It is appropriate to honor Robin Netherton this year as she steps down from her role as coeditor of the annual journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles (2006–), which she co-founded. It is unusual to offer a Festschrift of this kind to a person who has never occupied an academic post. Robin has never sought such a post. Our Introduction gives a brief account of her career as a journalist and editor, her family life, and the multiplicity of talents which has led to her being accepted as a leading scholar in the field of medieval and early modern dress and textiles. The individual tributes that precede each contribution clarify the importance of Robin's industry, thoroughness, and personal kindness. All of our contributors have, in the past, enjoyed the benefits of Robin's editing of their contributions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Most are also personal friends. The enthusiasm of the contributors to give something back to Robin has been remarkable throughout the process of commissioning, writing, and editing this book, which we offer to her with the admiration and love of us all.

GRO-C and MCH

Many Italian communes enacted sumptuary laws in the later Middle Ages. In her study of Italian sumptuary law, Catherine Kovesi Killerby was able to list 326 enactments by 48 different communes, large and small, with every reason to believe that this was a minimum figure. The Tuscan commune of Lucca was among these. It was not among the earliest, with no extant enactments before 1300, nor was it among the most assiduous; its 18 different enactments between 1308 and 1498 could not compare with the 61 for Florence or 41 for Venice in a similar period, but put it more or less on a par with Perugia with 15, Genoa with 19 or Bologna and Siena with 21 each. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries Lucca can be seen enacting a series of measures of varying length and complexity as the city fathers attempted to respond to changing economic and social conditions. The sumptuary laws themselves produced change, as citizens refashioned their clothing and ornaments, to avoid items that were prohibited if there were alternatives that were permitted: for example concentrating on large numbers of silver buttons or studs (maspilli), when other decorations were forbidden, or employing taffeta borders that were permitted in place of prohibited borders of fur (vaio or gris). These enactments and the government's attempts to enforce them provide a window onto the society of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as those who drew up the laws were torn between a desire to suppress extravagance and excess in general terms, and a wish to conduct their own lives decently and honourably, and particularly to mark important family events, such as betrothals, marriages, and funerals with the customary celebrations and display to maintain the family's status.

The earliest recorded efforts to regulate dress seem to be the clauses included in the Statute of the Commune of Lucca of 1308. Women servants were forbidden to have silk purses or other accessories (guarnimenta) of gold, silver, or silk, and their clothing was not to have inserts (inghironatos) in front or at the back, or a train, or be made of cloth worth more than 40s. per canna. Nor were they to wear pattens (pianelle). Anyone infringing these regulations was to be fined £10 by the Podestà (chief magistrate), with efforts to encourage accusations.

Dressing of Christian devotional statues is often considered a sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Baroque development in continental Europe, but it probably dates from much earlier in the period. Scholars, for example, have noted references to such practices from late thirteenth-century Germany and late fourteenth-century Florence onward. However, even earlier textual references exist for the adornment of statues in early medieval England, in some cases with textiles, from the eleventh through the fourteenth century and beyond.

Devotional images themselves are discussed in medieval England as early as Bede (early eighth century), who described images that sound like two-dimensional pictures among the inspirational objects introduced by early Christian leaders, such as Benedict Biscop, returning to England after visits to Rome. Their subject matter and purpose, in many ways, prefigure much of the later devotional art of the period and beyond:

In her book Medieval People, Eileen Power offered a reflection on medieval nuns’ lives based on the Canterbury Tales. Among the faults and foibles the poet attributed to Madame Eglantine, the prioress, were her fashionable wimple, a well-made cloak, a coral rosary, and, most famously, a golden broch on which was inscribed Amor vincit omnia. Power drew on late medieval visitation records to show briefly how nuns, usually members of noble or gentry families, sometimes adopted fashions found in the world. Since many had entered the religious life to save their parents the cost of a marital dowry, some almost certainly felt entitled to their creature comforts, including their clothing. Although Power's examples of fashions worn by nuns were drawn from episcopal visitations, her study was neither deep nor systematic. Consequently, there is room for a more detailed study of the norms English and northern French prelates expected to apply to professed sisters and their religious superiors in a society that identified dress with status and women with moral weakness. Equally, there is a need to examine the actual patterns of complaint revealed by episcopal visitations to determine whether the foibles of Madame Eglantine often represent the problems the bishops identified or which were brought to their attention by the nuns themselves. An issue also worth raising is the effect of poverty or maladministration on the lives and dress of nuns, since their communities often were less well-endowed than those of male religious. In many cases, nuns can be found not just flouting discipline but fashioning their own patterns of dress and ornament when the eyes of the authorities were not on them.

The universal canon law, as we shall see, gave very limited attention to nuns from the twelfth century onward; and the local bishops enacted statutes affecting women religious only on occasion. However, professed sisters were treated as bound by legal norms crafted for observance by monks. To these were added ideas of due modesty and a suspicion that women, even nuns, were easily led astray by vanity or sexual desire. Thus, both the general canons and local statutes tried to prohibit excessive contact of nuns with any men, including clerics and servants, even in a monastic parlor in the presence of trusted sisters. Nor were lay kin to be trusted implicitly, whether coming to the monastery or visited at home.

One of the most revelatory experiences, as one of the authors of a book on medieval garments, was the good condition in which so many of them had survived to the present. Some were examples of deliberate deposition – in formal burial according to the rites and traditions of the time, modified by the relative wealth and social standing of the buried; or to conceal a crime, as in the case of a murder victim buried in a peat bog. Others were brought about through accidental loss in the same favourable environment, as suggested in the case of a child's hood from Orkney, ca. ad 250–615. Textiles of almost all fibres can have a surprisingly long life, and survive in surprisingly good condition, if the circumstances of burial are right, though few conditions involving intentional or accidental deposition favour textiles of both animal and vegetable origin. Very little underwear, which was usually of linen, has survived, for example, from either intentional or incidental burial in Western Europe, while linen survives very well in the dry sands of Egypt. But the survival of buried remains, human or material, was not the purpose of Christian burial. Textile coverings, whether shrouds or dress, were never intended to be seen again by human eye after deposition, though in the case of royal persons and high-ranking ecclesiastics they were probably seen in versions of what we would now call “lying in state” before burial (and see evidence of actual practice in the case of an English king, below, p. 72). This is probably why in these cases status-proclaiming dress was employed: the majority of corpses seem to have had only shrouds.

However, it was the ability of textile (which we assume to be a fragile medium) which had never been buried, or buried for only a short time, to survive above ground for hundreds of years – sometimes in use or for display over a large part of its history – which seemed to me to merit more thought. Textiles which are in constant use, as garments or furnishings, are subject to wear, damage, and even decay: for example through long exposure to light, as in curtains and hangings; through soiling and subsequent laundering; or through the action of pests such as moths.

Among the greatest achievements of early twentieth-century America is the public museum. Whether dedicated to the fine arts, notable citizens, or the nation's past, these institutions constitute an unparalleled educational and cultural resource. Most were established thanks at least in part to donations from ruthless, wealthy financiers and industrialists who had spent years acquiring stunning collections of art and artifacts, then presented them to the community as proof of their public spirit. The impulse behind these gestures may have ranged from a genuine interest in civic improvement to keeping up with the Morgans, but without the great collectors, the great museums of America would be little more than cabinets of curiosities.

For all their business acumen, these titans of industry were not necessarily so discerning when it came to what they purchased and then bestowed upon the new museums. Some acquired works that turned out to be misattributed, misdated, or outright forged. Others bought things they liked but knew little about, relying upon the seller's description when it came time to identify the article in their records. Errors were inevitable, and if not spotted and corrected, could accompany an artifact after its owner's death and its transfer to its new home.

Such seems to be the case with an unusual early seventeenth-century textile in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 5.1a). This item, donated by American expatriate Lily S. Place, came to the Met in the early 1920s. Place specialized in ancient Egyptian artifacts but also had a small collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Middle Eastern embroideries and costumes. The piece at the Met, a half-circle of cotton fabric quilted in hunting scenes with golden silk, is described in the museum's records as a “cope,” or vestment used by Christian clergy. There are some serious issues with this identification, however, as it is neither the correct fabric, the correct size, nor worked in the correct motifs to be credible as a religious garment. These issues, which should have been evident, were not addressed until the Met's 2013 exhibition “Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade.”

The garment itself is an unusual example of the so-called Indo-Portuguese quilted textiles imported by Portuguese merchants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Robin Beth Goldman was born on 25 November 1959 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Charney, an artist, and Charles, a mechanical engineer, their second child. Her parents moved frequently because of Charles's work, but eventually settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where Robin and her brother Bill grew up. The family environment was artistic and stimulating; both children were high academic achievers. In high school Robin was also a journalist and acted in school plays. However, she recounts that she missed her high school graduation – because she was at the White House at the time! She had been chosen as a Presidential Scholar, one of only two students (one male, one female) from each state in the USA, honoured annually with this award for academic achievement, together with extra-curricular activities. Robin's award was presented by President Jimmy Carter. She later interned at the White House. She graduated from the University of Missouri, having majored in Journalism and English. Her first job was as Arts and Entertainment Editor at a daily newspaper in Iowa, the Iowa City Press Citizen, where she revelled in attending every performance and exhibition that the city could offer.

When Robin was an undergraduate she joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and continued her membership during her years in Iowa. She found fulfilment in pursuing medieval calligraphy, illumination, and poetry, becoming a kind of “poet laureate” for her ability to produce suitable verse for ceremonies at short notice. As a project for a Rare Books class in graduate school, Robin had made a “medieval” book of the Middle English poem Pearl, writing the text in a Gothic cursive script, including full-page illuminations, sewing the leaves together with hand-spun linen thread, and hand-binding the manuscript in vellum. Unknown to Robin, she was nominated for, and granted, membership of the SCA's Order of the Laurel, with this manuscript cited as her masterpiece. Remarkably, considering her later status in the medieval dress/textile world, it was not for costuming that Robin received this honour.

However, Robin had started sewing in fourth grade, having taken an after-school course, and she had begun helping other SCA members with basic costuming, developing, as she did so, an interest in garment construction which would flourish in future years.

Among the precious miniatures that decorate Exultet 1, a parchment roll preserved in the Museum of the Cathedral of Bari, in Apulia, Italy, there is a striking image of the Earth personified as a woman dressed in sumptuous attire, which the artist has depicted with a high degree of originality. The Earth is standing between two trees; she grasps both trunks with her hands, four animals at her feet. Her patterned dress is adorned by a richly embroidered edging at the neck and waist; on her head she wears a bi-coloured, square headdress ornamented with luxuriant vegetation. The aim of this study is to verify, with the aid of written records and extant fragments of contemporary textiles, whether the artist was reproducing a dress which was in fashion at the time of the preparation of the Exultet Roll, and which words in written documents designate the clothing items represented in the miniature.

EXULTET ROLLS OF SOUTHERN ITALY

Manuscript production of the first centuries of the second millennium in southern Italy is exemplified by the so-called Exultet Rolls, that is, rolls of parchment that contain the text of the hymn sung by the deacon on the night before Easter, in which all creatures on Earth and in Heaven are invited to exult at the news that Christ has been resurrected (Exsultet iam angelica turba caelorum). In Latin this part of the liturgy of the Roman Church Mass is called praeconium paschale (the Easter Proclamation) and it is usually celebrated in front of a Paschal candle during the Easter Vigil. Thirty-one rolls are still extant, among which twenty-eight are Exultet, two are Benedictional and one Pontifical, produced mainly in the area between Benevento, San Vincenzo al Volturno, Montecassino, and Bari. Only two seem to come from a scriptorium in Pisa, but, according to Guglielmo Cavallo, they are undoubtedly imitating a model of southern Italian provenance, as is demonstrated by the fact that an Exultet roll produced in the area of influence between Benevento and Cassino is preserved in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, in Pisa.

It is generally assumed that the oldest roll was produced in Benevento in 970, under Archbishop Landulf I, when Benevento was the seat of the Langobardic principality in southern Italy (Langobardia minor).

Household accounts have a quotidian fascination all their own. On the surface these dry and impersonal records of moneys in and moneys out seem to contain little personality; but look deeper, and they illuminate humdrum details of life that would otherwise have been lost centuries ago. You may come across an entry “For my nephew Fraunces … for a pounde of sugere plate and greate comfettes to make hym larne his booke,” and envision a schoolboy sulking in his chair, gazing out the window and daydreaming of doing anything but Latin while his mother coaxes him with candies to mind his tutor. Young Richard Farmor was given “suger-candie to avoyde fleme, his mouthe and throte being sore,” evoking the image of an unhappy, feverish child being soothed by a nurse; and reading about funds “gyven to my cosyn Margett to putt in her purse at her going to My Ladye Elisabethes grace” lets one imagine the excitement of young Margaret, feeling terribly grown-up, her parents exhorting her to pay servants well on her first visit to Princess Elizabeth.

The Petre household accounts are one of several such collections surviving from the Tudor era. Ranging from the 1540s to the beginning of the seventeenth century, these accounts record outlays for food, drink, clothing, entertainment, construction, liveries and wages, household maintenance, and much more. Each book dates from Michaelmas (29 September) of one year to Michaelmas of the next. Although they are not a continuous series, their valuable yearly windows into the life of a Tudor household have seen them used as sources in several books on Tudor entertainment, music, feasting, and politics. They are also quite useful for the student of historical costume, as evidenced by Anne Buck’s examination of the clothing of Thomasine Petre, daughter of William Petre, listed in the Petre accounts of the 1550s.

The present article focuses on a later generation of the Petre family: that of John Petre, born in 1549 to William and his second wife, Anne Tyrrell, and John's children. John Petre married Mary Waldegrave, daughter of Sir Edward Walgrave of Borley, in 1570. They had three surviving sons: William, John, and Thomas. They also had two children who died in infancy: Edward, who lived for five months, and Anne, who lived for 16 months.

In his first Arthurian romance, Erec et Enide, Chrétien de Troyes distinguishes himself as a writer wise in the ways of fashion. Not only does he use clothing and textiles throughout the romance as a rhetorical device, but he also provides two of the most elaborate descriptions of garments of the twelfth century: the bliaut and mantle Enide receives as a gift from the queen and the coronation mantle King Arthur bestows on Erec. Roland Barthes insists that written clothing is “entirely constituted with a view to signification,” and literary clothing need not exist at all beyond the text. Chrétien's fashion is indeed unreal, which does not preclude its realism; for it to be narratively effective literary attire must have some basis in reality. Jacques Le Goff asserts that we best understand clothing's function in society through an examination of its place in “works of the imagination.” Depictions of clothing and other material goods pervade this romance, providing both structuring elements and thematic unity, as well as considerable reflections of twelfth-century French society. This chapter seeks to discern which of the sartorial elements we can consider real, reflecting some aspect of that extratextual reality, and which derive entirely from Chrétien's powerful imagination and are therefore patently unreal.

Chrétien structured this romance in three parts: the Prologue (lines 1–26); the first sequence (lines 27–1796); and the main sequence (lines 1797–6878), making up nearly three-quarters of the text. The first sequence constitutes only a fourth of the romance, but in it, Chrétien establishes clothing as a powerful thematic and structuring element. Attire continues to be a significant aspect within the longer main sequence, although it is more dispersed in its occurrence. The two lengthiest descriptions – Enide's wedding ensemble and Erec's coronation robes – end the two sequences in a sort of sartorial and narrative exclamation point.

In the first sequence, the two protagonists separately appear, unknown to one another, but both wearing clothes that mark them as lacking in some way.6 Erec's initial portrait, though highly conventional, immediately identifies him as a knight who prefers the company of ladies to more traditional knightly pursuits and thus establishes a major theme through a vestimentary lens. Chrétien introduces the description of Erec's attire with the surprising: Que diroie de ses bontez? (line 93, What shall I say of his good qualities?), making an explicit connection between the knight's character and what he wears.

Anyone who works with historical dress and textiles must in some way refashion them. Artists wishing to depict historical persons or allegorical figures may dress them in an imagined version of the costume of former times, or they may adopt and adapt the dress and fabrics of their own day in order to convey to their audience messages such as opulence, kingship, or degeneracy in their chosen characters. Poets may idealise or invent costumes for their characters, and soft furnishings to surround them; but there may be some truth, however exotic (like rare, colourful foreign furs), behind the imagined luxury. Surviving medieval and early modern garments and other textiles only continue to exist because someone made that possible – for example by placing them in an airtight tomb, keeping them in a moth-free environment, or even by discarding them to be preserved in the damp conditions of an urban rubbish heap. Textiles that were deliberately conserved and protected – because they were innately valuable, because of their usefulness, because of their associations with a saintly or other important person, or simply because they had been acquired among other collectables – often had to be repaired. This might involve patching and darning, replacing lost pearls and gemstones, adding or replacing linings, and sometimes replacing whole sections of cloth. These processes were sometimes carried out sympathetically, sometimes rather more cavalierly, but in each case, they changed the nature of the object, remaking it. When textiles are displayed, these changes are not necessarily flagged up in the succinct identifying cards on their showcases, which may provide the only information the general viewing public learn about the items.

Today many people wish to recreate historical dress and textiles, for theatre or film, for Living History purposes or simply to produce and display something as bright and as beautiful as the original must have been, though it is faded and shabby now. This cannot be done well without meticulous research, and even when that has been carried out, there are unanswered questions which can only be tackled with experiment, trial and error.

The authors in this book have approached the issue of reimagining dress and textiles from very different viewpoints: visual, textual, material, real and fictional.

There is more information available about the dress of King Edward “the Confessor” than any other person from Anglo-Saxon England. The evidence includes contemporary or near-contemporary descriptions, depictions of the king from within living memory of his reign, and textile fragments from his tomb. Apart from depictions of the king on coins and his seal – normal and usually stylised images of a monarch – the later development of St. Edward's cult led to a profusion of images of him as well as additions to, and removals from, his tomb in the form of textiles and royal regalia. Interestingly, images of the king himself became a decorative element on textiles, a subject for depiction on wall hangings and embroidered vestments. Yet almost all, possibly all, of these can be seen as refashionings, posthumous reimaginings of the saint-king, reflecting ideals of kingly magnificence (different at different times), and illustrating implausible miracles.

THE LIFE AND CULT OF KING EDWARD

Edward was an unlikely candidate for both kingship and sainthood. Born ca. 1002/1005, he was one of the youngest sons of Æthelred “the Unready,” King of England, by his second wife, Emma of Normandy. Widowed, Emma married the Danish usurper, King Cnut, and her children by Æthelred remained exiled in Normandy. However, in 1042, aged about 40, Edward succeeded his younger half-brother, Harthacnut, to the English throne. He married Edith, daughter of the powerful Wessex Earl Godwin and his wife Gytha, sister-in-law of King Cnut. The marriage was childless.

Little is known about Edward personally, except that he loved hunting and falconry. With no immediate rivals for the throne, his reign was relatively calm, giving later hagiographers the opportunity to construct him as a Man of Peace. He never went into battle, his Godwin brothers-in-law, Earls Harold and Tostig, campaigning successfully on his behalf against the Welsh, and Earl Siward against the Scots. The great religious gesture of Edward's life was the re-endowment and rebuilding in stone of St. Peter's Church (Westminster Abbey), consecrated on 28 December 1065, the week he died; yet there is no evidence that he was particularly reverenced at Westminster immediately after his death.