Modest Medieval
‘There’s never a new fashion but it’s old.’
Geoffrey Chaucer
’Clothes maketh the man’, or so the saying goes, and the High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1200) is generally accepted as the time when clothing first began to evolve into what we think of today as fashion. It was no longer the purpose of fabrics solely to cover nakedness, as it was for our Stone Age and Dark Age cousins. With technology fronting changes such as the spinning wheel, which replaced the hand-held distaff, and the horizontal loom which simplified textile production, clothing became a conscious choice of cut of shape and so style became a deliberate symbol of status. How we dressed became a means of differentiating between social classes and prompted displays of individualism. But to those in powerful places, individualism was divisive and could lead to social and civil unrest. Constantly afraid of ‘self-expression’ and ‘individuality’, the Church thought it could cure the people of the sins of vanity, greed and licentiousness by regulating who was allowed to wear what, where, when and how. It was not always easy in the face of new colours and fabrics being brought back from the crusades but with rules and punishments for those that transgressed, some modicum of order was achieved.
So with the advent of ‘fashion’ came inevitable clothing censorship, and for centuries to come laws would try to contain it while men and women would go to outrageous lengths to re-invent it. Not wanting to be left out, the Church would try – and in many respects succeed – in taking control of it. With the overriding impression of Middle-Age clothing being one of modesty, it is fair to say that women especially were never again to experience quite such pressure to be ‘overdressed’ from neck to toe until the Victorian age. In both eras, it was modesty by Church decree!
With only a minimum of flesh allowed to be on display, the medieval woman turned her attention to exactly how she could individualise her costume. Dressing from the inside out first, she would have worn ‘brais’, a medieval form of underwear consisting of a pair of separate loose stockings or hose fastened at the waist by a cord. These were made of linen and more often than not of different colours. The first full-length garment was then the shift or chemise, again made of linen covered over by a gown usually of wool called a kirtle or a cotehardie. Laces proved to be a medieval girl’s best friend, as once threaded and pulled they contoured otherwise shapeless gowns into a showcase for the curves of breast, hip and thigh. Buttons (stemming from the French bouton for bud or bouter to push) were available but usually only to adorn clothing, and it would be a long time before the humble button would reach its indispensable usefulness and the overriding reason for this was its counterpart the ‘buttonhole’. A necessary ‘opening’, it was vehemently frowned upon as flesh, no matter how small a glimpse, could be seen through it when a button was used.
A noblewoman of the fourteenth century wearing a variation of the cotehardie, the scandalous side-less surcote. This garment was condemned by the Church as the curve of a woman’s waist could be seen within and so it was considered a temptation. It was referred to as ‘Hell’s Windows’. (Author’s collection)
Should our medieval lady have had the money to alternate her outer garments then she may also have chosen to fly in the face of the Church and don the abominable side-less surcoat, possibly the most scandalous piece of clothing at the time. A variation of the cotehardie, it was wickedly open at the sides from shoulder to hip. Introduced late in the thirteenth century, this style became popular by the second half of the fourteenth century, its deep armholes allowing men to feast their eyes on the shape of a woman’s body beneath. Such an indecent invitation was deemed so immoral in the eyes of the Church that clergy dubbed the garment ‘Hell’s Windows’ and condemned it from the pulpit.
Equally condemned from on high was a woman’s headwear, hats at this time being universally worn. Pulling off anyone’s hat was considered a crime, while forcibly removing a woman’s headdress was to accuse her of being a harlot. Depending on one’s rank, occupation and the time of the year, hats could vary from linen head-warmers, straw or felt hats, mesh coifs, ‘sallet’ helmets (from which it is alleged we get the word ‘salute’ due to the hand movement required to raise the visor on a helmet to expose one’s face and so affirm your identity) to mitres and crowns. The most recognisable headwear of the Middle Ages was large, ornate, sculptured and extremely high.
Between 1430 and 1440 width was the object of hat fashion but later in the century it was height. The most characteristic of this high fashion in headwear was the cornet or steeple, which rose to unique heights from the head. Originally a Continental style, the hennin originated in Burgundy and became one of the most distinctive forms of headwear worn in human history. Beginning simply as a stiff cone with the wide end sat on the crown of the head, the point jutted up and slightly back. Over time the cone got longer and longer, reaching upwards of 4ft, and keeping the steeple headdress on the head was no easy matter. At first it was pinned to a simple cloth cap that tied beneath the chin. But as the steeples grew taller, women developed more substantial under-caps with sturdy anchors. It has even been suggested in some texts that women resorted to glue, though this is unlikely, especially in England where a truncated form of the hennin was favoured over the dizzy heights of its Continental counterpart. To add to this ever upward illusion it became fashionable to show no hair beneath the steeple headdress, so women plucked their hair up to the line of the headdress.
A fantastical variation on this theme was the ‘ram’s horn’ headdress, its name deriving from the two sculpted ‘horns’ that stuck out from either side of the temple. Again, these curved cones were constructed of wire mesh that was secured to a snug-fitting skullcap. Thin, gauzy veils could be hung from the ends or were draped between the horns, or they could be adorned with small ornaments. First seen in the late 1300s, they soon went out of fashion but both the ram’s horn and steeple headdresses were still known as hennins.
These hennins, along with the other outrageous horned headdresses favoured by ladies, were the subject of much abuse from clerics and moralists. Pierre de Gros, a Franciscan theologian, in his treatise on theology, law and history, Le Jardin des Nobles, written in 1464, complained that ‘the younger and more beautiful the ladies were, the higher were the chimneys that they carried!’. It was also a favourite pastime to demonise the fashion with one artist using the hennin to symbolise evil in his particular portrayal of the age-old subject of the Temptaion of St Anthony. The hennin, to his mind being both alluring and sinful, was worn by the temptress in his adaptation of the theme, the wearing of a steeple hat and trailing veil initially suggesting nothing out of the ordinary. It is only when we discover that her feet have been drawn as tallons that it is clear the charming woman is really the Devil in disguise.
Ridicule did not stop at paintings and sculpture. Thomas Conecte apparently went as far as mounting a one-man crusade against what he considered a most extravagant headdress. A native of Brittany and a friar of the Carmelite order, he was well known and celebrated through parts of Flanders – modern-day Belgium – for his preachings. As his reputation proceeded him, when it was known he was about to visit a town the local inhabitants made provisions for him in their finest squares and erected large platforms complete with an altar. Here, beneath decorations of rich cloths and tapestries, he would say mass, attended by some monks of his order as well as his disciples, who had followed him on foot while he himself rode a small mule. A man who abhorred corruption, Thomas’s sermons would blame the vices and sins of the individual, and more especially those of the clergy who publicly kept mistresses, on humanity’s failure to uphold vows of chastity either to God or within a marriage contract. Similarly, he blamed all ladies, noble or otherwise, ‘who dressed their heads in so ridiculous a manner’ and who wasted money on the luxuries of apparel. He was so vehement in his speeches that women dared not appear at his sermons in anything that would incite his condemnation, or cause him to ‘excite little boys to torment and plague them’, giving the lads as reward ‘certain days of pardon’ from their sins for carrying out his orders. Thomas found this arrangement quite satisfactory and ordered the boys to shout after such women, ‘Au hennin, Au hennin!’ while they chased them down the street in an attempt to pull the offending headdresses from their heads. In such instances ladies were forced to seek any place of shelter available, as it was usual for undignified scuffles to ensue between those in pursuit and the servants and defenders of the ladies.
Christina of Pisa, born 1363, wears the horned headdress known as a divided hennin. From the Court Magazine, 1840. (Author’s collection)
As a result of Thomas Conecte’s abuse of noble ladies with high headdresses, many females refused to attend his sermons altogether, or if they did, to escape his attention, they wore the low caps of peasant women or nuns. But this reform was shortlived, for just as a snail draws in its horns when anyone passes by, once the vitriolic preacher had moved on to tyrannise another town his doctrines were forgotten and the colossal headdresses came out once again. This proved if little else that there is nothing like public ridicule to inspire change, even if it is only temporary!
Hennins varied in shape and size, as seen in this Woodcut Au Hennin Female Head-Dresses Fifteenth Century Midieval France from 1877. (Author’s collection)
On the other hand, the wimple, also spelled ‘whimple’, was a completely different story. Coming from a word meaning ‘to flow in wavelets’, it was a very modest head covering for women from as early as AD 500. It continued to be a mainstay of women’s fashion up until the 1500s as it was customary for married women to cover their hair as a sign of modesty. Consisting of a length of soft cloth wrapped around the throat, it passed under the chin from one side of the head to the other and was pinned to the hair under a ‘couvrechef’, which covered the top of the head and flowed down over the shoulders. The wimple and veil combination was an excellent headdress for displaying respectability, and was greatly favoured by the Church since it covered everything except a woman’s face and especially a woman’s ears. Strange though it may seem, there was a train of thought at the time that believed that the Virgin Mary conceived the Christ child Jesus through her ears. No wonder the Church was worried. The wimple is still today the most recognised part of a nun’s habit and still covers the ears. The wimple also covered the hair. Just as in Roman times, hair was a symbol of both status and sex and as the thickness and condition alluded to a woman’s fertility, such a temptation was to be omitted from the view of all men except the husband or father of the woman in question. It was also useful for a woman to keep less than clean hair out of the way as open fires and general day-to-day town smells were not easily washed from hair that was often over 3ft long!
Of course, nuns had their hair shorn as a symbol of their renunciation of all worldly temptation and their fertility. Monks also had their hair cut and were clean-shaven as a symbol of servant-hood, and slavery, albeit slaves of Christ. The nun’s habit totally covered the body, de-sexualising the woman underneath, but was not necessarily black, as we have come to believe. In medieval strict Orders women wore totally undyed woollen garments to proclaim their poverty and so their clothing would be a greyish white, sometimes even brown. Particularly devout orders would require a hair shirt to be worn underneath everything else.
The ordinary medieval woman was, however, a far more colourful character, literally. Even the humble peasant had colourful clothing. Dyes were common and came from different sources, some more expensive than others. By utilising plants, roots, lichen, tree bark, nuts, crushed insects, molluscs and iron oxide almost every colour of the rainbow could be achieved. New and exciting colours appeared in England by way of the crusades, such as carmine and lilac, as well as fabrics such as muslin, cotton, satin and damask.
Although blue woad had been daubed upon the faces and bodies of Dark Age warriors centuries before, the blue adopted by medieval French kings was indigo, made available to Europe by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama who discovered a sea route to India in the fifteenth century. Importers could now avoid the heavy duties imposed by Greek and Persian middlemen and the lengthy and dangerous land routes which had previously been used. There were no gender assigned medieval colours, no pink for feminine or blue for masculine. It was in fact the reverse. Blue was associated with the Virgin Mary and conveyed gentleness. It was considered a weak colour in comparison to pink as pink came from red and red was the embodiment of power, passion, wealth and blood. White stood for purity, but was not worn by brides – whatever their station, people were simply married in the very best clothing they owned.
As with all fashion down the centuries, clothing had the power to communicate; the power to express, wealth, rank and power. Fabrics embodied social class. Perhaps more than male dress, female attire in the Middle Ages definitely indicated a woman’s social status, and morality. In an effort to distinguish the honourable women from the prostitutes specific sumptuary laws were enforced.
While it was not required by law for medieval prostitutes to emulate their ancient Greek and Roman sisters by dressing deliberately seductively in short, flame-coloured togas, applying copious amounts of make-up, wearing sandals that spelled out ‘follow – me’ in the sand (earning them the name ‘street walker’) and dyeing their hair yellow to differentiate themselves from respectable women, yellow was a colour effectively assigned them. There is a theory that this directly mirrored the colour assigned to medieval Jews who were also viewed with suspicion and considered outcasts from medieval society.
To be specific, different places had different costume restrictions with Hamburg in Germany, for example, making its prostitutes wear red hats with enormous red wings at each side so they were easier to locate. In Austria it was a yellow cloth under their arm and in Switzerland a hat with yellow balls on it. Unlike her Roman sister, the medieval prostitute could not rise through the ranks to become a great courtesan and as such was restricted from wearing any type of luxury fabrics at all.
Fur was an interesting item of clothing in its own right. Once used mainly for warmth it was now principally for decoration and was possibly the foremost fabric that denoted status. Strict rules were designed to protect the hierarchy of those who were entitled to wear it. Sumptuary laws of 1337 first restricted the wearing of furs, with legislation of 1363 decreeing that women were, in general, to be dressed according to the position of their fathers or husbands. Sable, vair or squirrel fur, ermine, and miniver, the un-spotted white fur derived from the stoat, was to be confined to the ladies of knights with a rental above 200 marks a year. Going down the social scale things did not improve. Yeomen’s wives were not to wear silk veils, while the wife or daughter of a knight-bachelor was not allowed velvet and females in the family of a labourer were not to wear clothes beyond a certain price or ‘girdles garnished with silver’. Peasants were warned they should never wear more than one colour at once, except, perhaps, a different coloured hood for special occasions.
Whatever solitary colour a peasant was allowed to wear at any one time, dyed fabric faded quickly if not mixed with a mordant or fixing agent. The best and easiest to access was human urine, a substance collected daily for the purpose of fulling and dyeing cloth. Urine was best stale and so was left for a couple of weeks to decompose after which it produced a powerful ammonia which was used to remove the grease from fabrics and fix colours. Medieval craftsmen had recipe books for making dyes, some of the information having been passed down in Latin from ancient times, but many women would have some knowledge of basic dyes and would collect the family’s morning urine – which was most effective – and store it until needed to help dye the wool.
Eastern England especially grew rich on the back of the country’s wool. Notorious for its lack of naturally occurring stone, building materials were able to be bought in with wool proceeds to enable churches to be built to cathedral proportions with celestial vaulted roofs and flying buttresses. Wool was such a significant source of income to the English Crown in 1275 that the first ever export tax was imposed on its shipment abroad. It was called the ‘Great Custom’ and to ignore it was at one time punishable by the cutting off of a hand. Wool also originated the label ‘spinster’ from ‘spin’ as women made most of the clothes. The importance of wool to the English economy is still evident today as the presiding officer of the House of Lords sits upon an official chair stuffed with wool known as the ‘Woolsack’.
Although most domestic clothes making was done from start to finish at home by females, surprisingly there was ready-made clothing available. At special times of the year clothing might be given to the poor by the wealthy as part of celebrations or as gifts from the Church or wealthy patrons who engaged in such acts both out of charity and for the sakes of their souls. A peasant woman who worked for a well-off family in town could expect to receive a new gown as part of her yearly upkeep. Not only was this a form of charity on the part of the employer, it also ensured that the staff they employed were reasonably dressed and fit to be seen as part of their retinue.
A townswoman had the choice of making her own well-fitting clothes or purchasing some items form a mercer, such as basic shifts, while making and decorating her outer garments herself. Mercers’ shops also sold accessories, like gloves, caps, socks and hose. She could employ a tailor to make her an outfit or buy second-hand clothes from him that had been ordered by others but not paid for. A new owner of an existing item of clothing was at liberty to have it re-cut for a better fit or unpicked and remade inside out so that any faded outer faces would be replaced by fresher inner colours. Noblewomen’s clothes and those of her family were always made by a tailor, though the lady would have an up-to-date knowledge of what was fashionable and how clothes were made. Once out of fashion a lady often handed down garments to her ladies-in-waiting, perhaps with trains trimmed and some ornamentation removed so as to befit the new wearer’s status. As well as universally recycled, medieval clothing indicated class differences, and was used to mark religious, military and chivalric orders as well as single out pilgrims, Jews, muslims, heretics, lepers and prostitutes, the insane and individuals condemned to death.
A high-waisted costume with a truncated hennin, c. 1470. (Author’s collection)
Shoes and Codpieces – the Long and the Short of It …
We cannot, of course, leave the Middle Ages without mentioning two outrageous fashions which allude to the blatant citing of male sexuality, first male footwear and secondly the codpiece. As if not to be outdone by the fair sex, as ladies headwear ranged ever higher, so too men’s footwear became ever longer. By 1367 a fashion for long-toed shoes called Krakows, after the capital city of Poland at that time, emerged and by 1450 the shoes were known as pikes or pigaches after a kind of pail with a long handle. A decade later they were universally recognised as Poulaines as in ‘souliers a la Poulaine’, otherwise shoes in the Polish fashion. The monstrosities lasted over 300 years, with the term Poulaine always referring to the long, pointed beak of the shoe only and not the shoe itself. The shoes were eventually legislated against as the ridiculous extensions became longer and longer until walking was almost impossible. Just as with women’s headdresses, the Church was shocked at the extravagance of such footwear as well as its obvious sexual overtones. Blatantly phallic, young men tended to stuff wool and moss in the extensions to keep them erect and a popular vulgarity was to paint the extensions flesh-coloured. The Church were appalled at how a humble shoe could be elevated into something, which depending on a gentleman’s rank, could extended to almost 24in longer than the foot and glorify masculine sexuality in such an obvious way.
The clergy supported legislation against the shoe exclaiming that it had incited God’s rage and exacted his wrath against mankind in the shape of the great Black Plague of 1347, when almost half the population had died. They also condemned the fashion because they claimed by wearing such footwear men had been physically unable to pray, though in reality it was probably more in keeping with the way some young men laced their hose too tightly to their doublets that prevented them from kneeling. Whatever the reason, the shoes were branded both as Satan’s Curse or Satan’s Claw and university professors were banned from wearing them. Laws were brought in to regulate the shoes and during the reign of Edward III (1312–77) pointed toes were prohibited for all who did not have an income of at least £40 a year.
When it comes to the codpiece much has been said about it but almost nothing written. It was a fashion born out of necessity and in this period of history it was a simple covering to prevent a man’s genitals from being exposed when the medieval tunic rose from knee-high in 1340 to thigh-high by the 1360s. It may have been the fashion but it was not a wise move, especially as the design of men’s hosiery had not had a chance to catch up. Oblivious to this state of affairs, tunics, which should be thought of as doublets or modern-day jackets, eventually levelled out at hip height between 1420 and 1440. All was not totally lost as men did wear shirts beneath their doublets which tucked into the individual hose and were attached by laces to the doublet’s hem and gave as much support and coverage a linen shirt could provide. Chaucer, well aware of the dilemma, gave these words to the parson in his Canterbury Tales to illustrate the state of affairs:
Alas! some of them show the very boss of the privy member and the horrible pushed-out testicles that look like the malady of hernia in the wrapping of their hose, and the buttocks of such persons look like the hinder parts of a she-ape in the full of the moon. And moreover, the members that they show by the fantastic fashion of making one leg of their hose white and the other red, make it seem that they are corrupted by the fire of Saint Anthony, or by other such misfortune.
With men performing physical daily tasks glimpses of the male sexual organs became commonplace and a general outcry prompted Edward IV in 1482 to introduce legislation. The law, which forbade persons below the rank of lord to expose their private ‘sinful’ parts by wearing short doublets, was at first ignored as sewing the hose together would make necessary front access almost impossible. Later, the first three-cornered fabric codpieces – cod meaning ‘scrotum’ or ‘bag’ in Middle English – were tied or partially stitched over the gap in the front of the hose. The codpiece was to remain relatively unobtrusive during the Middle Ages but was to re-emerge as a major fashion accessory in the coming century, as the Tudors will illustrate in the next chapter.
Medieval hose were fastened individually to a man’s upper garment giving rise for the need for what was to become known as the codpiece. (British Library digitised manuscripts)
No reference to ‘the medieval’ would be complete without the inclusion of armour, that steel casing a man wore exclusively to cover his body in time of conflict, turning him from mortal flesh into a living fortress. By no means a fashion statement, it nevertheless prompted a significant change in male/female clothing by taking men out of what could be described as the ‘universal tunic’ worn by both sexes, albeit with different cuts and embellishments. Now men needed to don ‘underwear’ beneath their plate armour in order to prevent their skin chafing and bruising and so garments such as aketons, gambesons and hacketons became available. Also known as ‘Welsh Jacks’, Scottish Jacks and ‘doublets of fense’, these tight-fitting, quilted coats were sewn and stuffed with linen or even grass to help absorb blows to the armour on the battlefield. One example of padding is the gambeson of Edward the Black Prince which consists of five layers: two linen shells and the wool stuffing in between, an inner satin lining and coat of arms in blue and red velvet applied to the front. From the twelfth century until at least the end of the fifteenth century they were also used by lower ranking soldiers whose wages did not stretch to full body armour.
The idea of a knight in shining armour was the product of Victorian romanticism but the numerous pieces of armour that made up a suit, which could weigh up to 27 kilos, did have to be kept clean and in full battle order. Squires rarely used water to clean the metal as that was wasteful, especially if out in the field. Instead, an abrasive was applied such as sand, where smaller pieces of armour were immersed in a barrel and rolled to enable the sand to remove mud and mire. Larger pieces were scoured with a cloth frequently dipped into sand mixed in with both vinegar and urine. Medieval mercenary Sir John Hawkwood rose to become commander of the famous White Company in 1364, his army known by that name for the scrupulously clean armour he demanded of his men.
Not for the first time would military clothing have a bearing on what later was to be worn in civilian life. Arming jackets coupled with the necessary knitted leggings or stockings gave men a new silhouette, pushing the male forward into garments that for centuries would become doublets and hose leaving them totally independent of women, who from this point on would continue the tradition of wearing skirts.
