links the interweaving of Aldhelm with the interlace style Leyerle
sees among a number of Anglo-Saxon authors:

Stylistic interlace is a characteristic of Aldhelm and especially of Alcuin. They weave

direct statement and classical tags together to produce verbal braids in which allusive
literary references from the past cross and recross with the present subject. The device
is self-conscious and the poets describe the technique with the phrases fingere serta or
textere serta (“to fashion or weave intertwinings”). In basic meaning, then, a poetic text
is a weaving of words to form, in effect, a verbal carpet page.42

Michael Winterbottom reaches a similar conclusion about Aldhelm at least, not-

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

41 Flaccus Alcuinus, The Rhetoric of Alcuin and Charlemagne: A Translation, with an Introduction,
the Latin Text, and Notes, ed. and trans. Wilbur Samuel Howell (New York: Russell and Russell,
1965), 66–155, at 70–71. Alcuin draws throughout on Julius Victor’s fourth-century Ars
Rhetorica to construct his dialogue on rhetoric; Victor’s work is influenced in turn by Cicero.
42 Leyerle, “Interlace,” 4.
43 Michael Winterbottom, “Aldhelm’s Prose Style and Its Origins,” Anglo-Saxon England 6 (1977):
39–76, at 41, 44, and 61.
44 Indeed, Winterbottom’s avowed object was to argue that features of Aldhelm’s prose were more
likely to derive from classical than Irish sources, rather than any more extensive statement.
45 William states, “Litteris itaque ad plenum instructus, natiuae quoque linguae non negligebat
carmina; adeo ut, teste libro Eldfredi, de quo superius dixi, nulla umquam aetate par ei fuerit
quisquam poesim Anglicam posse factere, cantum componere, eadem apposite uel canere uel
dicere.” [Filled full of letters as he was, he did not neglect the poetry of his native tongue
either. Indeed, as we are told in the book by Alfred I mentioned before, no one has ever in any
age rivalled him in the ability to write poetry in English, to compose songs, and to recite or
sing them as occasion demanded.] William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum: The
History of the English Bishops, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom with R. M. Thomson, Oxford
Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007), 506–7. William also states that Aldhelm put his
46
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

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

native tradition’s poetic skills to good use, singing traditional poetry to crowds to get them to
attend to religious teachings.
46 Andy Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 49
and 52–53.
47 Tatwine, Tatvini Opera Omnia: Variae Collectiones Aenigmatvm Merovingicae Aetatis, ed.
Franciscus Glorie, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 133A (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols,
1968), 165 and 208. Translations for both quotations from Tatwine are mine.
48 Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 66.
49 For further specifics on “wordweaving” among the Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, and Flemish
clusters of authors, as well as William of Malmesbury, see Hyer, “Text, Textile, Context,” 121–
38, as well as extensive analysis and citation in Hyer, “Woven Words.”
47
 Maren Clegg Hyer

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

50 Goscelin of St. Bertin, “The Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin,” in Analecta
Monastica, ed. C. H. Talbot, 3rd ser., Studia Anselmiana fasc. 37 (Rome: Herder, 1955), 1–117,
at 82, lines 16–18; translation from Goscelin of St. Bertin, The Book of Encouragement and
Consolation [Liber Confortatorius]: The Letter of Goscelin to the Recluse Eva, trans. Monika
Otter (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 98.
51 Scott Gwara makes a compelling argument that Aldhelm’s intended audience may be
Hildelith and her fellow abbesses within Wessex. Scott Gwara, “Introduction,” in Aldhelmi
Malmesbiriensis Prosa de Virginitate cum Glosa Latina atque Anglosaxonica, ed. Scott Gwara,
Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 124 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 41–57, at 51–53.
52 Goscelin, “Liber Confortatorius,” 81 n. 80a; Goscelin, Encouragement and Consolation, 97
n. 68.
53 Rosalind C. Love, “‘Et quis me tanto oneri parem faciet?’: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the
Life of St Amelberga,” in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature
for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 2 vols. (Toronto:
University of Toronto, 2005), 2:232–52, at 242.
48
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

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

CONCLUSIONS

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

54 These findings agree with Andy Orchard’s as he argues that Cynewulf ’s work in general is
a blend of Latinate and Old English methods of composition, with elements characteristic
of Anglo-Latin verse—rhyme and acrostics—alongside elements found squarely within the
Old English poetic tradition—alliterative lines, predominantly Old English metrical patterns,
semantic variation, common poetic formulae, and standard Old English poetic imagery;
Orchard, “Both Style and Substance,” 272.
55 Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 168.
56 Saxo Grammaticus, Saxonis Grammatici: Gesta Danorum, ed. Alfred Holder (Strassburg: Karl
J. Trübner, 1886), 172, lines 21–22; translation from Hilda Ellis Davidson, ed., and Peter Fisher,
trans., Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, 2 vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979),
1:162.
49
 Maren Clegg Hyer

“heritage projects” intended to describe and maintain vernacular traditions of the

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

57 Perhaps significantly, “wordweaving” texere is not used in the Aeneid or any other Roman epic
context.
58 Scheid and Svenbro, Zeus, 111. They point out that the etymology occurs in non-­Indo-
European languages, as well (204–5 n. 1).
59 Moisl, “Early Germanic Poetry,” 98. The article documents efforts of scholars to link a proposed
Indo-European word group which explains similarities between Celtic and Germanic words
and further connects prophecy, song, and weaving etymologically (98–99).
60 For Africa, see Alan L. Miller, “Ame No Miso-Ori Me (The Heavenly Weaving Maiden): The
Cosmic Weaver in Early Shinto Myth and Ritual,” History of Religions 24 (1984): 27–48, at
44. For Persia, see Olga Bush, “A Poem Is a Robe and a Castle: Inscribing Verses on Textiles
and Architecture in the Alhambra,” presentation at Textile Society of America 11th Biennial
Symposium: Textiles as Cultural Expressions, Sept. 4–7, 2008, Honolulu, available online
at Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, [Link]
tsaconf/84, accessed Dec. 29, 2018.
50
 “Wordweaving” in Anglo-Saxon Literature

individual and varying traditions of “wordweaving” by culture. Examining Cynewulf ’s

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

51
 Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of
Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga

Elizabeth M. Swedo

In thirty-nine chapters (Aventiuren), the epic Das Nibelungenlied traces Kriemhilt’s1

(Kriemhild’s) love and marriage to Sîvrit (Siegfried) the dragon-slayer; his betrayal
and murder by her brothers and her uncle Hagen; her loss of Siegfried’s treasure to
Hagen; her subsequent marriage to Etzel, king of the Huns; and her revenge for these
wrongs, which results in the annihilation of her family, the Burgundians. Yet among
the dramatic action of the tales, the narrative often lingers when, for example, Siegfried
the dragon-slayer, Burgundian Prince Gunther, and their company are presented with
an exquisite wardrobe:

Die arâbîschen sîden, wîz alsô der snê

unt von Zazamanc der guoten, grüen’ alsam der klê,
dar in si leiten steine; des wurden guotiu kleit.
selbe sneit si Kriemhilt, diu vil hêrlîche meit. (str. 362)2
[They threaded precious stones into snow-white silk from Arabia or into silk
from Zazamanc as green as clover, making fine robes, while noble Kriemhild
cut the cloth herself.] (NL, 37)3

An early version of this article was first presented in May 2006 at the International Congress on Me-
dieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am deeply indebted to Kaaren Grimstad, Ray Wakefield,
and Shelly Nordtorp-Madson for their inspiration, encouragement, and suggestions in the devel-
opment of this piece. Thanks also to Tovah Bender, Rachel Neiwert, Kira Robison, Emily Rook-­
Koepsel, and Aeleah Soine.

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

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

INTERWOVEN TEXTUAL TRADITIONS

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

4 Sidney Johnson, “Schneiderstrophe,” in The Nibelungenlied Tradition: An Encyclopedia, ed.

Francis G. Gentry, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, and Werner Wunderlich (New York:
Routledge, 2002), 225.
5 Kaaren Grimstad and Ray Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates: The Leading Ladies of the
Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga,” in Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits
of Epic Masculinity, ed. Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), 235–52, at 238.
54
 Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga

Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (1270s), “Nornagests þáttr” in the late-­fourteenth-
century Flateyjarbók, and various ballads from the Nordic countries.6 Despite the
wealth of variant narratives, the Nibelungenlied has hoarded scholarly attention,
with much attention paid to establishing the origins of the epic and to defining the
interrelationships of the surviving medieval manuscripts (stemmatics).7 Nordic texts
and later continental versions are often considered simply derivative or tangential.8
Both texts exhibit certain similarities with other variants of the Niflungen/­
Nibelungen traditions. Edward Haymes, in his book The Nibelungenlied: History and
Interpretation, and Joyce Tally Lionarons, in her study The Medieval Dragon, stress the
audiences’ knowledge of the expanding Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition.9 Lionarons
proposes that this intertextual awareness produced a “horizon of expectations”; the
storyteller’s new rendition must intrigue the audience “without violating [their] sense
of the ‘rightness’ of the traditional text.”10 Kaaren Grimstad and Ray Wakefield have
likewise demonstrated the utility of examining both the continental and Nordic rendi-
tions in conjunction with one another, arguing that medieval audiences’ extra-textual
awareness of multiple narrative variations—what they term “intertexts”—best resolves
otherwise inexplicable details and shifts in plot and character.11 Most convincingly,
Grimstad and Wakefield point out that the compiler of the Poetic Edda directly indi-
cated that the thirteenth-century audience had familiarity with variant versions of the
legend.12 The Brot af Sigurðarkviðu (Short Lay of Sigurd) asserts that

Hér er sagt í þessi qviðo frá dauða Sigurðar, oc vícr hér svá til, sem þeir dræpi hann
úti. Enn sumir segia svá, at þeir dræpi hann inni í reccio sinni sofanda. Enn þýðverscir
men segia svá, at þeir dræpi hann úti í scógi. Oc svá segir í Guðrúnarqviðo inni forno,
at Sigurðr oc Giúca synir hefði til þings riðit, þá er hann var drepinn. Enn þat segia allir
einnig, at þeir svico hann í trygð oc vógo at hánom liggianda oc óbúnom.13
[In this poem, the death of Sigurd is related and here it is said that they killed him outside.
But some say this, that they killed him inside, sleeping in his bed. And Germans say that

6 Ibid.
7 Winder McConnell, The Nibelungenlied (Boston: Twayne, 1984), xiii–xix; see McConnell’s
discussion of the origins of the epic. See also Karl Lachmann, Über die Ursprüngliche Gestalt des
Gedichts von der Nibelungenliedes (Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1816), with more recent contribution
to the debates found in Theodore M. Andersson, A Preface to the Nibelungenlied (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1987).
8 Edwards (NL, 219), for instance, suggests that “all in all, the Nordic analogues seem to have
developed within an independent oral tradition, until the Eddic poems came to be written
down in the thirteenth century. They can cast some light on some motifs in the Nibelungenlied,
yet the differences are as apparent as similarities.”
9 Edward R. Haymes, The Nibelungenlied: History and Interpretation (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1986); Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in
Germanic Literature (Enfield Lock, UK: Hisarlik, 1998).
10 Lionarons, Medieval Dragon, 69.
11 Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 237.
12 Ibid., 238–39.
13 Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn, eds., Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst Verwandten
Denkmälern (Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter, 1983), 201, as cited in Grimstad and
Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 238–39.
55
 Elizabeth M. Swedo

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

Acknowledging the possibility of broad medieval audience awareness of these various

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

14 Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 176.
15 A. T. Hatto, “An Introduction to a Second Reading,” in The Nibelungenlied (London: Penguin
Books, 1969), 293. Many scholars suggest that the poet composed for court(s) near the Danube,
likely in the duchy of Austria between Vienna and Passau.
16 Werner Hoffmann, “Nibelungenlied,” in Gentry et al., Nibelungenlied Tradition, 22.
17 James K. Walter, “Völsunga Saga,” in Gentry et al., Nibelungenlied Tradition, 44.
56
 Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga

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

18 Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 239.

19 McConnell, Nibelungenlied, 10–48. For analysis of the characters and their motivations, see
chap. 2, “The Major Figures.”
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 Elizabeth M. Swedo

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

FUNCTIONAL FASHION: CLOTHING IN LITERATURE

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

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

use clothing to project the identity of principal characters, disguise identities and
uncover deceptions, and signal ritual transformations and personal evolution within
the characters.
In both the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga, the principal role of clothing is to
establish the identity of its characters. The first of the very few detailed descriptions
of clothing in Völsunga saga occurs in chapter 3:

sa madr er monnum ukunnr at syn sea madr hefir þes hattar buningh. at hann hefir
hecklv fleckotta yfir ser sa madr var berfęttr ok hafde knyth linbrokum at beine. sa madr
hafde sverð i hende. … ok há[u]tt siðan a hǫfde hann var hár miok ok elldiligr ok ein
syn (VS, 82)25
[he was a man not known to the men by sight. He was dressed in this way: he wore a
mottled cape that was hooded; he was barefoot and had linen breeches tied around his
legs. … He held a sword in his hand while over his head was a low-hanging hood. He
was very tall and gray with age, he had only one eye.] (SV, 38)26

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

DISGUISES AND DECEPTION

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

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

ease, simply by donning garments not associated with their normal identities.29 In the
Nibelungenlied and Völsunga saga, however, deception that relies on a simple exchange
of attire typically fails. Literary and social conventions instead seem to dictate that
characters cannot disguise internal qualities with incongruous clothing. For instance,
Hjörðis, Sigurd’s widowed mother, exchanges clothes and names with a servant woman
(VS, 119). Despite Hjörðis’s temporary appearance of poverty, the queen-mother of
Alf apparently recognizes her true noble status by her manners and good breeding
(VS, 121). Queen Hjörðis’s disguise fails because of the mismatch between her poor
clothes and her noble character; her hosts intuit what the audience of the tale already
knows, reaffirming the literary synchronization of individual external appearance
and internal identity.
In both epics, magic and clothing are jointly used to remedy discordant identi-
ties; the bridal quest for Brynhild/Brunhild illustrates this point.30 A constant in the
­Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition, Sigurd/Siegfried is the more valiant warrior, the
better king, and the ideal suitor. In the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried is the only man strong
enough to surpass Brunhild in three contests and to subdue her in the bedroom; and
in Völsunga saga, Sigurd is the man who knows no fear and can ride through the
flickering flame to claim Brynhild as bride. In both versions, the superiority of Sigurd/
Siegfried necessitates the deception of Brynhild/Brunhild in order for the inferior
Gunnar/Gunther to win her as a bride.
The conquest of Brynhild/Brunhild in both renditions of the stories involves
clothing and magic, but in the Nibelungenlied, the role of the clothing in this deception
receives greater emphasis. The subduing of Brunhild, both in the three contests and in
the bedroom, depends on Siegfried’s tarnkappe, the cloak that renders him invisible.

Sîvrit der muose füeren die kappen mit im dan,

die der helt vil küene mit sorgen gewan
ab eime gewerge, daz hiez Albrîch …
Alsô der starke Sîvrit die tarnkappe truoc,
sô het er dar inne krefte genuoc,
wol zwelf manne sterke zuo sîn selbes lîp.
er warp mit grôzen listen daz vil hêrlîche wîp.
Ouch was diu selbe tarnhût alsô getân,
Daz dar inne worhte ein ieslîcher man,
Swaz er selbe wolde, daz in doch niemen sach.
sus gewan er Prünhilde; (str. 336–38)

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

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

Rather than disguising Siegfried to render him inferior—thereby disrupting

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

CLOTHES AND CHARACTER TRANSFORMATION

Because clothing is the external reflection of an individual’s identity, changes in

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

61
 Elizabeth M. Swedo

an “inner, spiritual, or psychological change” and an “outward, corporeal change.”31 She

identifies a preliminal phase, “during which the initiand is symbolically or physically
detached from his or her previous place in the social structure”; a liminal phase “during
which the initiand has lost the characteristics of his or her previous social identity
but has not yet gained those of the new and thus inhabits a marginal sociocultural
space”; and a postliminal phase, “in which the transition is completed and the initiand
rejoins society in the role of his or her new social identity.”32 Through this process of
initiation, a child becomes an adult and a man becomes a warrior. Likewise, character
transformations progress in stages, with each step of the internal metamorphosis sig-
naled through a change of garments that distinguishes and separates the past identity
from the new one.33 As identities unfold in Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied,
both male and female characters engage in wardrobe changes, marking each stage of
these transformations.
In Völsunga saga, Sigurd’s half-brother, Sinfjötli, the son of the incestuous relation-
ship between Sigmund and his sister Signy, best illuminates this link between change of
dress and status. When her husband, Siggeir, king of Gautland, treacherously kills her
father, Völsung, and nine of her brothers, Signy begins assessing her sons’ capacity for
avenging her birth family. Through a gruesome change of clothing, Signy tests first her
two sons with Siggeir, and later subjects the ten-year-old Sinfjötli to the same ordeal.

hun hafde þa raun giort vid ena fyre sono sina adr hun sendi þa til sigmundar at hun
saumadi at hondvm þeim med hollde ok skinni. þeir þoldv illa ok kriktu um ok sva
giorði hun sinfiotla hann brazt ecki vid. hun flo hann þa af kyrtlinum sva at skinnit
fylgdi ermunum hun kuað honum mvndv sart vid verða. hann s(egir) litid munði slikt
sart þickia volsungi. (VS, 94).

[She had tested them by stitching the cuffs of their kirtles to their hands, passing the
needle through both flesh and skin. They withstood the ordeal poorly and cried out in
pain. She also did this to Sinfjötli; he did not flinch. Then she ripped the kirtle from him,
so that the skin followed the sleeves. She said that it must certainly be painful for him.
He replied: “Such pain would seem trifling to Völsung.”] (SV, 43)

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

31 Lionarons, Medieval Dragon, 60.

32 Ibid., 59.
33 Ibid., 60.
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 Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga

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

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

created and reinforced social ties and obligations. As Wright suggests, “in a very real
sense, therefore, cloth bound society together.”41
The primary role of clothing in the Nibelungenlied is as a display of personal
honor, wealth, and status. The centrality of clothing to these sumptuary exhibitions
is apparent in aventiure 3. Before they depart for Burgundy, Siegfried and his knights
are first well-armored, richly saddled, and given “ze kleiden grâ unde bunt” (str. 59)
[grey and colored garments] (NL, 10).42 Everyone at Worms marvels at their clothes;
Hagen concludes

ez möhten selbe fürsten oder fürsten boten sîn.

ir ross diu wæren scœne, ir kleider harte guot. (str. 85)
[They might be princes themselves or princes’ messengers. Their chargers were
handsome, their garments excellent.] (NL, 12)

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

41 Wright, “‘Fil d’Or,” 62.

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

and Carolyne Larrington have recognized, Heimir’s court embraces courtly opulence:
“herbergit var tialldat af inum dyrstum tiolldvm ok þakit klędum allt golfit” (VS, 160)
[The room was hung with the most precious tapestries and cloth covered the whole
floor] (SV, 74–75). Obviously, the references to elegant apparel in Völsunga saga are
far outstripped by the frequent schneiderstrophen in the Nibelungenlied. But in both
of these epics, the sumptuary displays of characters mimic the noble culture of the
audience, in which textile gifts buttressed the political order and textile production
dictated notions of female refinement.44
In the Nibelungenlied, these displays of male grandeur are very clearly the result
of women’s labor:

Dô sâzen scœne frouwen naht unde tac,

daz lützel ir deheiniu ruowe gepflac,
unze man geworhte die Sîvrides wât. (str. 65)
[Fair ladies sat night and day, few of them taking any rest, until Sivrit’s garments
had been wrought.] (NL, 11)

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

44 Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode, 116–23, 134–35.

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

MONSTROUS MATES AND TRANSFORMATIVE WARDROBES

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

Deceived and defeated on the battlefield, Brunhild is then physically subdued in

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

49 Pafenberg, “Spindle and the Sword,” 111.

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 Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga

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

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

          “wie ist nu tôt gelegen

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

A belief in male dominance arguably governed the views of both authors and presum-
ably at least half their audience.52 Vengeful women with prodigious strength are key
elements in the Niflungen/Nibelungen narrative, but armored, heroic women appear to
present significant gender deviations for both the continental and Icelandic audiences.

QUARREL OF THE TWO QUEENS: CLOTHING AS A CULTURALLY SPECIFIC

PLOT DEVICE

Clothing assumes prominent but divergent roles in the confrontations between the
two queens. The Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition dictates that the queens must fight
over the superiority of their respective husbands, and both the German and Icelandic
audiences would have expected this hostile encounter. But variation in the deployment
of clothing in this core episode allows the Middle High German poet and the Old
Norse saga author to convey different underlying socio-political threats.
In the Nibelungenlied, convinced that Siegfried is not a king but her husband’s
vassal, Brunhild declares that the Burgundian people will not honor Kriemhild as
highly as they do their own queen. Preparing for a confrontation at the cathedral,
Kriemhild and her ladies dress to outshine Brunhild and her retinue. Intending to
secure recognition of her status through elegant attire, she encourages her maidens
“ir sult wol lâzen schouwen, und habt ir rîche wât” (str. 831) [show clearly whether
you have sumptuous clothing] (NL, 79). By virtue of her husband’s possession of the
Nibelung trove, Kriemhild and her damsels surpass Brunhild’s abilities to present a
lavish display, and process into the cathedral ahead of Brunhild’s party. The narrator
affirms that:

Swaz kleider ie getruogen edeler ritter kint,

wider ir gesinde daz was gar ein wint.
si was sô rîch des guotes, daz drîzec künige wîp
ez möhten niht erziugen, daz tete Kriemhilde lîp.
Ob iemen wünschen solde, der kunde niht gesagen,
daz man sô rîchiu kleider gesæhe ie mêr getragen,
alsô dâ ze stunden truogen ir meide wol getân. (str. 836–37)

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

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

Through these luxurious garments, Kriemhild claims social and political precedence
over her rival, affirming her desire to be recognized as

[ … ] tiwerr, danne iemen habe bekant

deheine küneginne, diu krône ie her getruoc. (str. 829)
[higher in rank than any queen known to have ever worn a crown.] (NL, 79)

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

53 See Brüggen, Kleidung und Mode, 47–70.

54 Edward R. Haymes, “Heroic, Chivalric, and Aristocratic Ethos in the Nibelungenlied,” in
McConnell, Companion, 94–104, at 95.
55 Francis G. Gentry, “Key Concepts in the Nibelungenlied,” in McConnell, Companion, 66–93, at
67–68.
56 Ibid., 68.
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 Elizabeth M. Swedo

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

57 Winder McConnell, “The Quarrel of Kriemhild and Brünhild: Mendacity or Self-Delusion?”

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

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

THE DRAGON-SLAYERS’ DRESS: IDENTITY, TRANSFORMATION,

AND DECEPTION

Concluding with a consideration of clothing worn by the dragon-slayers them-

selves—Sigurd and Siegfried—allows us to appreciate the intertextual threads that
tie the different renditions of the dragon-slayer epic together. Reviewing the same
narrative functions—clothing as identity, clothing and transformation, clothing

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

and ­deception—reveals the specific but evolving cultural milieus already identified.
However, the strategic continuities in attire also suggest the audiences’ familiarity with
other variants of the dragon-slayer legend.
Siegfried’s and Sigurd’s clothing reflects a complicated inner person, signaling an
intricate intersection of heroic prowess, courtly virtue, and dragonish cunning and
ferocity. Their attire furthermore engages their audiences’ broad awareness of variations
in the dragon-slayer tradition. In each epic, the dragon-slayer’s clothing projects his
status, signaling his noble bearing, manners, and wealth. In a detailed description of
a type rarely given to personal attire in Völsunga saga, the author notes that Sigurd’s
shield and all his fighting gear were emblazoned with the figure of a dragon:

hans skiollðr var marghfallðr ok lavghadr i ravdv gvlle ok skrifadr a einn dręke hann var
davckbrvnaðr it efra enn fagr raudr it nędra ok þann veg var markaðr hans hialmr ok
sauðvll ok vopn rokkr. hann hafde gvllbryniuna ok avll hans vopn vorv gvlle bvinn ok þvi
var dreke markadr a hans vopnum ollvm at er hann er senn ma vita hverr þar ferr. af avllum
þeim er frętt hafa at hann er ðrap þann mikla dreka. er uęringar kalla fafne. (VS, 154)
[His ornamented shield was plated with red gold and emblazoned with a dragon. Its top
half was dark brown and its bottom half light red, and his helmet, saddle, and buffcoat
were all marked in this way. He wore a mail coat of gold and all his weapons were orna-
mented with gold. In this way the dragon was illustrated on all his arms, so that when
he was seen, all who had heard the story would recognize him as the one who had killed
the great dragon called Fafnir by the Varangians.] (SV, 72)

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

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

of this Otherworldly initiation is marked by Siegfried’s reception of two new garments:

the tarnkappe (cloak of invisibility) and the dragon skin.72

einen lintrachen den sluoc des heldes hant.

er badet’ sich in dem bluote: sîn hût wart hurnîn.
des snîdet in kein wâfen (str. 100)
[(Siegfried) slew a dragon. He bathed in the blood—his skin turned horny.
Therefore no weapon can cut him] (NL, 14)

Siegfried wears this dragon’s blood as a second skin for the rest of his life as a trium-
phant adult hero.
This incident best demonstrates the balance of intertextual expectations by the
continental author and his patrons and audiences.73 Both audience and author likely
assume that Siegfried’s dragon-slaying feat is pivotal to his heroic identity. Yet, these
youthful adventures are not recounted in detail in the Nibelungenlied but presented
as hearsay and briefly summarized by Hagen in sixteen strophen (str. 86–101); only a
single strophe describes his slaying of the dragon (str. 100). This absence of detail about
Siegfried’s adventures and slaying of a dragon does not constitute a flaw or rupture in
the narrative, however; rather, it demonstrates the continental author’s assumption
that the patrons and audiences of this work would be aware of additional details from
the larger Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition.
While Sigurd’s heraldic devices and sumptuous attire merge his identities of both
dragonish hero and chivalric prince, Siegfried’s heroic ventures are covered by a guise
of refinement. Layered over his dragonish skin, he is domesticated in his postliminal
stage with the courtly garments, befitting his status in civilized human society. In the
Nibelungenlied, Siegfried’s outer layers of clothing affirm his well-established courtly
behavior, while concealing his uncouth, dragonish skin and untamed, heroic qualities.
The narrator declares that

Von bezzerm pirsgewæte gehôrt ich nie gesagen.

einen roc von swarzem pfellel den sach man in tragen
und einen huot von zobele, der rîche was genuoc.
hey waꝫ er rîcher porten an sînem kochære truoc!
Von einem pantel was dar über gezogen
ein hût durch die süeze. (str. 952–53)
……
Von einer ludemes hiute was allez sîn gewant.
von houbet unz an daz ende gestreut man drûfe vant.
ûz der liehten riuhe vil manic goldes zein
ze beiden sînen sîten dem küenen jegermeister schein. (str. 954)
[Never did I hear tell of better hunting-garb. He was seen to wear a tunic of
black phellel-silk and a hat of sable, which was of ample cost. Ah, what rich

72 Ibid., 160, 161.

73 Grimstad and Wakefield, “Monstrous Mates,” 237. See Francis G. Gentry, “Major Trends in
Nibelungenlied Scholarship,” in Gentry et al., Nibelungenlied Tradition, 206–9.
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 Elizabeth M. Swedo

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

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

74 Richard C. Hoffman, “Homo et Natura, Homo in Natura: Ecological Perspectives on the

European Middle Ages,” in Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 1–38, at 11.
75 Susan Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force,” in Hanawalt and Kiser, Engaging with
Nature, 63–84, at 69.
76 Edwards (NL, 232 n. 90) notes that the interpretation of ludem as “otter” is somewhat
speculative, as the Middle High German word “is only attested here.” Given the medieval Latin
for otter was lutra or luter, this choice of translation appears reasonable.
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amass enough gold to fill the otter’s skin and then cover it completely in gold, leading
the gods to extort gold from the dwarf Andvarri. Andvarri’s parting curse—“at hverium
skyllde at bana verða er pann gvllhring ętti. ok sva allt gullit” (VS, 128) [the gold ring
would be the death of whoever owned it, and the same applied to all the gold] (SV,
58)—heralds the violent and tragic events in the remainder of the saga. Otr’s unjust
slaying and his excessive ransom precipitates the inevitable deaths of Fafnir and Regin
as well as the downfall of the hero Sigurd, and ruin of the Burgundian Niflung lineage.
In the Nibelungenlied, the source of the dragon’s treasure remains undisclosed,
and Otr is entirely absent. Nevertheless, the poet achieves a subtle but deliberate
connection to the broad Niflungen/Nibelungen tradition explicitly through clothing,
which serves as the final instrument of betrayal in the death of Siegfried. His final
transformation—from hunter to hunted—is achieved by stripping him down to his
humanity again. Prior to his race against Hagen to the spring, Siegfried removes his
fabulous furry hunting suit and runs wearing only his white silk shift, which marked
the location between his shoulder blades of his vulnerable human skin,77 otherwise
obscured beneath the fine clothing (NL, 92). Trusting Hagen to protect rather than
betray her husband, Kriemhild had declared “mit kleinen sîden næ ich ûf sîn
­gewant ein tougenlîchez kriuze” (str. 904) [with fine silk I shall sew a secret cross on
his clothing] (NL, 86). Bending over a stream to drink and oblivious to the imminent
danger, Siegfried is speared down by the treacherous Hagen of Troneck.78 And just
as it was for Otr, an excessive ransom—resulting, in this case, in the death of all the
Burgundians—will be paid for the death of Siegfried.
Siegfried’s final hunting expedition provides another link between the death scenes
of the two dragon-slayers. Like Siegfried, Sigurd is struck without knowing that he
had become prey or even that he was the deserving target of treachery, ignominiously
stabbed while asleep in his bed rather than making the final stand of a noble quarry.79
The dying Sigurd proclaims that had he been forewarned of this treachery, they would
have found him “torvelldra mvnde þeim at drepa mik en en mesta visvnd eda ville
gavllt” (VS, 194) [more difficult to kill than the fiercest bison or wild boar] (SV, 195),
beasts that were among the quarries of Siegfried’s final hunt.80 These examples suggest
again the audience’s intertextual awareness of variants of the legend, a growing Icelan-
dic familiarity with courtly culture, and an overlap between genres of the Old Norse
fornaldarsögur and Middle High German chivalric literature. Ultimately, although use
of clothing in the narratives cannot attest to certain audience knowledge of variants,

77 Instead of impervious dragon skin head-to-toe, Siegfried retained a single vulnerable spot
between his shoulder blades, because a linden leaf had covered this patch of his human skin
when he bathed in blood flowing from the wounded dragon (str. 902).
78 Although frequently multipronged, spears were the preferred medieval weapon for hunting
otters; see Howard L. Blackmore, Hunting Weapons: From the Middle Ages to the Twentieth
Century (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1971), 105–7.
79 As Crane suggests (“Ritual Aspects,” 68), the only unpredictable aspect of a hunt à force was the
quarry itself, which had not been apprised of the rules and rituals.
80 Before his fateful drink at the spring, Siegfried had killed a lion, a bison, an elk, four aurochs,
a fierce buck, and a huge boar, which he slew with a sword (str. 935–939; NL, 88–89).
75
 Elizabeth M. Swedo

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

CONCLUSION

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

81 McConnell, Nibelungenlied, 113. For instance, unlike many of the courtly romances of the
period, this epic poem relates these actions through stanzas of four verses (Langzeilen), divided
into rhyming pairs.
82 Haymes, “Heroic, Chivalric, and Aristocratic Ethos,” 94, 95–98.
83 Larrington, “Völsunga Saga, Ragnars Saga,” 253.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Gentry, “Key Concepts,” 66.
76
 Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga

marks the characters’ transformations, and serves as an instrument of deception. The

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

77
 Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of
England, 1199–1216

Hugh M. Thomas

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

This article is an offshoot of a book in preparation on the social and cultural history of the court of
King John, and draws from research on the material culture of the court.

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

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

SCOPE AND RANGE OF TEXTILE PURCHASES

Though there is no way to systematically work out how much cloth King John’s court
purchased, it was certainly a large amount. In the pipe roll for John’s thirteenth regnal
year (1211–12), John fitz Hugh, a major purchaser of goods for the king, bought over
six thousand ells of cloth, of which a third was canvas but the rest was more expen-
sive, including 1,283 ells of expensive scarlet, the finest woolen fabric available at the
time.5 He also bought 216 pieces of silk cloth. The following year, in a single purchase,

Archaeological Society, 1978), 223–34; Kay Staniland, “Clothing Provision and the Great
Wardrobe in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” Textile History 22 (1991): 239–52; Frédérique
Lachaud, “Les Livrées de Textiles et de Fourrures à la Fin du Moyen Âge: L’Exemple de la Cour
du Roi Edouard 1er Plantagenêt (1272–1307),” in Pastoureau, Le Vêtement, 169–80; Frédérique
Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes in England, c. 1200–c. 1330,” English Historical Review 111 (1996):
279–98; Benjamin Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, Sister
of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011):
1–31; Frédérique Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries: A Study of the Material Culture of the
Court of Edward I (1272–1307)” (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1992).
  3 Sybille Schröder, Macht und Gabe: Materielle Kultur am Hof Heinrichs II. von England (Husum,
Germany: Matthiesen, 2004), 29–41, 212–43.
  4 Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati
(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1833; hereafter RLC); Rotulus Misae in Thomas Duffus
Hardy, ed., Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Praestitis, Regnante Johanne (London: Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1844; hereafter Misae 11J), 109–71; Rotulus Misae—Anni Regni Regis Johannis
Quarti Decimi in Henry Cole, ed., Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1844; hereafter Misae 14J), 231–
69. The sometimes highly detailed pipe rolls of John’s reign are also important; The Great Roll
of the Pipe for the First–Seventeenth Year of the Reign of King John: Michaelmas 1199–1216
(London: Pipe Roll Society, 1933–1964; hereafter cited as PR and by regnal year).
  5 For medieval scarlets, see John H. Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of
Sartorial Splendour,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, ed. Negley B. Harte and
Kenneth G. Ponting (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), 13–70; John H. Munro,
“Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology, and Industrial Organisation, c. 800–1500,”
in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge
80
 Clothing at King John’s Court

John bought 7,680 ells of four different fabrics, none of them cheap, at a cost of £840
15s 6d.6 At his death, John left behind in one of his several castle treasuries, at Corfe,
a collection of 119 silk “cloths” from “Hispania,” thirty-one pieces of samite (a thick
luxurious silk), and four baldekins (another rich silk fabric); altogether these silks were
worth a total of approximately £500.7 Given that John had a regular cash revenue of
around £20,000 for much of the reign, though it could go much higher, these were not
inconsiderable sums, especially for a king with burning needs for military expenditure
to maintain dominance in the British Isles and to retain or recover his continental
possessions, the most important of which were seized by Philip Augustus in 1204.8
Textiles were used for a wide variety of purposes, including many purely practical
ones, from bags and covers for the various objects the king was using on his constant
travels to linen for constructing the pavilions he sometimes slept in, particularly on
military campaigns.9 The most important use of textiles was of course clothing, which
will be discussed in subsequent sections, but it was one among many. Members of the
medieval elite also dressed up their horses, with metal ornaments, highly decorated
saddles, and brightly colored cloth.10 In 1206–7 Reginald of Cornhill, a major purchaser
for the king, bought seven pairs of horse “covers” (coopertorii—probably caparisons),
three decorated with golden lions and four with silk ones.11 More puzzling, but ulti-
mately more striking, the last item on John fitz Hugh’s massive purchase in 1212–13
was 243 ells of blanchet12 dyed with kermes, which were designated for sambucas,
most frequently translated as saddle cloths or saddle blankets. Kermes was the most
expensive dye available, made with dried insect eggs from the Mediterranean region
and usually reserved for luxurious scarlets; one would not normally associate it with
saddle blankets. However, related purchases, including palfreys (horses designated for
riding), saddles, gilded spurs and bridle reins, and hats with peacock feathers, indi-
cate that the king had a procession in mind—indeed, at least some of the other cloth
bought on this occasion may have been for clothing the riders. What is particularly

University Press, 2003), 1:181–227, at 212–17; John Munro, “Scarlet,” in Encyclopedia of Dress
and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth,
and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 477–81; Martha Carlin and David Crouch, Lost
Letters of Medieval Life: English Society, 1200–1250 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2013), 42–45.
  6 PR 13 John 107–9; PR 14 John 43.
  7 Fred A. Cazel, Jr., ed., Roll of Divers Accounts for the Early Years of the Reign of Henry III
(London: Pipe Roll Society, 1982), 34–35.
  8 Nick Barratt, “The Revenue of King John,” English Historical Review 111 (1996): 835–55, at 841.
  9 For example, Misae 11J 168–69; RLC 88a–b, 101b, 119a. For John’s constant itineration, see
Julie Elizabeth Kanter, “Peripatetic and Sedentary Kingship: The Itineraries of John and Henry
III,” Thirteenth-Century England 13 (2011): 11–26.
10 For metal ornaments, see John Clark, The Medieval Horse and Its Equipment c. 1150–c. 1450,
2nd ed. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004), 43–74.
11 PR 8 John xxvi, 47.
12 Generally blanchet was an undyed or white woolen fabric, though that was obviously not
the case here. Later the term was used for blankets. Mark Chambers, Elizabeth Coatsworth,
Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Mark Zumbuhl, “Blanket,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and
Hayward, Encyclopedia, 73–74.
81
 Hugh M. Thomas

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

13 PR 14 John 43–44.
14 RLC 88b, 109a. For paonaz, see Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 9; Lisa Monnas, “Some
Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 25–57, at 49–
52.
15 W. Sparrow Simpson, “Two Inventories of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London,”
Archaeologia 50 (1887): 439–524, at 494–95. For a gift of one silk cloth to St. Paul’s and three
each to the bishop of Winchester and Bury St. Edmunds, see RLC 175a.
16 Donald King, “Types of Silk Cloth Used in England, 1200–1500,” in La Seta in Europa: Sec. XIII–
XX, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Prato, Italy: Le Monnnier, 1993), 457–64, at 461; Frédérique
Lachaud, “Les Soieries Importées en Angleterre (fin XIIe et XIIIe siècles),” Techniques and
Culture 34 (1999): 179–192, at 186; Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 11.
17 PR 13 John 109.
18 PR 2 John 190; PR 3 John 89; PR 6 John 94; PR 9 John 30; RLC 27a, 89a, 96a, 103a.
19 Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus Danielis Becclesiensis, ed. J. Gilbart Smyly (Dublin: Hodges,
Figgis, & Co., 1939), 38, 83–84.
20 Henry C. M. Lyte, Liber Feodorum: The Book of Fees, Commonly Called Testa de Nevill, vol. 1,
1198–1242 (London: HMSO, 1920), 67, 80, 85, 117, 119, 126; Hubert Hall, ed. The Red Book of
the Exchequer, 3 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1896), 2:457, 537.
82
 Clothing at King John’s Court

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

CLOTHING PROVISION: FABRICS, FURS, COSTS, AND PERSONNEL

John’s court purchased many different kinds of fabrics. A number are listed
in table 4.1, on the prices of fabrics, and one could add fustian, blanchet, and

21 PR 1 John 169; PR 7 John 161; PR 8 John 181–82; PR 10 John 193; PR 12 John 76; PR 14 John 147; PR
17 John 48; RLC 15b, 25b, 58b, 66a, 75a, 98a, 127b, 157a–b, 180b, 220b; Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 93.
22 Paul R. Hyams, “What Did Henry III of England Think in Bed and in French about Kingship
and Anger?” in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H.
Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 92–126, at 93–94; C. M. Woolgar, The
Great Household in Late Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 78;
Hollie L. S. Morgan, Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations
and Realities (York, UK: York Medieval Press, 2017), 94–109.
23 Misae 14J 237, 246; RLC 190a.
24 Marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, ed. Karl Warnke and Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris:
Librairie Générale Française, 1990), 34–35, 138–39, 200–1; Master Thomas, The Romance
of Horn, vol. 1, Text, Critical Introduction and Notes, ed. Mildred K. Pope, Anglo-Norman
Texts 9–10 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), 27, 32, 36; Chrétien de Troyes, Œuvres Complètes,
ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 519–20, 536, 874; Albert Stimming, ed., Der
Anglonormannische Boeve de Haumtone (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1899), 112.
25 Fustian was a hard-wearing fabric made of more than one fiber, in this case probably flax
and wool; Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Fustian,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward,
Encyclopedia, 222–23.
26 PR 8 John 47. Matracas may have been a layer of bedding rather than a mattress; Morgan, Beds
and Chambers, 25–28.
27 Thomas Duffus Hardy, ed., Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati (London: G. Eyre
and A. Spottiswoode, 1837), 134a. For other references to bedding, see PR 16 John 28; RLC
83
 Hugh M. Thomas

Table 4.1: Prices of fabrics recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216

This table summarizes all entries in which one can determine the price per ell of a given type
of fabric. For these purposes, each purchase is treated equally, regardless of the number of ells
purchased.

Fabric   Number of purchases  Average price    Low price High price

    with price listed       per ell

Scarlet 12 6s. 8d. 4s. 7d. 8s. 6.

Burnet 1 3s. 9d. 3s. 9d. 3s. 9d.
Viride 12 3s. 4d. 2s. 3d. 4s. 4d.
Paonaz 3 3s. 1d. 3s. 3s. 4d.
Caperaco, capereto a
2 2s. 7d. 2s. 6d. 2s. 8d.
Russet 5 2s. 4d. 1s. 2s. 3s. 3d.
Irish dyed in kermes 1 2s. 3d. 2s. 3d. 2s. 3d.
Estamford 1 1s. 4d. 1s. 4d. 1s. 4d.
Blou, bleu 2 1s. 2d. 1s. 1d. 1s. 2d.
Burel 1 1s. 1s. 1s.
Linenb 13 5d. 2d. 1s. 1d.

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

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

25a, 101b, 103a, 109a, 175a, 184a. Culcitra could also mean cushion; Maria Hayward and Lisa
Monnas, “Quilting and Padding,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia,
439–40. For a modern reconstruction of bedding, see Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 25–36. For
a description of a bed and bedchamber contemporary to John, see Alexander Neckam, “De
Utensilibus,” in A Volume of Vocabularies, ed. Thomas Wright (Liverpool: privately printed,
1882), 100.
28 For this woolen fabric, probably a diamond twill, see E. Carus-Wilson, “Haberget: A Medieval
Textile Conundrum,” Medieval Archaeology 13 (1969): 148–66; Mark Chambers and Elizabeth
Coatsworth, “Haberget,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 260.
84
 Clothing at King John’s Court

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

29 For the nature of scarlets, see above, note 5. For russet, see Mark Chambers and Elizabeth
Coatsworth, “Russet,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 469; Louise
Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain:
A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2014), 389. The editors of the
latter work, however, treat viride simply as green cloth rather than a specific type of fabric (397).
30 Paul Latimer, “Early Thirteenth-Century Prices,” in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D.
Church (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999), 41–73; Paul Latimer, “The English Inflation of
1180–1220 Reconsidered,” Past and Present 171 (2001): 3–29. Fortunately, most of the prices
come from after the period of inflation had taken place.
31 RLC 88b, 97a–b.
32 PR 7 John 161; RLC 4a, 40b, 89a.
33 Wild, “Empress’s New Clothes,” 9–10.
34 For wages in the period, see Paul Latimer, “Wages in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-
Century England,” Haskins Society Journal 9 (2001): 185–205.
35 For important work on silk and its cultural place in the Middle Ages, see Cavaciocchi, La
Seta in Europa; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 82–126; Rebecca
Woodward Wendelken, “Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in
the West before 1300,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 59–77; Sharon Farmer, The
Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological Innovation, and Gendered
Experience (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Robin Fleming, “Acquiring,
85
 Hugh M. Thomas

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

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

Table 4.2: Prices of fur panels recorded at the court of King John, 1199–1216

This table summarizes all entries in which one can determine the price per panel of a given type
of fur. For these purposes, each purchase is treated equally, regardless of the number of panels
purchased.

Type    Number of purchases   Average price     Low price High price
    with price listed       per panel

Ermine 2 96s. 8d. 93s. 4d. 100s.

Red squirrel 18 27s. 18s. 53s. 4d.
Rabbit 8 8s. 6d. 4s. 9d. 10s.
Lambskin 7 6s. 3d. 4s. 6d. 7s. 4d.

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

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

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

50 RLC 178a.
51 PR 14 John 43; RLC 54a, 154b.
52 RLC 117a; For the practice of plundering, see Beryl E. R. Formoy, “A Maritime Indenture of
1212,” English Historical Review 41 (1926): 556–59.
53 For example, RLC 15b, 25b, 40b, 58b, 66a, 75a, 98a, 127b, 180b, 220b.
54 PR 13 John 108; RLC 145b; Cazel, Roll of Divers Accounts, 34; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and
Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, 103, 107–12; Neil Stratford, Pamela Tudor-Craig, and Anna
Marie Muthesius, “Archbishop Hubert Walter’s Tomb and the Furnishings,” in Medieval Art
and Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, ed. Nicola Coldstream and Peter Draper (London:
British Archaeological Association, 1982), 71–93, at 82–83. For a good and lavishly illustrated
discussion of Andalusian silks, see Matteo Mancini, ed., Vestiduras Ricas: El Monasterio de Las
Huelgas y Su Época 1170–1340 (Madrid: Patrimonio National, 2005).
55 “Worcester Cathedral Embroideries,” Textile Research Center, Feb. 15, 2017, [Link]
[Link]/trc-needles/clothing-undergarment/individual-textiles-and-textile-types/
fragments-and-panels/worcester-cathedral-embroideries, accessed May 24, 2017.
56 PR 13 John 108; RLC 145b; Misae 14J 267. One suspects that cloth was described as being from
Ireland because that was so unusual, rather than the reverse.
57 PR 13 John 108.
58 Naomi Jane Sykes, The Norman Conquest: A Zooarchaeological Perspective, BAR International
Series 1656 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007), 72–84.
59 RLC 144b.
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John’s court from many regions near and far, but the geographic connections involved
in supplying the court can only be traced in scattershot fashion.
The costs of clothing at court came largely from the materials that went into
them rather than the costs of tailoring. Three brief accounts of charges survive from
the king’s chief tailor for the later part of his reign, William Scissor, whose byname
obviously came from his profession. His charges ranged from 1d. for a linen shirt or a
wool supertunic to 2d. for a pair of gloves to 9d. for a pair of hose. Entire sets of three-
piece robes or suits (robae) could be tailored for as little as 3d. or 4d., and even the
most expensive sets of robes, lined with silk or fur, including ones made for the king
for his great feasts, cost no more than 12d. to make.60 Unfortunately, only a handful of
the many references in various royal records to the costs of sets of robes say anything
about the nature of those robes, but there are prices for five sets of scarlet robes and
to two made of viride. Of these, one set of scarlet robes came with a panel of squirrel
and one of the viride sets with a panel of rabbit, but fur linings were likely understood
in the other instances. The two viride robes cost 20s. 8d. and 24s. respectively, and the
prices of the scarlet robes ranged from 56s. to 71s. 8d.61 The scarlet robes were desig-
nated for important men, including a Welsh ruler and an envoy of Saladin’s brother,
El-Adil, but the robes worn by the king and queen, and perhaps the greatest nobles,
would likely have been more costly still. Nevertheless, even the cheapest of the viride
sets of robes represented nearly three months’ wages for a skilled worker, and a set of
scarlet robes would have been a valuable gift even for a knight.
Though the royal records reveal all too little about matters such as the cut or style
of garments, one can glean a few things. As was standard in the period, sets of two-
piece or three-piece robes were normally worn atop linen undergarments. The standard
three-piece robe consisted of a tunic (tunica), an overtunic or surcoat (­supertunica),
and a cloak (usually capa but sometimes pallium). In later periods, robes sometimes
had more than these three outer garments, but I have found no instances of this
from John’s reign. Nonetheless, sets of robes involved substantial amounts of cloth.
Scattered references suggest six ells was standard for male robes and seven for those
of women. For the queen, one cloak (capa) alone included four ells.62 A reference to
lining sleeves with squirrel furs underscores the well-known importance of that part
of the garment in that period.63 References to the purchase of laquei (laces, ribbons,
or bands) for overtunics, in various colors in one case and containing gold in another,

60 Misae 11J 170–71; Misae 14J 267, 269. A payment of 100s. in John’s first year for work done for
John between his investiture as duke of Normandy and his coronation in England may suggest
coronation robes were a different matter, but it is possible that the tailoring involved clothes for
many followers as well; PR 1 John xi, 129.
61 PR 9 John xvi–xvii, 30; PR 10 John 127; PR 12 John 149; PR 13 John 43.
62 Amounts could be less, however, for youths or less important servants; PR 14 John 98; Misae
11J 141; Misae 14J 244, 248; RLC 104a, 109a, 184. See also Carlin and Crouch, Lost Letters, 45.
63 Misae 11J 142.
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 Hugh M. Thomas

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

64 PR 16 John 28; RLC 128b, 167a.

65 PR 13 John 107–8.
66 For distribution of cloth rather than clothes, see Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes,” 279.
67 Staniland, “Clothing Provision,” 7–8; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and
Clothing, 130–31; Frédérique Lachaud, “Embroidery for the Court of Edward I (1272–1307),”
Nottingham Medieval Studies 37 (1993): 33–52, at 36–37; Jitske Jasperse, “Matilda, Leonor and
Joanna: The Plantagenet Sisters and the Display of Dynastic Connections through Material
Culture,” Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017): 523–47, at 532–36.
68 Sarah-Grace Heller, “Obscure Lands and Obscured Hands: Fairy Embroidery and the
Ambiguous Vocabulary of Medieval Textile Decoration,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 5
(2009): 15–35.
69 J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955), 256–76; T. F. Tout,
Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber, and
the Small Seals, repr. ed., 6 vols. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967), 1:158–69.
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 Clothing at King John’s Court

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

CLOTHING THE HOUSEHOLD AND VISITORS TO COURT

If Anglo-Saxon kings were known as ring-givers, later medieval kings might aptly
have been called cloth-givers. Like all heads of households, rulers were expected to
clothe as well as feed their followers and dependents. For ordinary servants, food and
clothing were a major part of their remuneration. In giving clothing to elite followers
and visitors, the king was mainly conferring honor and status rather than providing

70 PR 9 John 148; RLC 60b, 82a, 82b, 88b, 101b; Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 263; Veale, English Fur
Trade, 40–41.
71 Misae 11J, 113, 121, 149, 150–51, 157, 163–64, 170–71; Misae 14J 232–33, 236–37, 241, 245,
247, 254–55, 267, 269; RLC 117a, 229a, 279a; Hardy, Rotuli Chartarum, 213a; Lyte, Book of
Fees, 77.
72 For Alan, see PR 6 John 131; RLC 152b.
73 PR 1 John 215.
74 However, she is not found elsewhere in the royal records; Lyte, Book of Fees, 103.
75 Misae 11J 110, 118–19, 128, 135, 143, 159; Misae 14J 231, 234, 244, 249, 251, 254, 258. For the
gifts of robes, see RLC 109a, 184b. Florence at that point was in the queen’s household, but
robes of viride lined or trimmed with lambskin were given to the king’s laundresses early in the
reign of Henry III; PR 17 John 21.
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 Hugh M. Thomas

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

76 Anonymous of Béthune, Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d’Angleterre, ed. Francisque
Michel, Société de l’Histoire de France (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1840), 105.
77 PR 7 John 11; PR 9 John 31; RLC 87b, 103b, 106a.
78 RLC 103b.
79 PR 14 John 91.
80 RLC 20a, 104a; Misae 11J 112, 122, 127, 130; Misae 14J 222, 232, 244, 246–48; PR 6 John 80,
131; PR 7 John 221; PR 10 John 126; PR 11 John 58.
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 Clothing at King John’s Court

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

81 RLC 214a.
82 Burnet was a brown woolen fabric (though sometimes dyed very dark, as will be seen below),
often of high quality; Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Burnet,” in Owen-Crocker,
Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 103–4.
83 Misae 14J 267.
84 Misae 14J 250, 267; PR 11 John 10; RLC 3a, 121a, 126a, 159b, 186b, 214a, 231a.
85 PR 14 John 58. For burel, see Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Burel,” in Owen-
Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia, 103.
86 RLC 104b.
87 RLC 103b, 104a.
88 Frédérique Lachaud, “Dress and Social Status in England Before the Sumptuary Laws,” in
Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter R. Coss and Maurice
Keen (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002), 105–23.
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 Hugh M. Thomas

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

CLOTHING THE ROYAL FAMILY

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

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

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

93 Misae 14J 244, 267. For provision of such clothing to Edward I’s son, Alfonso, at age three or
four, see Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 138.
94 Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 14.
95 John’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who survived until 1204, had her own large income,
which is probably why nothing survives about clothing for her.
96 Misae 14J 267; RLC 274b.
97 PR 10 John 96; PR 10 John 96; RLC 111b, 144b, 155a, 168b.
98 PR 10 John 97.
99 RLC 104a; Misae 14J 285.
100 PR 7 John 112; RLC 4a, 40b, 89a, 168b.
101 PR 7 John 113, 121; PR 13 John 108; PR 14 John 44; RLC 64a, 106b.
95
 Hugh M. Thomas

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

102 RLC 14a. For another reference to what was probably a decorative border, see RLC 225a. For
the nature of the bliaut, see Hilary Davidson, “Bliaut,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and
Hayward, Encyclopedia, 74–75.
103 Misae 11J 111, 150–51; Misae 14J 236, 239, 243. References are either to hosa or ocrea described
as vaccinea, de cordwain, or de bove.
104 Misae 14J 253.
105 PR 6 John 131; Misae 11J 170–71; Misae 14J 267, 269; RLC 144b, 145a–b.
106 Misae 11J 150–51, 236, 242, 245, 255.
107 Misae 11J 151; Misae 14J 257, 285.
108 I am presuming that a garment called the perpunctus or pourpoint also referred to the aketon,
given that they are grouped with surcoats for armor; PR 10 John 96; PR 14 John 44; Misae 14J
269; RLC 109a, 240b; Ralph Moffat, “Aketon,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward,
Encyclopedia, 29–30. For the surcoats, see Nicholas Vincent, “Leopards, Lions and Dragons:
King John’s Banners and Battle Flags,” The Magna Carta Project, April 2015, [Link]
[Link]/read/feature_of_the_month/Apr_2015_4, accessed July 3, 2017.
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 Clothing at King John’s Court

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

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

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

114 Heller, Fashion in Medieval France.

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

120 Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 4–5; Elizabeth Danbury, “Queens and Powerful Women: Image and
Authority,” in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. Noël Adams, John
Cherry, and James Robinson (London: British Museum, 2008), 17–24, at 20. Danbury suggests
the queen is holding a flower, but the object looks similar to the scepter John holds in his royal
seal.
121 For the Castilian funerary garb, see Maria Judith Feliciano, “Muslim Shrouds for Christian
Kings? A Reassessment of Andalusi Textiles in Thirteenth-Century Castilian Life and Ritual,”
in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, ed. Cynthia Robinson
and Leyla Rouhi (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 101–31; Mancini, Vestiduras Ricas; Etelvina Fernández
González, “‘Que los reyes vestiessen paños de seda, con oro, e con piedras presiosas’:
Indumentarias Ricas in los Reinos León y Castillla (1180–1300): Entre la Tradición Islámica y
el Occidente Cristiano,” in Simposio Internacional : El Legado de al-Andalus: El Arte Andalusí en
los Reinos de León y Castilla durante la Edad Media, ed. Manuel Valdés Fernández (Valladolid,
Spain: Fundación del Patrimonio Histórico de Castilla y León, 2007), 367–408; Böse, “Cultures
Re-Shaped,” 90–94. For images of the Sicilian royal garments, see the website of the Imperial
Treasury of Vienna, [Link]
treasury/selected-masterpieces, accessed July 5, 2017.
122 Marie de France, Lais, 138–39 in Lanval, and 34–35 in Guigemar.
123 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De
Gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae), ed. Michael D. Reeve and Neil Wright, Arthurian
Studies 69 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2007), 111.
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 Hugh M. Thomas

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

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

Tina Anderlini

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

ORIGINS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

The silks we will consider appear to be of two main kinds of silk fabrics: samite and
lampas. Samite, from the glossary of Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain, is defined as

a plain silk cloth in weft-faced compound twill. Its appearance has the diagonal lines
of a twill weave and a lustrous quality produced by the long weft floats. It was made in
various weights, but was usually quite heavy and suitable as background for embroidery

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

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

Lisa Monnas discusses variations in samites as well as their popularity and provides
a useful definition of lampas:

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

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

1 Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval Dress and
Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2014), 390.
2 Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings
1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 298.
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 Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe

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

3 St. Germain: Musée de l’Abbaye de Saint Germain, Auxerre. St. Albuin: Brixen,
Diözesanmuseum. “Charlemagne”: Metz, Trésor de la Cathédrale. For more information about
Auxerre and Brixen, see Anna Muthesius, Studies in Silk in Byzantium (London: Pindar Press,
2004), 228.
4 Color images are available for view online at the author’s website, [Link]
com/2018/12/[Link].
5 Steven Wagner, “The Impact of Silk on Ottonian and Salian Manuscripts,” in Silk Roads, Other
Roads: Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, September
26–28, 2002, Northampton, Massachusetts (n.p.: Textile Society of America, 2002), 4, available
online at Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, [Link]
tsaconf/426, accessed Oct. 22, 2018.
6 Originally these patterns had been used for noble riders’ garments in the Middle East and in
many parts of Asia. Silks had traveled along the Silk Road in all directions for centuries and
were of great economic importance; subsequently, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian developed
sericulture in his empire.
7 Musée National du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny), Paris, no. CL 13289, dating from the eighth
century. It can be viewed at [Link]
[Link], accessed July 20, 2018.
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Fig. 5.1: Shroud of St. Germain, Byzantine silk (tenth or eleventh century; Musée-Abbaye
Saint-Germain, Auxerre). Photo: Tina Anderlini.

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

8 The charioteer example is one of the largest. The whole fragment is 73 by 72.5 centimeters
(28¾ by 28½ inches). The medallion is incomplete on one side and occupies almost all the
surface of the fragment. We will return to this one later.
9 Dimensions of the fabric: 240 by 118 centimeters (94½ by 46½ inches). The medallions vary in
size: 25–30 centimeters (9¾–11¾ inches) high by 30–32 centimeters (11¾–12½ inches) wide.
10 Both can be found in Roger Gilman and Jane Bowler Gilman, “Byzantine Textiles,” Art and
Archaeology 13 (1922): 179–83, at 180 (St. Fridolin) and 181 (Sancta Sanctorum); available
online at [Link] accessed May 5,
2010.
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Fig. 5.2: Shroud of St. Colombe and St. Loup, Persian silk (eighth century; Musée de Sens,
Treasury, Inv. TC B 2). Photo: Musées de Sens, J.-P. Elie.

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

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

11 Fernando (1255–75) is buried in the Royal Monastery of Las Huelgas, Burgos.

12 Hero Granger-Taylor, “Silk from the Tomb of Edward the Confessor,” in Byzantium: Treasures
of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, exhibition catalog, ed. David Buckton
(London: British Museum Press, 1994), 152. For reconstruction of the fabric, see 152; for
fragments, see 153. The fabric found in his coffin is fragmentary, but the presence of seams
point to it being part of a funeral garment.
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Fig. 5.3: Detail of imperial dalmatic, embroidery on Chinese silk (beginning of the
fourteenth century; Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, Imperial Treasury). Photo: Tina
Anderlini.

embroidered fabrics, wherever they come from, we can find repetitions of designs—as
in woven fabrics—or different religious or astrological scenes, this kind of expansive
subject matter being possible in embroidery. The repertoire of embroidered subjects
inside medallions grew in the fourteenth century, but, whether they were woven or
embroidered, these fabrics were used by the same kinds of people for the same kinds
of purposes, that is, high-ranking ecclesiastics and rulers for church ceremonies.
The exotic origins of these fabrics offer another reason they were seen as so spe-
cial. Regardless of where they originated in the East, they traversed the Holy Land on
their journey to Europe, which likely conferred upon them a kind of magic. Examples
abound of various sacred objects coming from the Levant that garnered a very particu-
lar treatment in the West. One striking illustration is the soil from Golgotha, which
was rumored to possess magical powers. In Pisa’s famous Camposanto, the cemetery
beside the cathedral contained some of this soil and was thus believed to prevent a
long period of decay, instead allowing dead bodies to become skeletons in only one
night. Also, linens originating in the Middle East were used to wrap relics. Indeed,
anything from the East could be a relic, whether that relic was a true or false one. This
set of superstitions that assigned magical properties to anything from the Levant is
evidenced by the biography of William Marshal (ca. 1146–1219), composed in the
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Fig. 5.4: Detail of cope in opus ciprense (end of the thirteenth century; Museo della
Cattedrale, Anagni). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma.

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

13 Nigel Bryant, trans., The History of William Marshal (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2018).
14 Ibid., 216–17.
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East until the late Middle Ages.15 Medallion silks were therefore precious for a number
of reasons, and not simply because of their presumed eastern origins, as crucial that
connection to the Levant might be; the combined effects of eastern origin, exquisite
material, fine dyestuff, and beautiful and significant design on these silks’ desirability
was greater than any one factor.
The roundel shape, which is connected to Heaven, is not the only part of the
design to have associations with Christian symbolism: The designs inside the shape,
which vary considerably—vegetal, animal, geometrical, and human—can carry an
apologetic meaning, which is to say, they can participate in the Christian Revelation
through Christian iconography. Particularly noteworthy are the animals, which have
strong symbolic meanings, according to medieval bestiaries. Louis Réau asserts that
to the medieval Christian imagination, the whole of nature is a religious symbol.16
Everything is a sign. There is therefore no need to make a distinction between aquatic
or earthly animals, between birds and reptiles, between wild beasts and pets, between
real creatures and fabulous ones. The same bird, the eagle, is both real and chimeric
(in the case of the bicephalous eagle). As St. Augustine wrote, what is important is to
meditate upon the meaning of things and not to discuss their authenticity.17 When it
comes to bestiaries, what is important is not the species but rather the sénéfiance, or
interpretive meaning. The bestiary is thus separated into two parts: the Good (God’s
Bestiary) and the Evil (Devil’s Bestiary), with some animals appearing in both, de-
pending on the context. The animals of God’s Bestiary are commonly depicted in
medallion silks. Despite a non-Christian origin for the Middle Eastern fabrics and their
designs, often copied in Byzantium and Italy, most of the animals are iconographically
connected to Christ and, what is even more interesting in relation to our subject, with
Heaven, resurrection, and eternal life.18 This is the case for the deer, the peacock, the
eagle, the griffin (a hybrid creature, symbol of Jesus Christ, God, and Man), and the
lion. Other animals often featured inside the medallions can relate to the virtues, like
the camel (humility), the cock (watchfulness), and the elephant (baptism, thus leading
of course to the resurrection of the soul—the elephant can also symbolize chastity
and temperance).
Byzantine emperors also used medallions to convey this association with the
virtues: The peplos (mantle) was embroidered with griffins made of gold and pearls.
The griffin as well as the eagle can fly to Heaven, and both are images of the imperial
majesty, while the pearls are images of purity.19 In fact, round white circles that seem
to represent pearls on the medallion border are not rare. Gold is a symbol of eternity,

15 David Jacoby, “Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim
World, and the Christian West,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 197–240, at 201.
16 Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’Art Chrétien (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), 1:78.
17 Regarding Augustine: Vincent Giraud, “Signum et Vestigium dans la Pensée de Saint Augustin,”
Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 95, no. 2 (2011): 251–74.
18 Ibid., 1:76–141.
19 Christiane Elster, Die Textilen Geschenke Papst Bonifaz’ VIII (1294–1303) an die Kathedrale
von Anagni (Petersberg, Germany: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018), 82. The eagle even appeared
on the Emperor’s shoes, making the entire ensemble symbolic from head to toe.
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as it retains its color and shine through the ages. Occidental imitations of imperial
Byzantine traditions can be seen in, for instance, Empress Künigunde’s tunic, which
includes beautiful examples of griffins embroidered in pearl medallions.20 The eagle,
of course, is a common motif inside medallions. As mentioned above, it has strong
Christian associations, but since Roman antiquity, it has carried imperial ones, making
the eagle a Christian symbol associated with an image of power.
The lion itself, an image of Christ, was a royal symbol for the Sassanian kings and,
before them, Persian and Assyrian kings.21 In Iran,

The lion, symbol of kingship, power, prestige and protection of sacred spaces, was a
dominant motif on both silverware and silks, either as the dying lion which confers status
on its royal hunter or as the guardian lion of the empire.22

Another image of royal power is the senmurv, a hybrid creature that is part dog or
lion and part bird, thought to have originated in Iran but possibly in Byzantium.23
The Silk Road seems to have been a vector to convey new images of power even if it
is not certain that the original Sassanian symbolism of power remains intact in these
images. Yet, it seems that this symbolism was absorbed into Christian iconography in
a new example of syncretism. Anna Muthesius has observed this phenomenon in her
analysis of the symbolic correspondence between the lion and the Emperor:

The striding lion and panther/leopard motifs of classical antiquity were not the only motifs
to appear on Byzantine silks. Other ancient motifs, such as griffins, eagles, eagles attacking
quadrupeds, and so on, occurred upon Byzantine silks of the 10th/11th centuries. All
these ancient images were absorbed into Christian allegory. The eagle rending a deer
was interpreted as a symbol of the gathering of Gentiles at the Body of Christ, or of the
faithful before the Body and Blood of Christ. John Chrysostom associated the eagle and
the carcass with Communion and with the Resurrection of the Son of Justice. Another
commentator interpreted the image as Christ’s Victory over Evil.24

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

20 First half of the eleventh century, Bamberg, Diözesanmuseum.

21 Until the eleventh or twelfth century in Western Europe, the king of beasts was the bear, not
the lion. The bear was a “pagan king” and ultimately became associated with the Devil. Michel
Pastoureau, Bestiaires du Moyen Âge (Paris: Seuil, 2011), 63–66.
22 Heleanor Feltham, “Lions, Silks, and Silver: The Influence of Sasanian Persia,” Sino-Platonic
Papers 206 (Aug. 2010): 4.
23 Jacoby, “Silk Economics,” 212.
24 Muthesius, Studies in Silk, 114.
25 See note 7, above.
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ed to power, virtues of the rulers, Heaven, and the Resurrection. The circular shape
emulates and reinforces the sacred aura and gives more sénéfiance to these fabrics.
There are of course exceptions. A subject like parrots does not have a positive
meaning in the Christian tradition. Despite that, fabrics with parrots were used as
shrouds, religious clothing, or wrappings for relics, but perhaps these parrots were
confused for eagles. The design of the Lower Austrian “five eagles” arms is supposed
to have come from a fragment of the so-called Mantle of Leopold III (1095–1136) in
Klosterneuburg Abbey, which has golden parrots (not in medallions) on blue silk.26
During the second half of the thirteenth century, parrots became popular among
aristocracy.27 The fact that they appear in fabrics at the same time can be connected
with this fashion. Leopards are also not usually regarded in a positive way, but appear
in the heraldry of noble families, as leopards, bearing some similarity to lions, were
also symbols of power. Having formerly been associated with evil, leopards became
the symbol of strength and power for the nobility.
Much silk found in churches or in tombs is not medallion silk, such as the St.
Germain shroud. We must therefore consider what kind of silk was available when
needed. It depended mainly on diplomatic gifts and trade, as the fabrics came from
the East or Spain.28 The western sovereigns who received gifts of silks from Constan-
tinople or Baghdad in turn made donations to churches, cathedrals, or abbeys. The
Byzantine silk trade was strictly regulated, particularly for high-quality silks and large
quantities.29 Economic and political factors determined which silk fabrics and raw
materials arrived in Western Europe from elsewhere. Due to increased interactions
between the West and the East, it is not surprising that silk fabrics began to appear in
greater quantities after the Crusades.30 For large fabrics used for palls or shrouds, there
seems to be a marked preference for motifs of sacred eagles, whether in medallions or
not. It bears repeating that all these silks were rare and precious, and by touching the
body of a saint, they became relics themselves. Shapes and motifs that were reminiscent
of Heaven, Christ, or the Resurrection added even more power to these new relics.
To complete our picture of these medallion silks, especially to gain an under-
standing of how they were used and on which occasions, we turn our attention to

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

visual evidence.

TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

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

31 Benjamin L. Wild, “The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, Sister of King
Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7 (2011): 1–31; Louis
Douët-D’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil de Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France (Paris: Renouard,
1874), 140–50.
32 Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995),
204, sec. 94. Samite is wrongly translated as satin in the modern French version; 205, sec. 94.
Samite was also discovered in some Merovingian graves, such as that of queen Aregonde (sixth
century) or tomb S 118 in Louviers (late fifth to early sixth centuries).
33 Douët-D’Arcq, Nouveau Recueil, 140–50.
34 Jacoby, “Silk Economics,” 212. But see also note 44, below.
35 Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, [Link]/definition/siglaton,
accessed Nov. 5, 2018. There seems to be a common Latin origin, sigillum, referring to seals,
embroidery, and small figures.
36 Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française (Paris: Hachette, 1873–77), [Link]
[Link], accessed Dec. 2, 2018, s.v. “paille.”
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funerals very often would not have owned, during their lifetimes, clothing made from
these precious textiles, even if, as she emphasizes, these were wealthy people.

Bien souvent, le moribond qui ordonne l’achat d’un drap d’or, ou de soie pour ses obsèques
ne possède, et n’a jamais possédé, de vêtement taillé dans ces textiles précieux.37

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

Une tumbe troverent grant,

Coverte d’un paile roé,
D’un chier orfreis par mi bendé. (lines 504–6)
[They found a great tomb covered with medallion silk that had a band of
precious orphrey down the middle.]42

Medieval literature is full of marvelous descriptions of fantastic silk fabrics.43 These

sartorial details enhance their wearer’s status, but authors use medallion silk to elevate
status not necessarily through wear but also through the display of uncut lengths of the
fabric for various purposes. We find this kind of use in two very interesting examples
from the thirteenth-century writer Jean Renart. In L’Escoufle,44 the emperor decorates
his hall with medallion silk for a special occasion in order to impress his guests:

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

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

Displaying expensive and exotic fabric constitutes an effective way to demonstrate

wealth and power. Crucially, this highly prized fabric is not transformed into clothing,
where it would be degraded with wear, but remains intact, as does its great worth. If
we dare to find a modern equivalent, we can compare hoarding the uncut medallion
silks to the collecting of precious artworks for status, such as the private ownership
of Old Masters paintings, which potentially keeps them out of museums. Moreover,
we must remember that silk was indeed an important diplomatic gift and even a type
of currency in China.45 In the Byzantine Empire silk was also used for “diplomatic
gift-giving, imperial use, or ritual purposes.”46
In Galeran de Bretagne, another work attributed to Jean Renart, silk also plays an
important role.47 A lady is able to identify her long-lost daughter, the heroine, Frêne,
due to a fine cloth of gold that she had placed with her baby in order to indicate the
child’s noble origin to the nuns who would find her. Later in the story Frêne makes a
robe of the fabric and is thus recognized by her mother. Jean Renart, if he really is the
author, borrowed this story from Marie de France. In her Lai Le Fresne, the baby girl is
left near the convent door not with a cloth of gold but with a paile roé from Byzance:48

En un chief de mult bon cheinsil

envolupent l’enfant gentil
e desus un paile roê ;
sis sire li ot aporté
de Costentinoble u il fu ;
unques si bon n’orent veü. (lines 121–26)

45 Mark A. Norell, Denise Patry Leidy, and Laura Ross, eds., Sulla Via della Seta: Antichi Sentieri
tra Oriente e Occidente (Turin, Italy: Codice, 2012), 237; James C. Y. Watt and Anne E.
Wardwell, When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1997), 18.
46 Dagmar Schäfer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Molà, eds., Threads of Global Desire: Silk in the Pre-
Modern World (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2018), 9, with a citation to Heleanor B. Feltham,
“Justinian and the International Silk Trade,” Sino-Platonic Papers 194 (Nov. 2009): 1–40.
47 Jean Renart, Galeran de Bretagne: Roman du XIIIe Siècle, ed and trans. Lucien Poulet (Paris:
Champion, 1971).
48 Marie de France, Lais, 44–60.
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[The noble-born child was wrapped in a fine linen cloth, and she was covered
by a medallion silk that the lord had brought back from Constantinople, where
he had been. Such a beautiful fabric had never been seen.]

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

ICONOGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE

It is worth looking at sacred images to see if they provide us with different clues from
what we have seen in written records. The marriage charter from April 14, 972, of
Emperor Otto II and his Byzantine wife Theophanu provides us with a marvelous
example of a wedding contract between two powerful people, and its three pieces of
parchment were painted to look like silk woven in a medallion pattern. This particular
artefact certainly joins roundels in silk to nuptial practices and rituals.49
Pictorial renderings of medallion silk can also figure on decorated pages in
sacred books, as, for instance, in the Codex Aureus made in Echternach, a masterpiece
of Ottonian art.50 Stephen Wagner asserts:

The Codex Aureus Epternacensis in Nuremberg, a Gospel book dated to around 1030
contains the most textile-inspired pages of any manuscript and is a real codicological
achievement. A wide variety of designs painted on openings between each Gospel text
analogically wraps and protects the sacred text much the same way that silk fabric pro-
tects relics and silk vestments cloaked bishops and kings. For example, in comparing a
tenth-century silk fragment associated with the relics of St. Siviard, a seventh-century

49 Wolfenbüttel, Germany, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, 6 Urk. 11, viewable at https://

[Link]/wiki/File:[Link], accessed Oct. 30, 2018.
50 Dating from 1030–35; Nüremberg, National Germanisches Museum, Hs. 156142, 17v–18.
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bishop, with the opening that divides the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, a comparison
to the cut style51 in silk weaving is evident.52

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

51 Cut silk, or kesi, is a technique of weaving tapestries in which a slight slit, or relais, is left due to
a lack of interlocking when the weaver changes colors.
52 Wagner, “Impact of Silk,” 11.
53 For examples of Lucchese silks and sculptures from the cathedral, see Ignazio del Punta, Lucca
e il Commercio della Seta nel Medioevo (Pisa: Pacini, 2010), 14 and 17.
54 Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, imitation of fabric.
55 Choir of Ourjout, in the French Pyrénées mountains.
56 Tournus cathedral, floor mosaic.
57 See Paul Deschamps, “L’Imitation des Tissus dans les Peintures Murales du Moyen Âge,”
Comptes Rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 98, no. 3 (1954):
320–26. Deschamps points out that the paintings can be connected with a growing scarcity of
fabric importations (326). It seems that the exact opposite is true.
58 The case of Brindisi’s cathedral being unique as the city suffered from an earthquake in 1743
during which the cathedral was heavily damaged.
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Fig. 5.5: Apse of the church of Ourjout, Bordes-sur-Lez, with astrological signs in medallions and, at the very bottom, painted imitations of hangings
with what appears to be medallions (beginning of the twelfth century). The paintings were rediscovered in 2012. Photo: J.-F. Peiré, Drac Occitanie.
 Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe

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

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

59 David Abulafia, “Trade and Crusade, 1050–1250,” in Cross Cultural Convergences in the
Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Graboïs on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael
Goodich, Sophia Menache, and Sylvia Schein (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 1–20.
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subjects offered by the traditional fabrics of Oriental origin but only for very specific
subjects like bestiary, astrology, and allegory. Yet, these Oriental fabrics also feature
subjects more unusual and elaborate than the beasts, such as the so-called shroud
of Charlemagne with its charioteers, or the St. Lazarus shroud, embroidered with a
falconer.60 We shall return to the preserved floor mosaic of Otranto later. Medallion
mosaics inspired by fabrics also hang on the walls and ceiling of cathedrals in Sicily.
Once again, we can deplore the later renovations that destroyed many roundels, but
the palatine chapel of Palermo and the cathedral of Monreale have been preserved
and provide us some precious examples.
Is it possible that in these cases the artworks were less costly than silk and were
a permanent way to display, even at a degree of separation, the splendor of the most
precious fabric? This could be the case for some paintings, although some mosaics
contain gold foils, which are themselves very expensive. So, which was more expensive,
medallion silks or precious mosaics? It is difficult to determine, since both have poten-
tially less costly alternatives. Other, cheaper materials for mosaics cover whole floors,
such as in the Apulian cathedrals, places where it is difficult to imagine someone laying
rare fabrics, where they would be impossible to care for. Similarly, cheap replacements
were also possible for hangings to protect the originals or in the absence of real silk.
We also find examples of medallion paintings in some of the few remaining pal-
aces from the period, such as the medieval palace in the Vatican.61 Roundels figure
prominently at Bonifacio’s palace in Anagni where there is a repeated design of two
birds, in different colors, on a wall (fig. 5.7). This beautifully decorated palace boasts
different patterns, but the bird design appears on only one wall. If we consider the
orientation of the building, that wall is the one closest to Jerusalem, although this
may be pure coincidence. On the same wall, in the neighboring room, we also find
roundels oriented the same way.
King Roger’s apartments in the Norman Palace of Palermo offer another lay ex-
ample of rooms that feature a roundel motif. The beautiful mosaic room has a golden
ceiling adorned with lions in medallions, griffins in octolobes, and an eagle in the
center, which seems to take its inspiration from medallion silks. This is, of course,
a royal palace. Medieval literature provides many examples of royal pavilions of silk
and cloth of gold,62 and the ceiling in Palermo could reflect this trend by suggesting
that the occupants of the room were housed in a beautiful pavilion. In this room we
also find designs depicting lions, which are themselves reminiscent of the imperial
mantle featuring twin lions attacking two camels; this was originally Roger’s mantle,

60 Charlemagne, see note 7, above. Lazarus shroud: Musée National du Moyen Âge, Paris, no. CL
21865, [Link]
accessed July 20, 2018.
61 Elster, Textilen Geschenke, 132–33, illustrations of griffins, 133.
62 Not to mention the Field of the Cloth of Gold (known as the Camp du Drap d’Or in French) of
many pavilions, where François I met Henry VIII in Ardres in 1520.
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Fig. 5.7: Fresco showing medallions with eagles in the Palazzo Bonifacio VIII, Anagni
(end of the thirteenth century; property of the Congregazione delle Suore Cistercensi della
Carità). Photo: Tina Anderlini.
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made for an unknown occasion (see fig. 1.1 in this volume). In these cases, images of
power coming from the Middle East again travel from cloth to wall.
One of the oldest remaining painted ceilings, dating from the first half of the
thirteenth century, was removed from the chapter of the Collégiale de Notre-Dame-
la-Ronde and is now on exhibit in the Musée de la Cour d’Or in Metz (figs. 5.8 and
5.9). Its iconography is a bestiary and astrological signs, mostly in circles.63 Some of
the animals depicted can definitely be connected to fabric design.64 But, once again,
this is a building that belonged to wealthy, religious people, whose taste would have
coincided with a program similar to the sculptures from a religious building. The exact
meaning of the Metz bestiary is unknown, but it has been linked to a Sicilian wood
canopy that appeared on the art market.65 The similarity of designs could be the result
of the same influence, that is, silk medallions. This brings us to consider a possible
new iconography for the medallions.

FUNERARY FUNCTIONS AND ARCHAISM

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

63 Its design is sometimes in alternating squares and circles, sometimes in a succession of

roundels.
64 Unfortunately, there are no extant medieval textiles in the treasury of Metz Cathedral except
the so-called cope of Charlemagne. I would suggest that the ceiling is evidence of the presence
of such fabrics in the thirteenth century.
65 Jérôme Fronty, L’Étrange Bestiaire Médiéval du Musée de Metz: Un Poisson dans le Plafond
(Metz, France: Éditions Serpenoise, 2007), 19, illustration of the Sicilian canopy, 18.
66 Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Le Moyen Âge Fantastique: Antiquités et Exotismes dans l’Art Gothique (Paris:
Flammarion, 1993), 176–84; Luca Molà, M. Ludovica Rosati, and Alexandra Wetzel, “Dialogo
tra Oriente e Occidente,” in Norell, Leidy, and Ross, Sulla Via della Seta, 116–22. Moreover, the
fourteenth-century Eagle Dalmatic is made of Chinese silk; such silk was extremely rare before
the second half of the thirteenth century.
67 Jacques de Voragine, La Légende Dorée, trans. Teodor de Wyzewa (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 10–11,
sec. 3.
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Figs. 5.8 and 5.9: Paintings from the ceiling of the chapter of the Collégiale de Notre-Dame-
la-Ronde (first half of the thirteenth century; now at Musée de la Cour d’Or, Metz). Fig. 5.8
(top): Griffin. Fig. 5.9 (below): Pair of panthers or lionesses. Photos: © Laurianne Kieffer,
Musée de la Cour d’Or–Metz Métropole.

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

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

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

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

69 Monnas, Merchants, Princes, 228–30. I must emphasize that Simeon’s cope in Bellini’s painting
contains huge drops instead of medallions; we also find the drop pattern in conjunction with
the medallion pattern on the aforementioned Cloisters altarpiece.
70 Triptych of Kamp-Bornhofen, 1415, Bonn, Landesmuseum.
71 Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, “La Mort en Images: Les Funérailles des Princes au Bas Moyen Âge
dans le Royaume de France,” in Des Images dans l’Histoire, ed. Marie-France Auzépy and Joël
Cornette (Saint-Denis, France: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2008), 57–74.
72 The exception to this is Charles VI, whose body was decaying and was replaced by a wood and
wax effigy on the bier. Ibid., 66.
73 Ibid., 65 n. 32.
74 Padua, Treasure of the Basilica del Santo, end of the thirteenth century.
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Fig. 5.11: St. Clare, from the Kamp-Bornhofen Triptych (1415; LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn).
Photo: LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, Jürgen Vogel.

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

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 Tina Anderlini

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

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 Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe

COSTUME

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

75 Ca. 1160; no. M.53–1988.

76 Maddalena Pellizon, “I Tessuti Bizantini con Motivo Decorativo a Rotate: Analisi e Viluppo
Storico-iconografico” (Ph.D. diss., Università Ca’Foscari, Venice, 2011–12), 73–77. This
fascinating work focuses on the Byzantine and Venetian worlds and studies the different
patterns as well as pavements.
77 Munich, Herzog August Bibliothek, Bayern National Library, Codex Guelf. 105 Noviss 2° Clm.
30055, dated 1188.
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Tina Anderlini

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

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

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

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connected to emperors or to sacred events (fig. 5.14).78 Unfortunately, this example

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

78 Gioacchino Giammaria, Un Universo di Simboli: Gli Affreschi della Cripta nella Cattedrale di
Anagni (Rome: Viella, 2001), plate 49.
79 Ibid., plate 48.
133
134
Tina Anderlini

Fig. 5.18: Detail of the cushion from the effigy of Heinrich II. Photo: Tina Anderlini.
 Medallion Silks in Western Medieval Europe

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

135
 Tina Anderlini

THE POWER OF SILK

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

80 Other connections between silk patterns and major arts may be made, such as the influence of
Chinese bat patterns on the representations of demons, as was demonstrated by Baltrusaitis,
Le Moyen Âge Fantastique, 156–75. Moreover, there are also the imitations of Arabic writing
on the mantle of Roger II and similar ornamentation on some Sicilian Christian churches; see
Isabelle Dolezalek, Arabic Script on Christian Kings: Textile Inscriptions on Royal Garments
from Norman Sicily (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). The fact is that the medallions are the most
striking examples, and, in this particular case, it is obvious that the motif travels from textiles
to other arts.
136
 Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire,
and the Search for Legitimation
Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders

Alejandra Concha Sahli

On February 21, 1241, Pope Gregory IX sent a bull to archbishops and bishops alerting
them to

… some women who wander in your cities and dioceses, they falsely pretend to be from
the Order of San Damiano, and in order that others may comply, with the false faith of
unfounded trust, to what they assert, they go barefooted, wearing the habit and the belt
or the thin ropes (cordulas) of the nuns of this order, whom some call discalciatas or
cordularias or minoretas … .1

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

  1 Johannis H. Sbaralea and Conradus Eubel, eds., Bullarium Franciscanum (Rome, 1759;
hereafter BF), vol. 1, no. 331, 290; Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle
Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious
Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German
Mysticism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 115.
  2 Literature on Clare of Assisi and her order is extensive, but see for example: Maria Pia
Alberzoni, Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute, 2004); Lezlie S. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities
in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares
Between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
  3 Grundmann, Religious Movements, 110, 115; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 37–38. On
claustration of religious women, see Eileen Power, English Medieval Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

not found a way to do so since, at least between 1228 and 1245, the order was neither
accepting new members nor building new convents to accommodate this demand.4
Therefore, these women might have been more than just impostors, wandering around
the cities and trying to trick the devout by appearing to be Damianites. Perhaps they
were yet another group representing the wider movement of lay piety that had started
to materialise throughout Europe by the end of the twelfth century and which expand-
ed especially among women during the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, despite the
possibility that their actions were indeed founded on pious intentions, Innocent IV
repeated the tone of Gregory IX’s bull, twice in 1250, and again in 1252, with harsh
words for these mulieres who went around in a habit similar to the one of the Order
of San Damiano.5
As Grundmann skilfully presented it in his now classic study, new ways of religious
devotion and life were flourishing throughout Europe during this period. Even though
it was not a welcoming world for the women who could not find a place to live the kind
of novel religious experience that the Damianite order offered, the women targeted
by Gregory IX’s bull were not the only laypersons adopting the habits of the religious.
These women formed a notorious subset, and female movements took many different
forms, but the longing to embrace a more virtuous way of life outside the traditional
religious orders was shared by groups of both men and women. Paradoxically, for these
people, who could not—or did not want to—take religious vows in the traditional way,
wearing uniform clothes that resembled religious habits seemed to be essential, as the
number of sources related to dress in Gérard Gilles Meersseman’s Dossier de l’Ordre de
la Pénitence demonstrates.6 It became, indeed, a common feature of the extra-religious
groups that started to spread during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as an
act that placed their choice of lifestyle immediately within their social and cultural
context. To “take the habit” was equivalent to entering a religious order. It was not only
a symbolic act to mark an individual’s option and the start of a new way of life, but it
also had immediate practical consequences, signifying a new status.7 The robing of a

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 341–93; Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, “Strict
Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience,” in Medieval Religious
Women, vol. 1, Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, MI:
Cistercian Publications, 1984), 87–113; Elizabeth M. Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered
Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University
of America Press, 1997); James A. Brundage and Elizabeth M. Makowski, “Enclosure of Nuns: The
Decretal Periculoso and Its Commentators,” Journal of Medieval History 20 (2004): 143–55.
  4 Grundmann, Religious Movements, 115–16. However, Sbaralea mentions that the Damianite
convent of Salamanca, to which Innocent IV addresses one of his bulls in 1250, had been
founded in 1238. BF, 1:556, note d.
  5 BF 1, Cum harum rector Sathanas, April 20, 1250, no. 322, 541; Ex parte dilectarum, Sept.
30, 1250, no. 345, 556; Petitio vestra nobis, July 8, 1552, no. 419, 619. Grundmann, Religious
Movements, 116 and n. 167.
  6 Gérard Gilles Meersseman, Dossier de l’Ordre de la Pénitence au XIIIe Siècle (Fribourg,
Switzerland: Editions Universitaires, 1961).
  7 For a general overview about the use and symbolic meaning of monastic habits, see Barbara
F. Harvey, Monastic Dress in the Middle Ages: Precept and Practice (Canterbury: William Urry
Memorial Trust, 1988).
138
 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

new monk or nun “made” them into a religious person and it therefore was a public
act. Thus, it is worth taking a closer look at this phenomenon of “habit envy,” particu-
larly the one represented by beguines and penitential groups who, standing outside
the traditional religious orders, still wanted their share of religious praxis.8 And this
praxis, just as with monks, friars, nuns, and canonesses, started with their clothes.

MULIERES RELIGIOSAE, HABITUS BEGHINARUM: RELIGIOUS DRESS, LAY

PIETY, AND THE FORMATION OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

She dashed to a recluse’s nearby cell, threw off her own garb, wrapped herself in a des-
picable piece of fabric, draped a shabby cloth over it as a mantle, and wound a filthy
rag around her head so that only her face was visible. She looked disgusting, but in that
manner she walked the busiest streets and squares of the town, especially those where
she had previously appeared in grand style and had haughtily dazzled the public with
her fashionable appearance. Now she walked the same route as a horrible spectacle, a
crazy fool.9

The passage narrates the conversion, towards the end of the twelfth century, of the
Belgian noblewoman Ida of Louvain, to a life dedicated to God and poverty. Like her
more famous counterpart, Marie of Oignies, she was one of the forerunners of the
movement of mulieres religiosae, which in time would be known as beguines.10 Despite

  8 On the so-called via media, see Ernest W. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval
Culture with Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New York: Octagon, 1969), 120–40.
  9 Vita Idae Lovaniensis, in Acta Sanctorum Quotquot Toto Orbe Coluntur, vol. 11 (April, vol. 2),
ed. Jean Bolland, Godefroid Henschen, and Jean-Baptiste Carnandet (Paris: V. Palmé, 1866),
156–89, at 163. Fragment translated by Walter Simons in Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities
in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2001), 66. However, this conversion and change of clothes also meant that Ida was thought by
her family to have gone mad and was put in chains; Katrien Heene, “Gender and Mobility in
the Low Countries: Traveling Women in Thirteenth-Century Exempla and Saint’s Lives,” in
The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries, ed. Ellen E. Kittell and
Mary A. Suydam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 31–49, here 35.
10 As beguines were not always distinguished as a clearly defined category within the wider
movement of mulieres religiosae, and because these extra-religious women could receive many
other names, for example Swestriones/Suestriones or bizoche, I will be using the term also as
synonym for the entire phenomenon. This seems to be, in fact, the approach also taken by
authors such as McDonnell in Beguines and Beghards, Jean-Claude Schmitt in Mort d’une
Hérésie: L’Église et les Clercs Face aux Béguines et aux Béghards du Rhin Supérieur du XIVe au
XVe Siècle (Paris: Mouton/École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1978), and Gordon
Leff in Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250–c.1450
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967). Furthermore, this seems to have also been
the practice in the Late Middle Ages, as, for example, in 1374, Lambert, bishop of Strasbourg,
made reference to “the women commonly called beguines, sisters or swestriones among other
names” (“profane multitudinis mulieres, que vulgariter etiam Begine, quedam ex eis Sorores
seu Swestriones, vel aliis nominibus appellantur”); Michael Bihl, ed., “De Tertio Ordine
S. Francisci in Provincia Germaniae Superioris sive Argentinensi Syntagma,” Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum 14 (1921): 138–98, 442–60; no. 21, 183. On the name, see also
McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 430–38, and Letha Böhringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane,
139
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

the uphill challenge of finding themselves in an ambiguous terrain—as they opted

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

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

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

19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., italics in the original; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 157.
21 McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 86.
22 However, it must be noted that female communities in general, including the traditional ones,
were usually under close examination for sartorial deviances, with visitors and those in their
pastoral care paying extra attention to these kinds of trespasses. The diary of visitations of
Bishop Eudes of Rouen, for instance, is full of examples of these faults; The Register of Eudes of
Rouen, ed. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, trans. Sydney M. Brown (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1964). Likewise, as Eva Schlotheuber has shown, similar concerns about the lack of
observance in nuns’ attire, as well as their use of secular clothes, were shared in the synod of
Trier of 1237, and confirmed again in 1277; Eva Schlotheuber, “Best Clothes and Everyday
Attire of Late Medieval Nuns,” in Fashion and Clothing in Late Medieval Europe / Mode und
Kleidung im Europa des Späten Mittelalters, ed. Rainer Christoph Schwinges and Regula Schorta
141
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

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

(Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 2010), 139–54, here 141. On Eudes Rigaud, see
Adam J. Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century
Normandy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). See also Susan M. Carroll-Clark,
“Bad Habits: Clothing and Textile References in the Register of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of
Rouen,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 81–103, as well as Kristi Upson-Saia, Early
Christian Dress: Gender, Virtue, and Authority (New York: Routledge, 2011). I would like to
thank the reviewer of this article for pointing out these works to me.
23 The critical edition of this text is Edmond Faral, ed., “Les ‘Responsiones’ de Guillaume de
Saint-Amour,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 18 (1950–51): 337–
94. See also Michel-Marie Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la Polémique Universitaire
Parisienne, 1250–1259 (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard, 1972), 283–91.
24 Faral, “Responsiones,” no. 10, 343.
25 Ibid., no. 12, 344; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 463; Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris,
18.
26 Giovanni Domenico Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio (Venice,
1779; hereafter Mansi), 23:1089; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 95.
27 Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, eds., Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum (Paris, 1717), 4:226–
27; Pierre Péano, “Les Béguins du Languedoc ou la Crise du T.O.F. dans la France Méridionale
(XIII–XIVe Siècles),” in Atti del 2e Convegno di Studi Francescani Roma, 12–13–14 Ottobre
1976: I Frati Penitenti di San Francesco nella Società del Due e Trecento, ed. Mariano D’Alatri
(Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1977), 139–59, here 143–44.
142
 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

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

28 Leff, Heresy, 315–19. Around the same time, they became also associated with the dissident
Franciscan faction of the Spirituals and the sect of the Fraticelli. See Raoul Manselli, Spirituali e
Beghini in Provenza, Studi Storici, fasc. 31–34 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo,
1959), and David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century
after Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 109, 120.
29 Schmitt, Mort, 110–11.
30 Paul Fredericq, Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis Haereticae Pravitatis Neerlandicae:
Verzameling van Stukken Betreffende de Pauselijke en Bisschoppelijke Inquisitie in de
Nederlanden (Ghent: J. Vuylsteke, 1889), vol. 1, no. 161, 153; Leff, Heresy, 318; McDonnell,
Beguines and Beghards, 517. However McDonnell points out that the decree seemed to leave
out “real beguines,” as it was directed against “Beggardos et Beggardas” under the name of the
Apostolici (518).
31 Fragment translated by Leff, Heresy, 318; the original text appears in Fredericq, Corpus
Documentorum 1, no. 163, 155; Mansi, 25:261.
32 The text of the bull appears in Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2nd. ed. (Graz,
Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1959), 2:1169. Elizabeth Makowski offers
a full translation of the bull into English in “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”: Quasi-Religious
Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2005), 23–24; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 524. Jacqueline Tarrant
has convincingly argued that the decree was not the blanket condemnation of beguines that,
from its contemporaries to modern scholars, it has been thought to be; Jacqueline Tarrant,
“The Clementine Decrees on the Beguines: Conciliar and Papal Versions,” Archivum Historiae
Pontificae 12 (1974): 300–8; Makowski, Pernicious Sort, 26.
143
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

which “‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ beguines, along with those quasi-religious women who
resembled them, would be caught up,” and which lasted for over a century.33
Both the Council of Tarragona (1317) and the one of Mainz (1318) issued pro-
scriptions against the beguines and banned their habit.34 Likewise, in August 1317,
John of Dürbheim, bishop of Strasbourg, issued a decree calling the “bad” beghards
and beguines (begging sisters or “Swestrones,” also nicknamed brod durch gott, “bread
for God”) to give up, within three days, their way of life and the habits that, in their
“perversity,” they had been wearing. They could neither wear garments that were
open below the navel, nor small hoods, especially if attached to the tunic.35 Moreover,
although its closing clause supposedly protected both the “good” beguines and the
penitents of the third Franciscan order, the Strasbourg chronicler observed in his entry
for 1318 that some ecclesiastical authorities in Germany, interpreting Clement V’s bull
indiscriminately, and executing it unjustly, had forced devout and humble women to
give up their coarse and poor habits, to wear undergarments (camisia), and to resume
their use of lay and coloured clothes.36 Hence, in the face of the growing harassment
experienced by both “good” and “bad” beguines, John XXII sought to clarify the terms
of Clement V’s earlier condemnation with his bull Ratio recta of August 13, 1318.
Although he explicitly did not grant official approval (nullatenus ex praemissis inten-
dimus approbare), he stated that the Clementine document was not aimed at “good”
beguines, and that those leading a perfectly orthodox life should not be persecuted.37
Still, John of Dürbheim issued a second decree, about eighteen months later, to
repeat the censure on beguines, expressing that “as experience had taught us,” they
brought “scandal and danger to the people.”38 In this document from January 18, 1319,
beguines were instructed to effectively abandon their status within fifteen days. So
that this renunciation would be openly visible, they had to cast away their clothes or
habits, which, in consideration of said status, they had hitherto carried, under threat of
excommunication.39 The close attention paid to beguines’ attire is again made evident
in the decree issued by the same bishop within a month, on February 17, 1319, to repeat
the ban, which again seemed to be particularly punitive for women. As a sign of their
change of status, the beguines had to make the following alterations: The veil that,
until then, they used to wear attached to their cloak, now had to be worn separated, as
was the secular use (more secularium); they had to put their scapulars entirely aside;

33 Makowski, Pernicious Sort, 27.

34 Leff, Heresy, 331; for Tarragona: Mansi, 25:627–28; for Mainz: Mansi, 25:638.
35 Bihl, “De Tertio Ordine,” no. 14, 173; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 525–26; Robert E.
Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1972), 93.
36 Leonardus Lemmens, ed., “Chronicon Provinciae Argentinensis O.F.M. circa an. 1310–27
a quodam Fratre Minore Basileae Conscriptum (1206–1325),” Archivum Franciscanum
Historicum 4 (1911): 671–87, here 683; McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 529; Lerner, Heresy
of the Free Spirit, 48.
37 The text of the bull appears in Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2:1279–80.
38 H. Haupt, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sekte vom freien Geiste und des Beghardentums,”
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 7 (1885): 503–76, no. 2, here 560–61.
39 Ibid.
144
 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

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

40 Ibid., 561–62; also in Bihl, “De tertio ordine,” 175–76; Leff, Heresy, 338; Schmitt, Mort, 107;
McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 533.
41 Bihl, “De tertio ordine,” 183–84.
42 The text of the bull in Fredericq, Corpus Documentorum 1, no. 220, 228–31; Leff, Heresy, 339–40.
43 Leff, Heresy, 339–40.
44 Camille Tihon, ed., Lettres de Grégoire XI (1371–1378): Textes et Analyses, vol. 3 (Brussels:
Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1964), no. 3992, 500–1; Leff, Heresy, 347; Schmitt,
Mort, 111.
45 McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards, 409.
145
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

especially seeing that they wore habits. Thus anyone who harmed them was liable to
receive a canonical sentence.46

THE CLOTHES OF POPULAR PIETY: RELIGIOUS HABITS AND THE

LEGITIMATION OF PENITENTIAL MOVEMENTS

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

46 Decisiones Rote Nove et Antique cum Additionibus Casibus Dubiis et Regulis Cancellarie
Apostolice, Diligentissime Emendate (Lyon: Etienne Gueynard, 1507), no. 332, fol. 141; also in
Decisiones Antiquae et Novae Rotae Romanae, a Variis Auctoribus Collectae et Editae (Rome:
Georg Herolt and Sixtus Riessinger, 1483), no. 332, fol. 88; Makowski, Pernicious Sort, 108–9;
Elizabeth Makowski, “‘Mulieres Religiosae,’ Strictly Speaking: Some Fourteenth-Century
Canonical Opinions,” Catholic Historical Review 85 (1999): 1–14, here 10–12.
47 Hostiensis, Summa Aurea (Lyon: Apud hæredes Iacobi Iuntæ, 1548), book 3, fol. 174(1)v,
“De regularibus et transeuntibus ad religionem.” Also in Meersseman, Dossier, 308–9; see
as well Makowski, Pernicious Sort, xxvii; Alison More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life in
Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules, and Canonical Legitimacy,”
Church History 83 (June 2014): 297–323, here 300; André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle
Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1993), 113.
48 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 113, 119; Ingrid Peterson, “The Third Order of Francis,”
in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael J. P. Robson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 193–207, here 199; Grundmann, Religious Movements,
31–58.
49 Raffaele Pazzelli, St. Francis and the Third Order (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989),
7–42; Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Penitenze nel Medioevo, Uomini e Modelli a Confronto
(Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1994), 98; Marie-François Berrouard, “La Pénitence Publique
durant les Six Premiers Siècles: Histoire et Sociologie,” La Maison-Dieu 118 (1974): 92–130,
here 102–7; Robert M. Stewart, “De Illis qui Faciunt Penitentiam,” in The Rule of the Secular
Franciscan Order: Origins, Development, Interpretation (Rome: Istituto Storico Dei Cappuccini,
146
 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

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

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

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

55 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 114. As Meersseman (Dossier, 92) explains, the expression
in domibus propriis existentium referred to those clerics, conversi, and penitents who lived in
their own houses, in contrast to those living in a monastery and those who did not have a fixed
residence (vagantes).
56 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 299.
57 Thompson, Cities of God, 84.
58 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 113.
59 As it appears in both the Legenda Maior of St. Bonaventure and in the Vita Prima written by
Thomas of Celano; see Bonaventura, “Legenda S. Francisci,” in Opera Omnia, vol. 8 (Ad Claras
Aquas [Quaracchi], Florence: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1898), 504–64; particularly 508–9; and
Thomas de Celano, Vita Prima S. Francisci Assisiensis et Eiusdem Legenda ad Usum Chori (Ad
Claras Aquas [Quaracchi], Florence: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1926), vita I, particularly 18.
On Francis’s action of stripping before the bishop of Assisi, see Damien Boquet, “Écrire et
Représenter la Dénudation de François d’Assise au XIIIe Siècle,” Rives Nord-Méditerranéennes
30 (2008): 39–63. The juridical meaning of Francis’s change of clothes is briefly discussed by
Meersseman, Ordo, 1:355–57.
60 Marco Bartoli, “Gregorio IX e il Movimento Penitenziale,” in La “Supra Montem” di Nicolo’
IV (1289): Genesi e Diffusione di una Regola: Atti del 5° Convegno di Studi Francescani, Ascoli
Piceno, 26–27 Ottobre 1987, ed. Raffaele Pazzelli and Lino Temperini (Rome: Analecta TOR,
1988), 47–60, here 52–53. On the different types of public penance in French cities during
the thirteenth century, see Mary C. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in
Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 92–129, 248–87.
61 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 122; More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 298.
148
 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

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

62 Meersseman, Dossier, 41; Meersseman, Ordo, 1:363; Bartoli, “Gregorio IX,” 52; Giovanni
Odoardi, “L’Ordine della Penitenza di San Francesco nei Documenti Pontifici del Secolo XIII,”
in Schmucki, L’Ordine della Penitenza, 79–115, here 111.
63 Meersseman, Dossier, no. 27, 60.
64 Ibid., no. 45, 70.
65 Ibid., no. 46, 71.
66 Even though this is the year stated in its title, the four earliest extant copies only date back
to 1228; see Pazzelli, St. Francis, 133–37. As Meersseman and Temperini explain, memoriale
means “chart” or “document,” and propositi relates to “a public promise of consecration,” “a
programme of life”; therefore, the Memoriale was not a religious rule, as Alison More also
asserts. Meersseman, Dossier, 92; Lino Temperini, Carisma e Legislazione alle Origini del Terzo
Ordine di S. Francesco (Rome: Editrice Franciscanum, 1996), 94; Alison More, “Canonical
Change and the Orders of ‘Franciscan’ Tertiaries,” in Religious Orders and Religious Identity
Formation, ca. 1420–1620: Discourses and Strategies of Observance and Pastoral Engagement,
ed. Bert Roest and Johanneke Uphoff (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 69–85, here 70.
67 However, scholars have never definitely established its authorship. See Stewart, “De Illis,” 183–
84; Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 121; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 130–33. On the role of Gregory
IX in the development of the penitential movement, see Bartoli, “Gregorio IX,” 47–60.
68 Meersseman, Dossier, 93–95. Lino Temperini offers a Italian translation of the text in Carisma
e Legislazione, 94–97; Stewart offers an alternative translation in “De Illis,” 188–89.
149
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

normative guidance, they remained mostly relevant only to local communities,

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

69 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 302–3.

70 Vauchez, Laity in the Middle Ages, 122.
71 In BF 4, no. 150, 94–97. A bilingual edition in Latin and Italian, in Temperini, Carisma e
Legislazione, 111–55; see also Mariano D’Alatri, “Genesi della Regola di Niccolò IV: Aspetti
Storici,” in Pazzelli and Temperini, Supra Montem, 93–107. For a comparison between the
Memoriale propositi and the Supra montem, see Stewart, “De Illis,” 373–88.
72 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 302–3. However, Edith Pásztor points out that the
bull was written and registered upon request rather than initiated by the papacy itself, as it
does not appear registered ex officio in Nicholas IV’s register of curial letters; Edith Pásztor,
“La ‘Supra Montem’ e la Cancelleria Pontificia,” in Pazzelli and Temperini, Supra Montem,
65–92, here 66–67. Still, as Stewart (“De Illis,” 202) remarks, the 1289 bull became universally
recognised and, in fact, used as the Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order until 1883.
73 More, “Institutionalizing Penitential Life,” 302–3.
74 Meersseman, Dossier, 130–1, 128–38. Also contained in BF 4, no. 50, 94–95; Temperini offers
a Latin transcription and an Italian translation in Carisma e Legislazione, 135–6; see also
Stewart’s own translation in “De Illis,” 376–77.
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 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

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

75 Antonio García y García, “La Regla de Nicolao IV: Aspectos Jurídicos,” in Pazzelli and
Temperini, Supra Montem, 109–31, here 120–21.
76 Servus Gieben, “L’Iconografia dei Penitenti e Niccolò IV,” in Pazzelli and Temperini, Supra
Montem, 289–304, here 293–94.
77 Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden:
Brill, 2004), 105; Rosalind B. Brooke, The Image of St. Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the
Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 77–78.
78 Livarius Oliger, ed., Expositio Quatuor Magistrorum Super Regulam Fratrum Minorum (1241–
1242) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950), 136.
79 Gieben, “L’Iconografia,” 293–94.
80 Although only approved officially by Innocent VII in 1405 with the bull Sedis apostolicae (June
26). See Meersseman, Dossier, 143. Munio of Zamora, however, did not have a happy career
later on. Elected as general of the order in 1285, he was deposed by Pope Boniface VII in
1292 after a couple of decades tainted with controversy for his, apparently, not very saintly
relationships with the nuns of a local convent in Zamora, Spain. See Peter Linehan, The Ladies
of Zamora (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); Michael A. Vargas, Taming a
Brood of Vipers: Conflict and Change in Fourteenth-Century Dominican Convents (Leiden: Brill,
2011), 292–95.
81 Meersseman, Dossier, 144–45.
151
 Alejandra Concha Sahli

rule. From the Benedictine Rule onwards, the prescriptions covering the matter of
clothing were fairly general, putting most of the emphasis on the humbleness of the
attire and usually just itemising the garments and maybe specifying colour and material.
Perhaps to the eyes of the ecclesiastical hierarchy the fact that penitents were living in
the world made them more vulnerable to “sartorial trespasses,” thus requiring more
detail in their normative directives—especially for women, it seems —but also more
flexibility, hence the attention to local usage.
As the status of penitents became progressively more defined and started moving
towards a certain clericalisation—which could be seen, for example, in the privileges
they received or in the increased professionalisation of their participation of the move-
ment82—they also sought to attain some special rights over their habits. This started to
be made explicit, for instance, in certain regulations concerning penitents. Such is the
case of the rule given in 1284 by bishop Guidaloste to the Vestitae of St. Francis of Prato
in which, besides prescribing in detail the garments they should don,83 he threatens to
excommunicate any woman who, not being part of the congregation, should dare to
use the order’s habit, lest a dishonourable woman damage its reputation.84 Likewise, if
any of the sisters were being disobedient or rebellious, leading a dishonourable life, or
causing scandal to their neighbours, they should have their habits and status removed
and be expelled from their association.85
The prohibition of illegitimately wearing penitential attire was also present in
the threat of excommunication given in July 1286 by Giacomo Cavalcanti, bishop of
Città di Castello, to anyone who dared to take the seal and habit of the Order of the
Penitence without the licence of its minister.86 The same zeal for the exclusivity of the
habit appeared as well in the constitutions of the provincial chapter of the penitents of
Bologna in November 1289, which established that no one should wear the habit of the
brothers or sisters of the Penitence unless they had previously made their profession
according to the rule of Nicholas IV.87 The injunction was repeated in the subsequent
publication of the acts and statutes of the general chapter of the penitents of Bologna
that same year with the addition that in no way should the brothers go beyond their
district or move more than a stone’s throw away from their house without wearing their

82 For instance, in the restatement of the ancient restriction for penitents to “return to the
world” after entering the fraternity (see for example, Meersseman, Dossier, 109, 141, 147, 257;
Thompson, Cities of God, 84), or the ceremony of blessing of the habit and vestition that started
to accompany the entrance of the novices (for example, Meersseman, Dossier, 145–46, 159;
Meersseman, Ordo, 2:643; Temperini, Carisma e Legislazione, 108–9). Even if one agrees with
Thompson’s assertion that this ceremony of the blessing of the habit had no resemblance to the
monastic vestition (Cities of God, 84), I believe that the development of a more solemn ritual
is still very telling about the existent desire to professionalise the elements that marked the
penitential life.
83 Meersseman, Dossier, 139.
84 Ibid., 140.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid., no. 19, 203–4; Thompson, Cities of God, 84.
87 Meersseman, Dossier, 168–69.
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cloaks.88 Similarly, statutes given to the penitents of Tuscany in 1298 forbade a­ nyone
who did not belong to the fraternity, or who had been expelled from it, to use its gar-
ments and signs.89 Analogous instructions were given to the grey sisters (identified
as Franciscan Third Order) of the hospital of St. John of Ghent in 1397, who were to
be deprived of their mantle and scapular for an entire year if they punched someone,
stole something, or committed a “carnal crime” with a man.90
As was the case for canonical religious orders, for the penitential movement habits
were a mirror of their users’ virtue and piety—both internal and external. Thus, they
were not only garments for the exclusive use of their legitimate owners, but they also
had to be earned and respected in the solemnity of the promise they symbolised, as
they were the sign of this particular kind of profession. Likewise, the development of a
collective identity linked to the use of religious-like dress became more evident as the
penitential movement increased in popularity: Just as religious orders did, fraternities
gained rights of exclusivity over their habits and started to pay disciplinary attention
to whether they were being used legitimately. Consequently, the groups sought to
maintain these identities not only to establish distinguishing attributes among dif-
ferent penitential associations, but sometimes also to assert their secular autonomy
from religious authorities.
In this context, as the importance of the habit in the formation of distinctive
identities for the penitential groups increased, it seemed almost inevitable for them to
encounter controversies relating to their habits. This was, indeed, the case of the “black”
and “grey” penitents of Florence during the last decades of the thirteenth century. The
penitents had been established in the city since around the end of the decade of the
1220s, probably under the influence of the first mendicants who settled in the city.91
Although they were especially close to the Dominicans during the first stages—helping
them to administer their possessions and donations92—by the mid-thirteenth century
they appeared to have distanced themselves, in a process apparently sought by both
sides, and had gained an autonomy which was zealously defended from then on.93
While the tensions between grey and black penitents appeared only towards the end
of the century, it is possible to assume that a differentiation among the penitents of the

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

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

94 Meersseman, Dossier, 196–98; Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 293; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati
della Penitenza,” 199 n. 28, 201.
95 See the chapter “Cartulaire” in Meersseman, Dossier, 179–85.
96 Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 207–8 n. 55.
97 Benvenuti (“Fonti e Problemi,” 294) states, in discrepancy with Meersseman, that the choice
of the black colour may have corresponded to the ties of the confraternity with the secular
clergy of the city—also shown in that they had a secular visitor, Bindo Montanini—rather than
to their dependency on the Friars Preacher, a fact that would make, in turn, more evident the
confraternity’s autonomy.
98 Benvenuti (ibid., 295) suggests the possible influence of the Spiritual Franciscans, and their
accent on absolute poverty, in the adoption of a grey habit by a party of Florentine penitents.
99 Meersseman, Dossier, 241; Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 295.
100 Meersseman, Dossier, 69–70; Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 296; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della
Penitenza,” 209; Temperini, Carisma e Legislazione, 114–15; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 150.
101 Meersseman, Dossier, 77–79. Also Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati
della Penitenza,” 209–10.
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 Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and Legitimation

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

102 On the topic of apostasy and the abandonment of religious habits, see F. Donald Logan,
Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c.1240–1540 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 25ff.
103 Meersseman, Dossier, 78; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della
Penitenza,” 209–10.
104 Benvenuti, “Fonti e Problemi,” 298; Pazzelli, St. Francis, 210–11 n. 70.
105 Meersseman, Dossier, 242.
106 Ibid., 242–45, no. 2, no. 10, and no. 16.
107 Meersseman, Dossier, 262–64; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 211; Pazzelli, St.
Francis, 210–11 n. 70.
108 Meersseman, Dossier, 157–58.
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 Alejandra Concha Sahli

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

109 Romolo Caggese, ed., Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, vol. 2, Statuto del Podestà dell’Anno
1325 (Florence, 1921), 371; Benvenuti Papi, “I Frati della Penitenza,” 203 n. 42, 208.
156
 The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels:
Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art

Joanne W. Anderson

In a late-fourteenth-century depiction of the Annunciation, painted around the apex

of a triumphal arch, we see the Virgin Mary and Angel Gabriel kneel opposite one
another with a vase of lilies placed in between (fig. 7.1). Their diaphanous robes are
adorned with geometric patterns on the hems and necklines, down the seam from the
elbow to the wrists, and on the cuffs themselves, with an additional rectangular panel
attached to Gabriel’s sleeve. These trims or borders might easily refer to the practice
of stamping gold or silver onto cloth or the stitching of ribbons woven with gold onto
garments that visually conferred dignity and status upon the displayed body.1 In this
case, that body was the receptacle for Christ, the woman who would become the vehicle
for the salvation of humanity.
The Virgin kneels at a simple domestic prie-dieu that displays an open book.
Mary had been reading up until the point of angelic interruption. Two text boxes are
precisely ruled in black across the double spread of the book, and they each contain
lines of large, loosely described letters. In the little cupboard of the prie-dieu, there
is another small book of prayer owned by the Virgin, reinforcing the message about
containment and incarnation, about divinity in the making, as well as private devo-
tion. This is made all the more clear in the vignette set to the far left of this biblical
episode. Behind the Virgin there is a plain chest, a wooden chair set with a blue and
red checked fabric seat, and an upright weaving loom. They are items of domestic
furniture that illustrate the Virgin’s devotional life and activities, but they also are

This article is the product of two separate presentations on related themes: one at the Birkbeck Me-
dieval Seminar, Medieval Textiles: Meaning and Materiality (November 2016), organised by Laura
Jacobus, and another at Pregare in Casa: Oggetti e Documenti della Pratica Religiosa tra Medioevo e
Rinascimento, an international conference convened by the University of Padua in association with
the Cambridge Research project, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance
Home, 1400–1600 (June 2016), organised by Cristina Guarnieri and Zuleika Murat. I am grateful to
all the organisers for their support in developing this material.

1 See Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 43.
 Joanne W. Anderson

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

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 Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art

identifiable with the furnishing of a contemporary home of a well-to-do woman. The

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

WHOSE THREAD IS IT ANYWAY?

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

2 Hereafter I will use German when referring to people and places in Bozen, given that it was
principally German-speaking up until the twentieth century.
3 This followed the first wave of Italian influence led by the work of Giotto. See Zuleika Murat,
Guariento: Pittore di Corte, Maestro del Naturale (Cinisello Balsamo, Italy: Silvana Editoriale,
2016); Anna Maria Spiazzi, ed., Attorno a Giusto de’ Menabuoi: Aggiornamenti e Studi sulla
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 Joanne W. Anderson

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

Pittura a Padova nel Trecento (Treviso, Italy: Canova, 1994); and Bradley Joseph Delaney,
“Giusto de’ Menabuoi: Iconography and Style” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1972). For
the diffusion and encounter of northern and Italian styles in this locality, see the exemplary
essays by Andrea de Marchi, “Il Momento Sperimentale: La Prima Diffusione del Giottismo”;
Tiziana Franco, “Tra Padova, Verona e le Alpi: Sviluppi della Pittura nel Secondo Trecento”;
and Andreas Besold, “Il Gotico Internazionale: Influssi Nordici,” all in Trecento: Pittori Gotici a
Bolzano, exhibition catalog, ed. Andrea de Marchi, Tiziana Franco, and Silvia Spada Pintarelli
(Trento, Italy: TEMI, 2002), 47–75, 149–65, and 195–201. See also various essays in Il Gotico
nelle Alpi 1350–1450, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo and Francesca de Gramatica (Trento, Italy:
Castello del Buonconsiglio, 2002).
4 The literature is vast on the Arena Chapel. Two recent monographs with ample bibliography
are Laura Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel: Art, Architecture, and Experience (London:
Harvey Miller, 2008), and Anne Derbes, The Usurer’s Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the
Arena Chapel in Padua (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008).
5 Helmut Stampfer, St. Magdalena in Prazöll bei Bozen (Bolzano, Italy: Chiesa di Santa
Maddalena, 1988). A definitive study on the reception of the Arena Chapel is promised
by Laura Jacobus, The Afterlife of the Arena Chapel, 1305–1600 (Brepols–Harvey Miller, in
preparation). On the cross-media reception of the Arena Chapel, see Almut Stolte, “Der Maestro
di Gherarduccio Kopiert Giotto: Zur Rezeption der Arena-Fresken in der Oberitalienischen
Buchmalerei zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in
Florenz 40 (1996/97): 2–41.
6 Joanne W. Anderson, “St. Magdalena in Rentsch bei Bozen: Ein Neuer Vorschlag zur
Auftraggeberschaft im 14. Jahrhundert,” Der Schlern 88 (2014): 40–44. For Bozen’s record-
keeping history, see Hannes Obermair, “‘Bastard Urbanism’? Past Forms of Cities in the Alpine
Area of Tyrol-Trentino,” Concilium Medii Aevi 10 (2007): 53–76, esp. 63, and more recently,
“The Use of Records in Medieval Towns: The Case of Bolzano, South Tyrol,” in Writing and the
Administration of Medieval Towns, Medieval Urban Literacy 1, ed. Marco Mostert and Anna
Adamska (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014), 49–68.
7 The sinister side (proper left) would normally be reserved for female family arms. There is no
suggestion of heraldry behind archangel Gabriel even with the substantial losses of painted
plaster. Inversions of standard visual formulae are common in this church; the Annunciation
scene is unusual in having the Virgin on the left. See Joanne W. Anderson, “Mary Magdalen
and Her Dear Sister: Innovation in the Late Medieval Mural Cycle of Santa Maddalena in
Rencio (Bolzano),” in Mary Magdalene: Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the
Baroque, ed. Michelle A. Erhardt and Amy M. Morris (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 45–74, esp. 59.
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of scale and decorum. Rather than displaying a prominent shield and/or a model of the
building that they helped support, such as in the case of Enrico Scrovegni in the Arena
Chapel (discussed later in this article) or the nobleman Guglielmo Castelbarco in the
Franciscan church of San Fermo Maggiore in Verona, whose shield is accompanied
by an inscription reading “accept dear God this small present that I Guglielmo give
to you Christ” (combining generosity and humility), the patron of Sankt Magdalena
chose to discreetly insert their arms into a detail of the iconographical programme.8
And discreet it is—the loom is placed high up on the triumphal arch and is embedded
in the narrative episode. Moreover, it requires one to know who was who in the local
feudal system since there are no accompanying inscriptions.
The red rampant lion being woven onto silver ground in fact belongs to the
noble family of von Brandis, as verified by a glass window dated 1495–1500 in the
parish church of nearby Meran.9 Other paintings and genealogical charts confirm
its repeated and continued deployment across the successive generations.10 But who
were the von Brandis in the late medieval period, and why did they choose to portray
their family emblem—their public identity marker—in such atypical fashion? Why
was it incorporated into a textile still being woven rather than a complete, fixed, and
permanent symbol? An answer lies in marital bonds, and more specifically with a
mercantile family who traded in cloth and were thus aware of its power as a vehicle
and shaper of identity.

CLOTHING THE BODY IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE: A FAMILY PRACTICE

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

8 See Louise Bourdua, The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 32–70, esp. 39–41.
9 See Anderson, “St. Magdalena,” 43; or Ernst Bacher, Die Mittelalterlichen Glasgemälde in
Salzburg, Tirol und Vorarlberg (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2007), 489.
10 They are held in the private collection of the family at the castle of Brandis in Niederlana,
South Tyrol.
11 Botsch’s Christian name is undocumented. Scholars have postulated that he was called
Nicholas (explaining the chapel and cycle in the Dominican church) but he is always referred
to as Botsch or Boccio in the surviving documents. He was the second son of Giovannino II
161
 Joanne W. Anderson

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

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

Rossi, described on his tombstone as “Banninus de Bamborociis de Florentzia,” whose line

went back to Bartolomeo I. He is often referred to as son of Bamborociis. The name Botsch is
a process of naturalisation: shortening the Bamborociis and giving it German spelling for ease
in local society. In 1343 he is named as the son of “Bombarotschen von Florentz,” indicating
the naturalisation process; see Codex R 55, fol. 51, 1343, I 29, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv,
Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna. In a document from Hall in Tirol dated Oct. 16, 1336,
there is reference to the Botsch heraldry—“in Silber drei schwarze Balken”; see Document 12,
Stadtarchiv, Hall in Tirol, Austria. My thanks to Hannes Obermair for sharing his unpublished
Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Bozen, Teil 3: Urkunden 1300–1349, 123. The family came from
the parish of Santa Felicità (de populo ste. Felicitatis) in Oltrarno. For Florentine migration to
northern Italy and the Alps in the late medieval period, see Gustav Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel im
Bozen des 14. Jahrhunderts Botsch von Florenz und Niklaus Vintler,” Pro Civitate Austriae,
Neue Folge 6 (2001): 3–23, and Damiano Neri, “I Commercianti Fiorentini in Alto Adige nei
Secoli XIII e XIV,” Archivio per l’Alto Adige 42 (1948): 90–146.   
12 Nicolo Rasmò, “La Chiesa dei Domenicani a Bolzano (Note Araldiche e Genealogiche),”
Archivio per l’Alto Adige 36 (1941): 359–79, esp. 363. The chapel was badly damaged in 1944,
following a period of neglect.
13 The tombstone reads “[Link] [Link].
[Link].” Bartolomeo (Bambo) II died in 1318. See Alberto Alberti,
“Sepoltuario e Lapidi Funerarie,” in Domenicani a Bolzano, ed. Silvia Spada Pintarelli and
Helmut Stampfer (Bolzano, Italy: Archivio Storico di Bolzano, 2010), 90–107, esp. 99; it
includes genealogical trees of the families interred in the church.
14 Giovannino II, Botsch’s father, may have helped finance the rebuilding of the church and
convent in 1300–20, and was rewarded with a privileged space east of the choir screen. For
comparative examples of eastern chapels for lay use, see Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty,
Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 227–59, esp. 243–44.
15 See Tiziana Franco, “Il Trecento: Pitture Murali nella Chiesa e nel Convent dei Domenicani,” in
Pintarelli and Stampfer, Domenicani, 162–83, esp. 168–76, and Enrica Cozzi, “Johanneskapelle,”
in Atlas Trecento: Gotische Maler in Bozen, ed. Andrea de Marchi (Bolzano, Italy: Temi, 2001),
78–101. Also Guido Gentile, “Iconografie e Ambienti Spirituali,” and Friederike Wille, “Die
Argumentation der Bilder: Versuch einer Bildlektüre in der Johanneskapelle im Bozner
Dominikanerkloster,” both in Trecento: Pittori Gotici a Bolzano: Atti del Convegno di Studi, ed.
Andrea de Marchi, Tiziana Franco, and Silvia Spada Pintarelli (Bolzano, Italy: Città di Bolzano,
2006), 25–42 (esp. 31–36) and 57–68.
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Fig. 7.4: Interior view of St. John Chapel, facing liturgical west, Dominican Church, Bozen.
Photo: Joanne W. Anderson.

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

16 See Michael Viktor Schwarz, “Padua, Its Arena and the Arena Chapel: A Liturgical Ensemble,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010/11): 39–64.
17 Botsch leased the customs house and pawnshop in Bozen from at least 1332, he became the tax
collector of Bozen under the County of Tyrol, and soon ran in the circles of the landed nobility
which determined his rise towards aristocratic status; see Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel im Bozen,”
6–12.
18 See Tommaso Fanfani, “L’Adige come Arteria Principale del Traffico tra Nord Europa ed
Emporio Realtino,” in Una Città e Il Suo Fiume: Verona e l’Adige, ed. Giorgio Borelli (Verona:
Banca Popolare di Verona, 1977), 2:569–629, and in Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance
Venice (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), 244, 246, and 273.
19 This includes two personifications of virtue and vice in grisailles. See note 5 on the afterlife
of the Arena Chapel. The Arena Chapel narratives are organised in left-to-right wraparound
mode across flat wall surfaces. A similar strategy is employed in Bozen with scenes running
from left to right, but in the subsequent registers it departs from this logical order. For narrative
categories, see Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian
Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
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Fig. 7.5: Giotto, Annunciation to Anna, Arena Chapel, Padua, 1303–5. Photo: Courtesy of
the Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection.

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

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

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

20 See Anne Derbes, “Patronage, Gender, and Generation in Late Medieval Italy: Fina Buzzacarini
and the Paduan Baptistery,” in Patronage: Power and Agency in Medieval Art, ed. Colum
Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 119–50; and Benjamin G. Kohl,
“Fina da Carrara, née Buzzacarini: Consort, Mother, and Patron of Art in Trecento Padua,”
in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. Sheryl E. Reiss and
David G. Wilkins (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), 19–36.
21 Namely the probable self-portrait of Martini in the St. Martin Chapel (1320–25) in the
Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi and the portrait of Cardinal Stefaneschi donating
his altarpiece to St. Peter on the reverse of the Stefaneschi Altarpiece (ca. 1330), now in the
Pinacoteca, Vatican City.
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Fig. 7.7: Giotto, Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, Arena Chapel, Padua, 1303–5.
Photo: Courtesy of the Warburg Institute, Photographic Collection.

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

22 For early portraiture, see Laura Jacobus, “Propria Figura: The Advent of Facsimile Portraiture
in Italian Art,” Art Bulletin 99:2 (2017): 72–101, esp. 73. Botsch’s parents, Giovannino II and
Katherine von Reichenberg, are represented as kneeling donors above the altar of the chapel,
presented to the Man of Sorrows by St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist. See Franco,
“Il Trecento,” 168–76, and Cozzi, “Johanneskapelle,” 78–101. The donors were once believed to
be Botsch and his first wife, Gerwiga von Niederthor.
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Fig. 7.8: Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, St. John Chapel, Dominican Church, Bozen,
ca. 1329. Photo: Fondazione Rasmo-Zallinger, Fondo Fotografico, scatola 67, no. 4833/3274,
by permission.

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

23 The symbolism of the colour is described by Cardinal Lothar of Segni (Pope Innocent II) in his
De Sacro Altaris Mysterio of 1195, in Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: Garnier,
1844–91), 217:786. For a brief discussion of the Christological significance of purpura, see
Heather Pulliam, “Color,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 3–14, esp. 9–10.
24 Obermair, Quellen zur Geschichte, 155. The document is registered in the Landesfürstliches
Rechnungsbuch, Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck, Hs. 288, fols. 15–16 n. 3. The fabric was
most likely silk; see Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and
Northern Paintings, 1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 298.
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Fig. 7.9: Illustration from the Meditatione de la Vita del Nostro Signore Ihesu Christo (Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Ital. 115, fol. 41r). Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de
France, by permission.

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

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

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

and Liz James (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 261–79. See also Katherine T. Brown, Mary
of Mercy in Medieval and Renaissance Art: Devotional Image and Civic Emblem (New York:
Routledge, 2017), 56–57.
27 Vitale da Bologna, Madonna del Ricamo, 1335(?), detached fresco, 118 centimeters by 79
centimeters, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (formerly Pradalino).
28 See Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion
(Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010), 86–118, esp. 110–15. McNamer argues
for a female author and recipient, with the Latin version representing a gender shift that is
concomitant with a redaction of the text from compassion to an arresting of that emotion.
29 Columban Fischer, “Die Meditationes Vitae Christi: Ihre Handschriftliche Überlieferung und
die Verfasserfrage,” (Florence: Quaracchi, 1932), 3–35, 173–209, 305–48, and 449–83.
30 See Holly Flora, The Devout Belief of the Imagination: The Paris “Meditationes Vitae Christi”
and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009),
27–47. She advocates “responsible scholarship” when discussing the text/image and pictorial
traditions, particularly in light of past art-historical work that treated the manuscript as a
source for iconographic inspiration. See also Sarah McNamer, “Further Evidence for the Date
of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Franciscan Studies 50 (1990): 235–61.
31 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Ital. 115. This manuscript is available for view
online at [Link] For a published reproduction, see
Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of
the Fourteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 27–29, 42–43, and
74–83.
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by the mural cycle, tempting the conclusion that the painter had access to a copy of an
illustrated manuscript—in the possession of the friars or the patron.32 If correct, this
would imply that the Meditationes Vitae Christi has an earlier dating, namely before
1329, the approximate date of the mural cycle.33 The jury remains out, but we can at
least follow Anne Derbes’s line that both the miniature and mural painting represent
an “expression of a larger discourse” on the domestic life of the holy family.34
This inclusion of a new iconographical detail in the decoration of the St. John
Chapel speaks to the individualisation of devotional space and the circulation of ideas
for the visual arts via the new religious orders. The Dominicans were dedicated to
the cult of the Virgin Mary and consequently, this imagery offered an opportunity to
emphasise her importance in a contemporary context of virtuous industriousness.35
This was appropriate to their preaching activities but also suitable in a chapel that they
saw on a daily basis when crossing between cloister and choir. The Virgin spins the
purple thread for the pallium that will veil the entrance to the tabernacle, and at the
same time predicts her role in the divine creation. However, it was more than just a
case of humanising the sacred story for the Botsch family, which included the women.36
The detail was highly apt to the patron’s requirements in this chapel, namely Botsch,
particularly in his quest to further assert the rising status of his family in Bozen.
As mentioned above, the Rossi family originated from Florence, but as with all
outsiders, a process of integration took place; this is evident in the naturalising of
Botsch’s name. In the chapel, it happens thanks to what Kathryn Rudy has described
as the “specific charge surrounding textiles and articles of clothing.”37 Indeed, it is this
charge and the very materiality of textiles that is germane to a final understanding of the
heraldic cloth being woven on the loom in the painting at Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch.

32 That the Meditationes Vitae Christi is associated with the Franciscans is unproblematic. The
order was present in Bozen, and Botsch’s family were prominent patrons of their convent.
33 For a rehabilitation of the early dating of the Meditationes Vitae Christi (i.e. early 1300s), see
Dávid Falvay and Peter Tóth, “L’Autore e la Trasmissione delle ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ in
Base a Manoscritti Volgari Italiani,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 108, no. 3–4 (2015):
403–30, esp. 403–6.
34 Quoted in Flora, Devout Belief, 40.
35 The Dominican church is dedicated to St. Dominic. In 1273 in Regensburg, the feast days
of importance are named along with indulgences for the new convent of the Dominicans in
Bozen (novella plantatio ordinis fratrum predicatorum in Bolzano Tridentine diocesis): These are
Christ, Mary and the Apostles, Peter, Dominic and Mary Magdalen. The original document
is lost but recorded in Marian (Andreas) Fidler, Austria Sacra: Österreichische Hierarchie und
Monasteriologie: Geschichte der Ganzen Österreichischen, Weltlichen und Klösterlichen Klerisey
Beyderley Geschlechtes, part 2, vol. 4 (Vienna: Schmidt, 1782), 51. My thanks to Hannes
Obermair (Quellen zur Geschichte, 74).
36 The early life of the Blessed Virgin Mary could have an edifying role for the women in the
family; see Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel, 221–39. Jacobus argues this case convincingly
for Jacopina d’Este, second wife of Enrico Scrovegni.
37 Kathryn Rudy, “Introduction: Miraculous Textiles in Exempla and Images from the Low
Countries,” in Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and Their Metaphors in the Late Middle
Ages, ed. Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), 5.
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The painted programmes in the St. John Chapel offered lots of opportunities to
display the Botsch family colours of black and silver on the bodies of those who served
or were dependent because of their gender on their lord and master (fig. 7.10). Firstly,
it is worn by the musicians in the Procession after the Marriage of the Virgin on the
liturgical west wall facing the altar, a scene that is rich with luxury garments; secondly,
by the servants in the Marriage at Cana on the north wall; and thirdly, by the three
daughters of the destitute father in the cycle of St. Nicholas, on the north wall to the
left of the altar (proper right). Each striking example of the liveried body is located at
the top of its respective bay under the gothic ribbed vaults. It was a suitable location
for such heraldic displays but also decorous given the great height of the chapel and
the fact that it was a space through which the Dominican friars would traverse on
a frequent daily basis; the black-and-white livery could at least be tolerated for its
chromatic similitude to the habit of the mendicant order.
The Botsch family represents one of two branches of the Rossi family. According
to a later chronicler, one branch had heraldry of red and white stripes, and so the other
one changed the colour to black.38 The Botsch heraldry, representing the latter, can
still be seen on the bell tower of the Dominican church and in the baptismal church of
Sankt Johann im Dorf, confirming both colour and pattern. There it is characterised
by horizontal black and silver stripes (known as a barré effect, or fess).39 In the St. John
Chapel, however, the horizontal stripes of the Botsch heraldry are transformed into
black and white diagonal stripes (the rayé effect, or bend sinister).
The precise diagonal lines of the painted cloth in the three examples listed above
might seem at odds with the actual depiction of the family’s heraldry elsewhere in the
Dominican church and in wider Bozen. However, the master painter was once again
adapting the Giottesque model. In the Paduan scene depicting the Virgin Returning
from her Marriage in the Arena Chapel (the match for the same scene in Bozen), the
musicians are wearing blue and silver diagonally striped robes, in reference to the
heraldic colours of the Scrovegni family.40 Once again, the role of cloth in shaping
and expressing identity finds its partial origins in a successful prototype. Moreover, it
provides a pathway to the dressing of the female body in family colours.
The dressing of the body, in reality and in pictorial form, wove visible bonds of
devotion with each item a record of self. Fashion today is part of the larger continuum
of textile’s cultural import. We dress to express, donate to offset, retain to remember
moments in our lives that are indicative of who we think we are and how that shifts
over time; personality being construed on a spectrum. While the liveried body was a
common trope in medieval society, “stitching” servant to master, in fourteenth-century
Bozen, ideas of cloth and display and its import to memory took on a fresh s­ ignificance

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

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

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

ORDINO ET DISPONO

Margaret Botsch took the powerful metaphor of social transformation embodied by

liveried cloth to the church of Sankt Magdalena through her marriage to Randold

41 “The liveried body, even though the livery was seldom marked as such, stitched servant’s bodies
to their households”; Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials
of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 11. See also Joanna Crawford,
“Clothing Distributions and Social Relations c.1350–1500,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed.
Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 153–64, esp. 155; and Malcolm Vale,
The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe, 1270–1380 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 112–14.
42 Eleanor Stuart, another daughter of James I, married Sigismund of Tyrol in 1450. They held
jurisdiction over Bozen and she was guardian of the Franciscan church in the same town. The
heraldry of Scotland can be found on a boss in the vaults of the cloister.
43 The illumination, attributed to the Rohan Workshop and dated c. 1410–40, is on fol. 20r of
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 62, viewable at [Link]
object/90393. It is discussed in Elizabeth L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty, and
Visual Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). In the Annunciation on fol.
29r, the Virgin wears a dress bearing her name repeated in its golden stripes. The impaled
arms of Isabel Stuart feature in many of the full-page miniatures (main text divisions), but as
L’Estrange observes, these arms were added after her marriage in 1442, and thus when this
luxury book came into her possession (20–22).
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von Brandis in the early 1380s. What we know about this union and its financial and
social benefits comes from the last will and testament of Margaret, which survives in
the family archive. It is valuable not only for what possessions she had to bequeath
and to whom, but also the provisions made for her body and soul, which speak to the
social bonds woven between natal and marital families and between church and home.
Margaret made her will on November 22, 1387, in the house of her mother,
Katherine Fellser (of Völs), which could be found on the Wangergasse, a quarter of
the old town of Bozen.44 She is named as the daughter of the late Botsch of Florence
(“filia quondam domini Botschonis de Florencia”) and wife of the Tyrolean nobleman
Randold von Brandis (“uxor domini Randoldi de Prandes”).45 After the preamble of the
document, covering the main protocols, Katherine, who is described as her beloved
mother (“dilecta mea mater … karissima”), is noted as being present at her side. The
other witnesses are laymen from Bozen, Dominican friars, two notaries (who will pre-
pare the legal document) and Eric of Rottenburg, the minister for foreign affairs of the
Habsburg rulers of Tyrol, who is there to guarantee the execution of the dying woman’s
wishes at her demand.46 She was a woman of importance in local and regional society.
The will continues with detailed instructions for her final resting place and
for the cure of her soul in the Dominican church. Margaret asks that she be buried
in the Nicholas Chapel, founded and endowed by her father Botsch between the
years 1345–50, directly next to his sarcophagus (“tumba que, sarch’ dicitur, in qua
pater meus … ”).47 The Dominican friars must conduct a weekly Mass (“perpetua
septimonialis missa”) in the chapel in honour of St. Michael Archangel, for which her
mother (“mea mater karrissima”) must assume responsibility.48 The fifteen denarii that
she leaves to the convent for this ritual will be taken from her Cholhoff vineyards in
Eppan, near Bozen. In addition, four friars must sing a vigil on her anniversary in
perpetuity—this public Mass comprised a procession with candles (candela) and with
chanting to her tomb in the chapel (“et visitatio mei sepulchri cum cantu”). For this
Margaret leaves twenty small pounds.
What this part of the will reveals are the basic forms of devotional practices re-
quired after death and the spaces in which they were performed. The friars’ procession

44 Account taken from document 8.13, Emil von Ottenthal and Oswald Redlich, eds., Archiv-
Berichte aus Tirol (Vienna: Kubasta and Voigt, 1888), 259. I am grateful to Duke Ferdinand von
Brandis for granting me access to the private archive and his interest in this new chapter in the
family history. As always, I thank my colleague Hannes Obermair for making the visit possible
and helping with the transcription on site.
45 Botsch died in April 1374. See Pfeiffer, “‘Neuer’ Adel in Bozen,” 12 n. 66.
46 The County of Tyrol was founded by Meinhard II in the late thirteenth century. Margaret’s aunt
was Katherine von Rottenburg and so the minister’s presence was down to a family connection.
See the genealogical tree in Alberti, “Sepoltuario,” 92–93.
47 It was common practice at this time for daughters to be buried with their natal rather than
marital families. See Luciano Maino, 50 Testamenti Medioevali nell’Archivio Capitolare di
Trento (Ferrara, Italy: Liberty House, 1999), 27–28. The location of Margaret’s tomb can be
identified thanks to the archaeological investigations undertaken at the Dominican church
during the early 2000s. See Alberti, “Sepoltuario,” 90–107, esp. 91.
48 The feast day of St. Michael is September 29 (Michelmas).
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to the chapel, ritualised by lit candles and chanting, would have passed into the lay
church through the portal in the choir screen, down the nave, and into the chapel,
which lay on the cardinal west side nearest the main entrance. They passed walls rich
with fresco paintings, both nave and family chapels, and textiles that adorned the
respective altars. The document lacks the common phrase “pro remedio anime,” but
there is no doubting that it was made in advance of the final event of Margaret’s mor-
tal life. The preparations for her death and the objects (tomb and candles) are clearly
articulated and visualised in the home, connecting domestic and ecclesiastical spaces.
Having dealt with the cure of her body and soul, Margaret turns to the dispersal
of her estate. As to be expected, recipients and goods are detailed, but there is one
surprising observation by the notary. Margaret is recorded as whispering the names
of some of those beneficiaries (“in secreto declaravi”). Only her mother learns of their
identity, leaving the notary in the dark. This disruption of normal legalese leaves the
door ajar to the private life and desires of a noblewoman in this period. With due
caution in mind, the document perhaps captures the emotive tenor of her family
relations and personal piety as bound up with her worldly goods, in particular her
clothing and jewellery.49
To her husband, Randold von Brandis, Margaret left half of her dowry (“dona-
tion mea antelecti”), which was valued at one thousand florins (“mille florenos”), a
convention of this period that would provide for all her children. As clearly implied
by the diplomatics of the document, this was her second marriage. The first was to
Jacob Fuchs (“quondam Jacobus Fux”), who died in 1380, for whom she bore a son,
Cyprianus. The other boys were fathered by Randold and were called Christopher and
Leo (“Christofforus e Leo de Prandes”). Katherine Fellser, the second wife of Botsch
and mother of Margaret, received clothing (vestes corporales) and jewellery (cleonodia
aurgentea), the precise details given in secret. To those whose names were whispered
went more clothing, indicating her relative wealth and position, but also how she con-
formed to the standard practice of handing on garments for reuse or repurposing.50 To
her dear sister, Elisabeth, wife of Gufidaun, who resided near Brixen (north of Bozen),
went also some jewellery. The rest of the cloth and jewellery was bequeathed to the
Dominican church, together with a chalice and ecclesiastical vestments.
The donation of such material goods to the church was common in the late
Middle Ages. As Sandra Cavallo has written in reference to Turin, it was understood
as an embodied act that connected the donor with public or private altars.51 These
bequests point us to the good women of the parish who created bonds between home
and church. The dress of a noblewoman suggests costly materials for which Margaret’s
father was in part responsible for importing to Bozen. Indeed, every year, three fairs

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

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

52 See note 18. Also Edoardo Demo, “Le Fiere di Bolzano e il Commercio tra Area Atesina ed
Area Tedesca tra Quattro e Cinquecento,” in Le Alpi Medievali nello Sviluppo delle Regioni
Contermini, ed. Gian Maria Varanini (Naples: Liguori, 2004), 69–97, and Edoardo Demo, “Le
Fiere di Bolzano tra Basso Medievo e l’Età Moderna (Secoli XV–XVI),” in Fiere e Mercati nella
Integrazione delle Economie Europee, Secc. XIII–XVII: Atti della “Trentaduesima settimana di
Studi,” 8–12 Maggio 2000, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 2001), 707–22.
The Bozen fairs are contextualized in Paola Lanaro, “Periferie senza Centro: Reti Fieristiche
nello Spazio Geografico della Terraferma Veneta in Età Moderna,” in La Pratica dello Scambio:
Sistemi di Fiere, Mercanti e Città in Europa (1400–1700), ed. Paola Lanaro (Venezia: Marsilio,
2003), 21–52.
53 See Karl Atz and Adelgott Schatz, Der Deutsche Anteil des Bistums Trient (Bolzano [Bozen],
Italy: Auer, 1903), 1:58.
54 Katherine French, “‘My Wedding Gown to Make a Vestment’: Housekeeping and Church­
keeping,” in her The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008): 17–49, esp. 44. She speaks of the
“inventiveness” of women in repurposing domestic items for church use. Wedding dresses
were remade as altar cloths, a red damask mantle and a silk-lined mantle for costumes for
a mystery play about Mary Magdalen, kerchiefs as cloth holders for hosts and a coverlet to
lie before the high altar at principal feasts. Frederick William Weaver, ed., Somerset Medieval
Wills: 1383–1500 (London: Somerset Record Society, 1901–5), 2:52–57, cited in French, “My
Wedding Gown,” 251.
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his daughter, who could marry above her natal station thus effecting social mobility.55
The union with the Fuchs family was prestigious, but by 1380, Jacob was dead, leaving
Margaret a still marriageable widow. The von Brandis family and their son, Randold,
represented a second opportunity and was to be matched by a respectable dowry.56
But the weaving of new family bonds could be recorded by other means. By
her remarriage and movement up the social ladder, Margaret’s identity was in the
remaking, and there was no better way of both communicating this process whilst at
the same time embodying it than by appropriating the tactics of her father: namely,
the representation of luxury cloth and heraldic motifs in the sacred image cycles that
decorated the walls of chapels and churches that benefited from his largesse. Servants
or female dependents wore the liveried colours of the Botsch family in the Dominican
church in the context of a narrative cycle and are indicative of social aspiration.57 In
the Magdalen church in Rentsch, where this article began, there was to be no extensive
Marian programme. Rather, it had a scene of the Annunciation, as was common for
triumphal arches. It was therefore necessary to find a novel way of inserting the von
Brandis family’s heraldic motif into the story. The result was a partially woven fabric
on the domestic loom. It represents a distillation from one sacred site to another, and,
in inheritance terms, a handing down from father to daughter.

THE LOOM, THE LADY, AND HER FAMILY CHAPELS

A picture emerges of Margaret’s life in terms of family connections, domestic and

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

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

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

58 The chapel is not mentioned in Marx Sittich von Wolkenstein, ed., Landesbeschreibung
von Südtirol (Innsbruck, Austria: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1936), accessible at https://
[Link]/tessmannDigital/Buch/13004/; the text mentions only that of the Botsch
(Wotschen) along with a drawing of their heraldic shield. It was destroyed at the beginning
of the 1800s. Fragments of painting survive and these are dated to ca. 1325–30. See Alberti,
“Sepoltuario,” 100–2, and Franco, “Il Trecento,” 167.
59 On this topic, see most recently Péter Bokody, Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250–
1350): Reality and Reflexivity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), esp. Introduction and chap. 1.
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most importantly two males who would ensure the continuance of the family line as
declared by the heraldic lions on the textile.
Weaving has been described as “an index of feminine virtue” thanks to its re-
maining a “respectable” craft for a woman long after its commercialisation.60 This is
conveyed beautifully in the painting in Rentsch in the context of the early life of the
Virgin, who works at an upright loom (warp-weighted). But this loom and its cloth
also represent a shift in visual practices in Bozen over a one-hundred-year period. In
the Dominican church in around 1329, the virgins worked together to produce the
pallium for the tabernacle, but no cloth is visible in their hands or in the gendered
space within the temple. Nearly seventy years later, the motif reappeared in the church
of Sankt Vigil am Weineck, which lies on the outskirts of Bozen and was patronised by
the noble Weineck family. In the fresco cycle of the life of the Virgin, there is a weaving
scene at the temple of David and cloth is present, but this time she only works a plain
green strip. There is no painted pattern in the completed textile because the heraldry
of the family is displayed on the exterior façade of the church, leaving no one in doubt
about their status and rights of patronage.61 Theirs was a nobility by birth and not one
acquired by mercantile graft and rising social status.
The painting in Sankt Magdalena in Rentsch is a midway point in the representa-
tion of what was understood as virtuous women’s work in the local area (figs. 7.1 and
7.2). And it was put to unique effect for a family on the rise. With no heraldry surviving
anywhere else in the building, inside or out, what remains are some thoughts left visible,
some unfinished threads to collect. For Margaret von Brandis, her second marriage
meant a new identity in the making, and this is what the Virgin weaves on her loom.

60 Ruth Mazo Karras, “‘This Skill in a Woman Is By No Means to Be Despised’: Weaving and
the Gender Division of Labor in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles,
Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 89–
104, esp. 91. Karras notes a technological factor in the move away from weaving as women’s
craft: namely the arrival of the horizontal loom, which required greater finances and strength.
61 See Roberto Bartalini, “‘Iudicium’: Un Affresco a San Vigilio al Virgolo a Bolzano e la Liturgia
Funebre Tardomedievale,” in de Marchi, Franco, and Pintarelli, Trecento, 45–55, and Sigrid
Popp, Die Fresken von St. Vigil und St. Zyprian: Studien zur Bozner Wandmalerei um 1400
(Ph.D. diss, Technische Universität Berlin, 2003).
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L’Arte del Sarto nel Medioevo: Quando la Moda Diventa un Mestiere, by Elisa Tosi
Brandi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017). ISBN 978-8815253248. 224 pages, 8 black-and-
white illustrations.
Elisa Tosi Brandi’s book on the trade or art of the tailor in the Middle Ages is
subtitled “when fashion became a profession,” alluding to the rise of tailoring as a
specialist activity during this period. The material runs from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century and concentrates geographically on cities and towns in central and
northern Italy, primarily Bologna, but also Udine, Verona, Milan, Venice, Ferrara,
Rimini, Pisa, and L’Aquila.
This is a richly documented book, and the reader could spend happy hours
following up the information provided in the footnotes. Chapter 1 begins with a
­reminder that the profession of tailor, one who cut and stitched clothing for both men
and women, goes back to the Middle Ages and that it was a profession that responded
to new needs in the courtly culture of the period, needs that were then disseminated
through the city communes of Italy. This is followed in Chapter 2 by a focus on tailors
within guild regulations, the ways in which the profession became specialized, and
the work of women. Chapter 3 is concerned with the practicalities of the profession,
such as places of work, tools, and the charges tailors were able to make for their work.
It contains a very useful appendix on tariffs in various cities between the thirteenth
and fifteenth centuries. The final chapter touches on a wide range of information: the
relationship between tailor and client, the tailor in sixteenth-century treatises, fashion
plates and manuals, records of clothing affected by sumptuary legislation.
L’Arte del Sarto is the result of a considerable amount of research and is also a
wonderfully engaging read. Tosi Brandi has succeeded in bringing together a vast
range of material, which she deftly manages, moving between primary and secondary
sources with a light but sure touch.
Like many books published in Italy, L’Arte del Sarto does not contain a bibliography
or an index. On the plus side, the lack of an index forces the reader to engage with the
argument rather than cherry-pick specific topics. The same could be said of the lack
of bibliography, but it can be annoying to check something in a footnote only to find a
short reference to the publication and that the work has been cited in full for the first
time in an unspecified previous footnote. — Cordelia Warr, University of Manchester
 Recent Books of Interest

Clothes Make the Man: Early Medieval Textiles from the Netherlands, by C ­ hrystel
R. Brandenburgh (Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University Press, 2016). ISBN 978-
9087282608. 289 pages, 112 illustrations (many in color).
This doctoral thesis addresses textiles of 400–1000 from Merovingian cemeteries
and settlement sites in the Netherlands. None of these are new finds; the author has
examined or re-examined textiles stored in museums, and each of the six case studies
presented here has been published (including in Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8) in
the course of her research. This means the book contains some repetition, and the
demands of thesis writing—in terms of stating research questions, then answering
them—produce some rather pedestrian paragraphs. However, the thesis is generally
written well and clearly in English, and the few errors (of which the worst I found were
“died” for “dyed” and “fixated” for “fixed”) certainly do not interfere with enjoyment
of the text.
While fully aware of the social/cultural implications of textiles and dress, the
author is concerned with presenting technical details of fibre, spin, and weave, and
particularly sensitive to what must have been the readily perceptible characteristics
of cloth, such as drape and texture. She makes it clear that she is not comparing like
with like. Evidence from cemeteries, both rural and urban, consists of small, miner-
alised fragments attached to metalwork. Although in some cases the position of the
metalwork in the grave is recorded, the practice of opening graves after the decay of
the flesh has often interfered with the positioning and may have included removal of
some grave-goods. Cemetery textiles are, however, datable by association, potentially
gendered by grave-goods even when there are no skeletal remains, and contextualised
by their burial ground and region. They are, potentially, valued textiles. Occupation
sites are generally later than the cemeteries, but finds are poorly dated, unstratified,
and without associations; many textiles were old and had been discarded. However,
they present larger samples than cemetery fragments, including some recognisable
hats and parts of other garments with hems, seams, and decorative embroidery, as
well as items that may have been domestic or industrial textiles.
The author enumerates fabric types and makes comparisons as regards choice
of tabby or twill, quality of textiles (measured by thread count), special weaves
(­Rippenköper, repp, and a loose tabby suitable for veils), and the use of gold thread.
The author identifies gender-related preferences, with women generally wearing
higher-quality fabrics than men. She notes that in the early Christian cemeteries of
Maastricht–St. Servas church and Vrjthof, gender differences were not apparent, as
both sexes were buried in tabby cloth, which, she suggests, is a precursor to the use of
special death cloths in Christian times. In comparison with cemetery evidence from
Merovingian Germany, these Dutch finds were not rich, though gold thread in graves
from Maastricht–St. Servas church and Maastricht-Pandhof made them richer than
others in this corpus. The study found regional differences in choice of textiles and
major differences between the settlement sites of the north and the cemeteries of the
south, though both chronology and different uses of cloth could partially account
for this.

184
 Recent Books of Interest

If the study answers some research questions it also raises others, but with its
detailed information, excellent photographs, useful diagrams, and wide-ranging dis-
cussions it presents a model for what study of archaeological textiles can be. — Gale
R. Owen-Crocker, Editor

Cloth Seals: An Illustrated Reference Guide to the Identification of Lead Seals Attached
to Cloth, by Stuart F. Elton (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2017). ISBN 978-0993324604. 409
pages, 330 photographs (mostly color), plus 47 black-and-white drawings.
The book begins with a 37-page introduction to cloth seals found in and origi-
nating from the United Kingdom that covers terminology, types, and identification
along with brief notes on the largely untapped potential of such seals to offer clues
as to weaves, which sometimes leave impressions in the soft lead when the seal is
attached, and even dye colors, from chemical traces trapped in the lead. This section
also includes a short history of the use of seals and their context and dating.
The bulk of the book’s content is 298 pages devoted to a list of seals, by general
category groupings. It finishes with a few pages on identification resources and care
of the objects. With this section, Elton achieves the book’s stated purpose of being
primarily a guide to aid identification of cloth seals used in post-medieval and early
modern industry and trade. There are numerous photographs of examples, many of
which depict both faces of the subject. This will be a great resource for collectors and
metal detectorists.
Of more direct interest to researchers in clothing history and trade will be the
notes on some seals that touch on their sources, offering hints into aspects of the cloth
trade. These notes sometimes include the types of cloth the merchants dealt in, where
they traded, and how long they operated. Alas, such information is not available for
all of the illustrated seals.
Appendices cover a timeline of events and legislation of the textile industry
­(almost all relating to England), types of cloth, known alnagers (officials charged with
inspecting and sealing cloth) and their agents, privy marks of known sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century clothworkers, distinctive identification features of cloth seals,
and tubular cloth seals used by Dutch immigrant clothmakers in sixteenth- and
­seventeenth-century England. The index concentrates on names and places, with little
on cloth itself. — Robert Charrette, La Belle Compagnie

The Diversity of Dyes in History and Archaeology, edited by Jo Kirby (London:

­Archetype, 2017). ISBN 978-1909492530. 448 pages, 231 illustrations (most in color).
The introduction to this collection is imperative to read, as it explains the attach-
ment to the journal of the same name and its annual meetings.
The book is lengthy, with forty-one articles and three abstracts along with a wealth
of photographs (most in color), charts, graphs, and maps. All the articles address
Eastern European subjects that are not widely known in the West. That said, they help
broaden the reader’s knowledge of medieval dyes and the industry.
Each of the book’s six sections encompasses a different aspect of dye or dye anal-
ysis. The articles in all but one of the sections (“The 18th and 19th Centuries and the
185
 Recent Books of Interest

Rise of Synthetic Dyes”) mostly remain within the medieval period, although several
articles throughout the book migrate beyond it. For example, in the section titled
“Dyes and Dyeing in Classical and Medieval Times,” the very first article investigates
purple paint on walls in the Late Bronze Age—an interesting read, just not within
the medieval period. The other eight articles in this section, as well as the following
section (“The 15th to the 17th Century”), which consists of eleven articles mostly
relating to the Middle Ages, will be compelling to the student of medieval dyes and
dye scientists working in this period.
One article in particular, “Dyes in Some Textiles from the Romanian Medieval
Art Gallery,” by Irina Petroviciu, Jan Wouters, Ina Vanden Berghe, and Ileana Cretu,
starts with an interesting theory that religious embroidery was done in Romania, but
brocades and ceremonial costumes were made in western Europe (probably Venice).
The article’s multiple color photographs, statistics, and graphs make for a complete
and engaging read on dyes used in medieval Eastern Europe.
Being that this book was published in 2017, the downside is that the research was
done and the articles were written as early as 2003 and no later than 2007. Much of
the research used approaches that were cutting-edge in their time but are possibly no
longer relevant, as new scientific techniques have been developed since then.
Still, this book is a fascinating collection of well-written and well-researched
articles, diverse enough that it should warrant interest from both scientific and non-
scientific dye enthusiasts alike. — Jennifer Ratcliffe, Clearwater, Florida

Dress and Personal Appearance in Late Antiquity: The Clothing of the Middle and
Lower Classes, by Faith Pennick Morgan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2018). ISBN
978-9004343955. 243 pages, 209 illustrations (169 in color).
Late Antiquity, broadly the period from the fourth to the eighth century, was until
comparatively recently shunned by classical scholars and many medievalists alike. From
the standpoint of the textile historian, on the other hand, the wealth of the surviving
archaeological evidence—particularly the complete garments from cemeteries of that
period in Egypt—and the iconographic and written sources that throw light on them
are immensely attractive. The University of Kent’s Leverhulme project on Visualising
the Late Antique City offers an appropriate context for the present volume.
Dress and Personal Appearance is in effect an amalgam of three independent
studies—on the apotropaic meanings embodied in the decoration of Late Antique
tunics, the life of clothes (repair, reuse, recycling), and the insights to be gained from
replicating and wearing specific extant garments—set in a broader matrix under an
umbrella title. Each study offers a new and original approach based on thorough
exploration of the sources. The multiple appendices, revealing the book’s origin as a
thesis, are extremely valuable tools in their own right: The catalogue of 187 selected
tunics in museum collections, for example, is the product of extensive fieldwork. There
is a wide spectrum of relevant illustration.
Criticism may be directed to minor points in the discussion and significant
omissions from the bibliography (some works are cited, but were not apparently

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read). Several obvious questions, such as the chronology of the introduction of flared
tunics with gores and the lengthening over time of male dress, are not raised. Written
sources are quoted only in translation, which glosses over some of the real difficulties
of interpretation.
Why should a medievalist consult this book? The ways in which power and
status were displayed in medieval costume owes much to the form and decoration of
Late Antique clothing; in a parallel sphere, the Christian church ensured a very long
life for the dalmatic, pallium, and casula. Early Church fathers preached against the
wearing of apotropaic (i.e., pagan) symbols, yet the practice persisted—but for how
long? Careful husbanding of apparel through repair and reuse—and in many cases
resale—is a well-attested phenomenon in medieval Europe, as well as in the Roman
Empire. There is a great deal of food for thought in this work, and in its striking im-
ages. Brill’s defensive pricing, however, may limit the circulation which it manifestly
deserves. — John Peter Wild, University of Manchester

Dress and Society: Contributions from Archaeology, edited by Toby F. Martin and
Rosie Weetch (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017). ISBN 978-1785703157. 184 pages, 37
black-and-white illustrations.
Inspired by interdisciplinary dialogue at conferences about dress and social
identity, this book contains eight papers demonstrating current approaches to dress
in archaeology. In a deliberate reaction to typological/chronological study of metal
dress accessories and archaeology as a means to reconstruction, the editors emphasise
an approach which prioritises archaeological dress finds as markers of social identity
and their interaction with the body. I would point out that typological/chronological
studies enable us to make societal observations about the constructions of grave de-
posits, marking, for example, ethnic allegiances and recognising that heirlooms as well
as newer items may make up the created “image” of the dead person; and that we have
by no means exhausted the topic of reconstruction, as any furnished grave found at
any time can change our perceptions. It was disappointing that the editors mentioned
only “two academic journals” for dress history (Costume and Textile History), ignoring
our own, which has published numerous articles using archaeological evidence.
Several chapters concern material within or close to the medieval period. Tatiana
Ivleva’s essay on first- to third-century Roman brooches accepts that brooches are
“indicative of … identities, such as gender, status, age, social status, and ethnicity”
but also considers the messages brooches may have sent out to observers, the objects’
acquisition of their own histories, and changes of association as artefacts were removed
from their original context. Stephanie Hoss examines the Roman military belt, a visual
and audible sign of status which affected the posture of the wearer and which went
through fashion changes as soldiers relocated or were killed (their bodies pillaged and
their equipment lost) so that new recruits had to be equipped afresh. Alexandra Knox’s
study of “Middle Anglo-Saxon Dress Accessories in Life and Death” considers items
collected by the Anglo-Saxons as amulets or heirlooms and includes a plea for attention
to the cultural value of dress accessories from settlement sites. Eleanor Standley (“‘Best’

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Gowns, Kerchiefs and Pantofles; Gifts of Apparel in the North-east of England in the
Sixteenth Century”) focuses more on textiles and garments than the other authors do,
summarising the limited archaeological evidence and comparing the evidence from
wills and inventories. Natasha Awais-Dean (“Redressing the Balance: Dress Accessories
of the Non-elites in Early Modern England”) considers surviving examples of these
easily lost artefacts, particularly men’s hat ornaments and buttons. Stuart Campbell
also looks at non-elite dress accessories, questioning assumptions about the annular
“highland” brooches viewed as characteristic of early modern Scotland.
The book’s front cover illustration is challenging: a colour plate from an 1815
historical costume book. It is a matter of individual taste whether the potential reader
is intrigued or repelled by it. If the latter (and I was among them), remember the old
saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” — G. R. O-C.

The Medieval Clothier, by John S. Lee (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2018). ISBN 978-
1783273171. 393 pages, 36 illustrations (10 in color).
It is surprising that we have had to wait so long for someone to tackle the cloth-
iers, since they transformed English clothmaking in the later fifteenth century, but it
was worth the wait. John Lee has soaked up all the relevant literature, plus added his
own discoveries from wills, chancery documents, and regional archives, to produce
a readable, thorough, and wide-ranging survey. It is written for the general reader,
while providing much of interest to professional historians.
The introduction and first two chapters cover the period leading up to the great
expansion in the mid-fifteenth century and background on cloth manufacture and
sale. The other four chapters deal in turn with regional development, government and
regulation, clothiers’ place in society, and biographies of famous clothiers. The illus-
trations are excellent, and the appendices, particularly one on small-town production,
are very helpful. I found the analysis of marketing cloth to be outstanding.
The following faint criticisms are therefore ones of emphasis and perspective and
do not detract from Lee’s considerable scholarship or the valued contribution he makes
to his subject. The title is a little misleading, since the book concentrates on the period
1450 to 1550; clothiers were most influential in the early sixteenth century, and (as the
author cogently argues) their capitalist and entrepreneurial tendencies are distinctly
modern rather than medieval in character. The definition of the clothier as “involved
in both the making and marketing of woollen cloth” is incomplete, even though this
is the type the author emphasises. Leading clothiers who made and marketed cloth
were by far the most influential, but there were also those who made cloth and sold it
to others who marketed it, and those who assembled large amounts of cheaper cloths
that they may have had dyed and finished before they sold them. These were all con-
sidered clothiers in the sixteenth century.
There is only one chapter, “Identifying Clothiers,” and some concluding remarks
that cover clothiers’ economic achievements during the key century 1450–1550 and, if
anything, the author understates their accomplishments. He sees the clothier emerg-
ing in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and there is an impression of

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inevitable and steady progression from that point forwards. But there was a critical
juncture during the mid-fifteenth century when Antwerp’s merchants and cloth finish-
ers must have made it clear that they wanted a standard-quality unfinished broadcloth
that would undercut Flemish cloth at Bruges. It was this strategic refocus that forced
English clothiers to reconfigure their operations and control the total production
system. The leading clothiers’ greatest achievement therefore was to standardise and
industrialise the making of Tudor broadcloth. The low cost of labour was a factor,
but more importantly it was a question of capital and organisation, which the author
acknowledges. It was no mean accomplishment for clothiers to maintain exacting
standards with little regulation other than for size and marking of cloths. — John
Oldland, Bishop’s University

Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction, and Ethnicity in Early Modern
Iberia, by Javier Irigoyen-García (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). ISBN
978-1487501600. 321 pages, 19 black-and-white illustrations.
The innovation presented in this book is an analysis centred on Moorish clothing
in early modern Iberia, but with a scope much broader than the Moriscos themselves.
In fact, sartorial Moorishness imbued Christian aristocracy and had a clear ceremonial
value. In this sense Part I (chapters 1 to 4) is devoted to the Christian reality and Part
II (chapters 5 to 8) to that of the Moriscos.
Moorish garments were part of aristocratic ceremonial clothing until the beginning
of the sixteenth century. Beyond that, probably because of fashion transformation in
Europe, they disappeared from aristocratic men’s daily wardrobes and were instead
relegated to ceremonial equestrian performances known as the “game of canes.” Every
aspect of these games’ organization was permeated by the evocation of Moorishness,
including its costume: leather boots, a Moorish tunic, a hooded cape, a turban, and
a leather shield. For Iberian kings, the game was central to their display of power,
and, as such, was promoted by every monarch from the sixteenth century till Philip
IV (1621–65), whose reign marks its slow decline. Participants’ involvement in these
games, dressed as Moors, was a mark of aristocracy; for municipal elites, this was even
a rite of passage to nobility.
If dressing as a Moor was a distinction between commoners and elites and a locus
for negotiating nobility, this affected only Old Christians and the Grenadian aristocracy,
well integrated in the Spanish court. Paradoxically, Moriscos didn’t dress like Moors.
In daily life, the author states, they displayed no garment differences in early modern
Iberia. Laws prohibiting Moriscos from wearing vestidos de moros [garments of Moors],
such as Phillip II’s 1567 decree, intersected with general sumptuary laws, regulating the
use of luxurious textiles across class lines. At the beginning of the sixteenth century,
some specific garments could distinguish some subgroups, particularly among women.
Still, only on such occasions as dance and music performances or martial exhibitions
were Moriscos asked to perform a certain specific form of Moorishness. In fact, the
idea of distinctive Moorish clothing was consolidated in the Iberian imaginary only
gradually and after their expulsion (1609–14). Imagining the Moriscos as differently

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dressed bodies presented an ethnoreligious identity through sartorial difference that

did not really exist.
The book is well supported by a solid theoretical apparatus, primary sources, and
a vast bibliography. Some doubts arise about the Moriscos of Granada, whose cultur-
al features were quite different from those of their Iberian counterparts—an aspect
which is not sufficiently emphasised in this work, as well as the fact that perhaps the
laws against Moorish garments were particularly addressed to them. Nevertheless,
this well-written book undoubtedly constitutes an essential work on clothing and
identity. — Filomena Barros, University of Évora

MS.8932: A Medieval Embroidered Folded Almanac, by Jacqui Carey (Ottery St.

Mary, Devon, UK: Carey Company, 2018). ISBN 978-1527216198. 176 pages, 293
illustrations (288 in color).
Jacqui Carey’s MS.8932: A Medieval Embroidered Folded Almanac amply demon-
strates the importance of studying medieval cultural objects specifically for their
materiality. In this lushly illustrated book, Carey discusses the history of one of the
earliest surviving examples of this type of folding almanac—MS 8932 in the Wellcome
Collection, London—within the context of such books and their use and visual rep-
resentation, and then delves deeply into its construction, focusing particularly on the
embroidery of the cover. Through her detailed examination and diagramming of the
elaborately layered embroidery structures, Carey clearly shows that the almanac cover
exhibits well-developed techniques produced by a skilled hand. Such skill speaks to
complexities of construction, the many different techniques and specialists involved
in the making of medieval objects, and the time it took to make them. Carey does not
present this skill as a new research revelation, but rather a continuing reinforcement
and specific example of the material richness of medieval textile objects.
The book is divided into several sections that make it easy to parse, whether the
reader is most interested in the history of this particular manuscript or the construc-
tion techniques. As Carey’s textile background and personal interest lie primarily with
small band, cord, and, most recently, sixteenth-century embroidery, she spends the
bulk of the book describing the dense cover decoration with thorough explanations
and many step-by-step illustrations. For the reader who is interested in learning the
complex embroidery techniques used on the almanac cover, this book is a gold mine
of detailed information and clear visual aids. For those less interested in the exact types
of stitches used, Carey’s careful analysis and meticulous reconstructions point to the
labor and expertise that were involved in creating the cover for the manuscript’s text,
calendar, and astronomical charts.
Carey’s object-based research is quite important in furthering our understand-
ing of fifteenth-century English almanacs. The text of MS 8932 can be transcribed,
photographed, photocopied, and digitized without losing the meaning. Such copies
can be studied by multiple scholars simultaneously. However, photographs of the
bindings and especially the cover do not offer enough detail, as the layers of stitches
obscure each other and the anchoring substrate. It is only by examining the object

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as a physical object (three-dimensional, flexible, and layered) that the researcher can
truly understand the skill and materials used in its making. Carey’s own skill and deep
understanding of cords and embroidery make her reconstruction that much more
compelling. — Carla Tilghman, University of Kansas, Lawrence

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

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

Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence: Wool, Silk, Painting, edited by ­Cecilie
Hollberg (Florence: Giunti, 2017). ISBN 978-8809865150. 288 pages, 136 color illus-
trations.
It should be said at the outset that this is a beautiful book: lavishly illustrated pages
between cloth covers printed to replicate the drapery behind the seated figure of St.
Martin in Lorenzo di Bicci’s Saint Martin Enthroned between Two Angels (1380–90).

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This is the catalog that accompanied the exhibition of the same name at Florence’s
Accademia Gallery.
The book begins with a series of essays that address such topics as the movement of
silk in Italy and the Mediterranean in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, the F
­ lorentine
economy, decorated textiles depicted in Florentine painting, Florentine textile man-
ufacture—both wool and silk—and silk garments. The essays are relatively brief, but
consistently readable and informative, with contributors from Germany and Israel as
well as Italy—the always reliable Roberta Orsi Landini among them.
“Tortoises, Phoenixes, and Parrots: Decorated Fabrics in Florentine Painting of
the 14th Century” by Juliane von Fircks is particularly engaging. The author traces
the depiction of rich textiles in artwork of the period, textiles that would have been
immediately recognizable to the viewer “in the clothing of the noble personages, in
the textile furnishings in city buildings and sacred spaces, or in the vestments of the
priest who celebrated Mass in front of the painted altarpiece.” She documents the ways
in which the changing tastes of consumers were reflected in artwork of the period
and examines a number of fabrics as they are depicted in the garments of saints and
other religious figures.
The essays are followed by a catalog of the works broken down by the sections of
the exhibition, among them Mediterranean Geometric Patterns, Luxury from Asia,
Winged Creatures, and Forbidden Luxury. Aside from the expected textile panels,
included are such diverse objects as a shield bearing the coat of arms of the Arte della
Lana, the Florentine wool guild; business documents, ledgers, and letters; paintings
and manuscripts; and a few garments (including the almost legendary pourpoint of
Charles de Blois).
More careful copyediting might have corrected a few errors, such as a detail of a
painting correctly identified as by Nardo di Cione in the text but credited to Bernardo
Daddi in the caption. There appear also to be minor errors in the translation from
Italian to English, but they in no way undermine the value of the work here.
The book ends with a glossary of terms used for fabrics and clothing, which lists
“both historical Italian and modern English terms … followed by the correspondent
Italian term,” an invaluable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike. — Tawny
Sherrill, California State University, Long Beach

Tricks of the Medieval Trades: The Trinity Encyclopedia: A Collection of

­Fourteenth-Century English Craft Recipes, by Mark Clarke (London: Archetype,
2018). ISBN 978-1909492653. 132 pages, 15 black-and-white illustrations.
Tricks of the Medieval Trades contains a transcription, discussion, and analysis
of two copies of a fourteenth-century manuscript of various craft recipes. Within its
pages are explanations for how to make such pigments as white lead, red lead, azure,
and verdigris; how to dye fabrics and leather in various colors; how to make parch-
ment and chamois; how to counterfeit pearls, coral, and amber; how to make black
and white soap; and finally, a selection of recipes for confits and other confectionary.

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This is one of several examples of such a collection of recipes. Other examples

of this genre, known colloquially as commonplace books, miscellanies, or “books of
secrets,” cover similar ground. There are a few aspects of this publication that make
it stand out, however.
The first is the depth of knowledge that Mark Clarke brings to the subject matter.
In particular, one of his other books, The Crafte of Lymmyng and the Maner of S­ teynyng,
is a monumental collection of all known Middle English technical instructions of this
kind, numbering over 1,500 recipes. As a result, his analysis and discussion of this
previously untranscribed manuscript convey a familiarity with the topic that adds
significantly to the text itself. It also allows him to add explanatory annotations to
unclear passages based on knowledge gained from other writings of the time.
The other unusual aspect of this work is the level of detail in the various recipes,
in many cases clearly the result of personal experience. There are many recipes extant
describing how to make lead pigment, but the one in the Trinity Encyclopedia goes into
detail about exactly how to perform each step, which equipment to use, and what the
temperature should be at each stage. A recipe for dyeing a leather skin red mentions
turning the edges of the leather inward when sewing it into a bag to help prevent
leaks when the dye is poured into it. Some recipes contain addenda along the lines of
“this is what the recipe says, but if I were doing this, I would do it this different way.”
The Trinity Encyclopedia manuscript focuses primarily on recipes useful to paint-
ers and limners. Of the seventy recipes in this book, textile-related content is limited
to six recipes for processing and dyeing leather, two for dyeing textiles, and four for
making soap. The quality of these recipes, however, is solidly above that usually found
in medieval recipe collections, and the book is worth reading for those interested
in learning more about the details of medieval crafts, as well as those interested in
attempting to recreate them. — Drea Leed, Springfield, Virginia

The Velvets in the Collection of the Costume Gallery in Florence / I Velluti nella
Collezione della Galleria del Costume di Firenze, by Roberta Orsi Landini (Florence:
Edizioni Polistampa, 2017). ISBN 978-8856403350. 328 pages, 433 color illustrations.
In this lavishly illustrated, bilingual volume, Roberta Orsi Landini presents a study
of Italian velvets based on the collection of the Costume Gallery of the Pitti Palace in
Florence. The introductory chapters address velvet production in Italy, beginning with
an explanation of the process of velvet weaving, followed by detailed descriptions of
various weave structures, accompanied by clear illustrations, allowing the reader to
grasp the highly technical discussions that follow. (At the end of the volume, further
practical information is given in tables and weave diagrams.) Separate chapters consider
the difficult question of attributing velvets to the most important centres of production
(Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Venice, and Milan). These offer new insights through detailed
comparisons between the extant velvets and legislation promulgated by the silk guilds,
with invaluable illustrations of many different selvedge types. Only the unqualified
use of kermes to denote all of the crimson insect dyes in the velvets could have been
addressed more accurately with reference to the work of Dominique Cardon.

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

ALSO PUBLISHED

Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western
Europe, by Elizabeth Coatsworth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
ISBN 978-9004288706.

A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, general editor, Susan J. Vincent (London:
Bloomsbury, 2017). ISBN 978-1472557490. 6 vols., notably including vol. 1: In Antiq-
uity, edited by Mary Harlow; vol. 2: In the Medieval Age, edited by Sarah-Grace Heller;
vol. 3: In the Renaissance, edited by Elizabeth Currie.

L’Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux: Naissance, Composition et Style d’un

Chef-d’œuvre Médiéval, edited by Sylvette Lemagnen, Shirley Ann Brown, and Gale
Owen-Crocker in collaboration with Cécile Binet, Pierre Bouet, and François Neveux,
with editorial coordination by Clémentine Berthelot (Rouen: Point de Vues, 2018).

195
 Contents of Previous Volumes

Vol. 1 (2005)

Elizabeth Coatsworth Stitches in Time: Establishing a History of Anglo-­Saxon

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

Vol. 2 (2006)

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

Drea Leed “Ye Shall Have It Cleane”: Textile Cleaning Techniques

  in Renaissance Europe
Tawny Sherrill Fleas, Fur, and Fashion: Zibellini as Luxury Accessories
  of the Renaissance
Danielle Nunn-Weinberg The Matron Goes to the Masque: The Dual Identity of
  the English Embroidered Jacket

Vol. 3 (2007)

Elizabeth Coatsworth Cushioning Medieval Life: Domestic Textiles in Anglo-

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

Vol. 4 (2008)

Heidi M. Sherman From Flax to Linen in the Medieval Rus Lands

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

Camilla Luise Dahl and The Cap of St. Birgitta

Isis Sturtewagen
Robin Netherton The View from Herjolfsnes: Greenland’s Translation of
  the European Fitted Fashion
John Block Friedman The Art of the Exotic: Robinet Testard’s Turbans and
  Turban-like Coiffure
Lisa Evans “The Same Counterpoincte Beinge Olde and Worene”:
  The Mystery of Henry VIII’s Green Quilt

Vol. 5 (2009)

Kate D’Ettore Clothing and Conflict in the Icelandic Family Sagas:

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

Vol. 6 (2010)

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

Kate Kelsey Staples Fripperers and the Used Clothing Trade in Late
  Medieval London
Charlotte A. Stanford Donations from the Body for the Soul: Apparel,
  Devotion, and Status in Late Medieval Strasbourg

Vol. 7 (2011)

Benjamin L. Wild The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of

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

Vol. 8 (2012)

Brigitte Haas-Gebhard The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials

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

Vol. 9 (2013)

Antonietta Amati Canta Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari

Lucia Sinisi The Marriage of the Year (1028)
 Contents of Previous Volumes

Mark Zumbuhl Clothing as Currency in Pre-Norman Ireland?

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

Vol. 10 (2014)

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

Vol. 11 (2015)

Ingvild Øye Production, Quality, and Social Status in Viking Age

  Dress: Three Cases from Western Norway
Karen Nicholson The Effect of Spindle Whorl Design on Wool Thread
  Production: A Practical Experiment Based on
  Examples from Eighth-Century Denmark
Tina Anderlini The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis
Sarah-Grace Heller Angevin-Sicilian Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s:
  Fashion in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean
Cordelia Warr The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in
  the Camposanto Last Judgment
 Contents of Previous Volumes

Emily J. Rozier “Transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of ”:

  Manipulated Masculinity in the Galaunt Tradition
Susan Powell Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Lady
  Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Mother of King
  Henry VII
Anna Riehl Bertolet “Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female
  Bonding in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Vol. 12 (2016)

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

Vol. 13 (2017)

Gale R. Owen-Crocker The Significance of Dress in the Bayeux Tapestry

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

Vol. 14 (2018)

Olga Magoula Multicultural Clothing in Sixth-Century Ravenna

Anne Hedeager Krag Byzantine and Oriental Silks in Denmark, 800–1200
Monica L. Wright The Bliaut: An Examination of the Evidence in French
  Literary Sources
John Block Friedman Eyebrows, Hairlines, and “Hairs Less in Sight”: Female
  Depilation in Late Medieval Europe
Megan Tiddeman Lexical Exchange with Italian in the Textile and Wool
  Trades in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries
Karen Margrethe Hidden in Plain Black: The Secrets of the French Hood
Høskuldsson
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Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15

MEDIEVAL

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Contents CLOTHING
GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER Old Rags, New Responses:
Medieval Dress and Textiles
MAREN CLEGG HYER Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures
AND
of Anglo-Saxon England
ELIZABETH M. SWEDO Unfolding Identities:The Intertextual Roles of Clothing
in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga
TEXTILES
HUGH M. THOMAS Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John
of England, 1199–1216
TINA ANDERLINI Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use
in Western Medieval Europe
ALEJANDRA CONCHA SAHLI Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire,
and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders
JOANNE W. ANDERSON The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels:
Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art

MONICA [Link] is Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the University

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

Cover image: Detail of cope in opus ciprense (end of the thirteenth century; Museo della
Cattedrale, Anagni). Photo: Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma. & Owen-Crocker
Editors Wright, Netherton

• 15•
Edited by
Monica L. Wright, Robin Netherton
and Gale R. Owen-Crocker