CHAPTER 6 Upper Body and Front Fastening Garments: Undergarment, Padded Garment, Coat-Like Garment

Introduction More elaborate garments may have been popular for adult women. A fragmentary shirt of fine linen, deco- Most of the items in this somewhat disparate chapter rated in panels with silk, perhaps embroidered, perhaps are garments for the upper body, the exception being the brocaded, was found at Llan-Gors, Wales; it was pre- Greenland gown, which would have reached to below served by being both charred and waterlogged and had, the knee (6.4). There are interrelationships between presumably, been thrown away. It dates to the late tenth the garment-types represented here: one of the items or early eleventh century and may be Welsh or Anglo- of female underwear is padded (6.2), like the protective Saxon.3 It may have been a woman’s garment. In the masculine garments (6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8). The fashionable, thirteenth century Spanish women wore a visible che- non-military, doublets evolved from those protective mise, or blouse, decorated with coloured embroidery, garments (6.9, 6.10). All the male doublets, both padded the so-called camisa margomada. Possibly the corpse and unpadded, are front fastening, like the Greenland of Eleanor of Castile wore such a garment (see 5.1). It is gown which is included here because it is coat-like rath- both described and illustrated in Spanish texts.4 Another er than tunic-like. Relatively little is known about medieval female underwear. Women occasionally appear in manu- Mittelalters (Basel: Abegg-Stiftung Riggisberg, Schwabe Verlag, script art wearing long white garments which are pre- 2010), 97–106 at p. 98, fig. 1, p. 99; Tina Anderlini, Le Costume medieval au XIIIe siècle (1180–1320) (Bayeux: Heimdal, 2014), 6, 8, sumably linen chemises or shifts, usually in situations fig. [4]. where they are being tortured or punished.1 The effect 3 Now in the National Museum, Cardiff, Wales. Hero Granger- of these garments is to conceal the shape of the body Taylor and Frances Pritchard, ‘A fine-quality Insular embroidery underneath. A surviving example was found in the grave from Llan-Gors Crannóg, near Brecon’ in Mark Redknap, Nancy of the Infanta María, daughter of Fernando III, king of Edwards, Alan Lane and Susan Youngs, ed., Pattern and Purpose Castile, León and Galicia, in the royal burial chapel of in Insular Art Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference the Cathedral of San Isidoro in León, Spain, and now on Insular Art held at the National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff in the Museo de Traje, Madrid, Spain. María died in her 3–6 September 1998 (Oxford: Oxbow, 1991), 91–9; Gale R. Owen- Crocker, ‘Llan-Gors decorated garment’ in Gale R. Owen-Crocker, childhood in 1235. Her chemise was made of cotton, in Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward, ed., Encyclopedia of a simple design, with triangular gores at the sides, and Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450–1450 (Leiden: lozenge-shaped gussets beneath the armholes to widen Brill, 2012), 338–40. The garment is now stained black. The deco- the sleeves at the shoulder. The sleeves tapered towards ration is therefore best appreciated in images which artificially the wrist where they were very narrow. There was a sim- mark out the decoration and in computer generated images of ple, round neckline with a slit at the front. The garment details, see Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: was worn over linen underpants (see p. 273) and under revised and enlarged edition (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 205–6 a sleeveless, striped silk dress backed with untanned Plates 9, 10. For the most up-to-date discussion of research on its decoration, see Alexandra Mary Makin, ‘Embroidery and its skin, probably of rabbit, presumably making a fur lining. context in the British Isles and Ireland during the early medieval Amalia Descalzo calls the undergarment la camisa and period (AD 450–1100)’, unpublished PhD thesis, The University of the dress la garnacha.2 Manchester (2016), 290–6. 4 Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo Renzo Escorial, 1 There are two instances in London, British Library MS Cotton ms T-1–6, fol. 8r (illustrated in Amalia Descalzo, ‘El Vestido entre Nero E. ii, Part 1; they do not include the female heretics being 1170 y 1340 en el Pantéon Real de las Huelgas’ in [Joaquín Yarza expelled from Carcassonne (see 7.1) who are naked, though their Luaces and Matteo Mancini,] Vestiduras Ricas: el monasterio de male companions wear underpants. las Huelgas y sua Época 1170–1340 (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2 Amalia Descalzo, http://museodeltraje.mcu.es/popups/06-2004% 2005), 107–118, 113, fig. 47. Extreme forms of the garment, deco- 20pieza.pdf, 2, 3. The authors thank Maria Barrigón Montan͂és for rated with gold, silver or ribbons were condemned in sumptuary this reference. See also Amalia Descalzo Lorenzo, ‘Les Vêtements laws of 1256; Descalzo Lorenzo, ‘Les Vêtements Royaux’, 99, cites Royaux su monastère Santa María la Real de Huelgas’ in Rainer Juan Semprere y Guarinos, Historia del luxo y de las Leyes suntu- C. Schwinges and Regula Schorta, ed., Fashion and Clothing in arias de España, 2 vols (Madrid: 1788; [reprinted Ediciones Atlas, Late Medieval Europe. Mode und Kleidung in Europa des späten 1973]) 87.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/9789004352162_008 236 CHAPTER 6 kind of decorated chemise survives in Assisi, Italy. Said undergarments are, although its neck edge is neatly to have been made for St Francis by St Clare (1194–1253), finished. As an item of clothing intended only for this alb-like garment is made of linen, different materi- warmth, definitely not to be seen, it is a witness to thir- als for the sleeves and the body of the garment, and is ex- teenth-century practicality. The padded and quilted gar- quisitely embroidered in whitework* at the cuffs, neck ment adapts a technique which is better known from and at the tops of the side gores.5 masculine protective garments, exploiting the cotton This chapter opens, however, with two items of female fibre which had first been traded to Italy in the twelfth underwear of a more intimate kind, neither of which is century and was being regularly imported to France and attested in art: the bodice or brassiere from Lengberg Spain in the thirteenth.8 The quilting is not stitched with Castle, Nikolsdorf, Austria, an archaeological find (6.1) the professionalism of the pourpoints discussed later in and the auqueton of the Blessed Isabelle of France, a the chapter (6.7, 6.8) and it is possible that the garment holy relic (6.2). Both garments are unique, though the was individual, rather than a representative of what was Lengberg ‘Bra 3’ is one of four related garments from the typical. same site. These fifteenth-century undergarments have In contrast, the Regensberg rationale (6.3) was defi- shaped cups for the breasts, which, to judge from the re- nitely meant to be seen, an outer garment worn by an constructions now in progress, were each achieved by ecclesiastic over the chasuble as an insignia of rank sewing together two curved pieces of linen.6 The inclu- equivalent to the episcopal pallium. This vestment was sion of dainty lace makes them aesthetically pleasing. chosen for inclusion here because it is not a well-known The Lengberg bodices were, as far as is known, a sarto- category of garment, having been confined geographi- rial cul de sac: when women’s underwear is evidenced cally and probably only worn on high festivals. This again, in the sixteenth century, it is designed for warmth, particular example of the rationale has been featured for soft comfort beneath the stiffened bodice of the pet- because it is less famous than the eleventh-century ra- ticoat, and is intended to smooth the profile flat, rather tionale from Bamberg.9 The Regensberg garment is cut than to support the breasts.7 The fashion of supporting more simply and made of linen rather than the more the breasts by means of a bodice suspended from the expensive silk, but nevertheless is richly embroidered in shoulders (the brassiere), was, as far as is known, only gold thread and coloured silks with iconographic and ar- re-invented in the late nineteenth century when it re- chitectural images. (This garment could also be classed placed the custom of pushing the breasts up by a corset as a humeral, see p. 311, 8.8, 8.9, 8.10). beneath. The chapter returns to secular garments with the but- The earlier undergarment associated quite firmly toned and collared Greenland gown (6.4). Full-skirted with the ascetic Isabelle, sister of the saintly Louis IX, is and in warm wool, it may appear totally different from not deliberately made pretty as the Lengberg feminine the waisted silk jackets of the French and Italian aristoc- racy which conclude this chapter. Nevertheless its front 5 Tina Anderlini, ‘The Shirt Attributed to St Louis’, Medieval Clothing fastening anticipates them and its stand-up collar looks and Textiles 11 (2015), Plate 3.17; Tina Anderlini, Le Costume medi- forward to the Renaissance guibboni* (6.9 and 6.10). The eval au XIIIe siècle (1180–1320) (Bayeux: Heimdal, 2014), 7, unnum- care with which the Greenland coat-like garment was bered fig., 42, 65, plate 2. made, and the dyed cloth – black and red – go some way 6 According to the website http://www.craftyagatha.org/ accessed to countering the popular conception of the Norse set- 14 March 2016, evidently authored by the scholar (Rachel Case) tlers of Greenland as impoverished and malnourished. who is reconstructing the items. Their settlements may ultimately have failed, and the 7 Eleanor of Toledo (died 1652) wore velvet stays, lined with linen; Roberta Orsi Landini and Bruna Niccoli, Moda a Firenze 1540– 1580: Lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la sua influenza (Florence: 8 Debbie Bamford, Mark Chambers and Elizabeth Coatsworth, Pagliai Polistampa, 2005), 131–2. The front-fastening bodice found ‘Cotton’ in Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and in her tomb is illustrated at Fig. 64. Documentary evidence re- Maria Hayward, ed., Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of cords that she also wore wool or taffeta stomach bands, one lined the British Isles c. 450–1450 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 151–4, with swansdown, for warmth and comfort (p. 132). According to at 151. documentary evidence Queen Elizabeth I of England wore a type 9 The Bamberg rationale has recently been discussed in detail of undergarment called ‘a paire of bodies’ throughout her reign, in Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy; Virtue and Power in which was stiffened with bents, reedy grass stems; Janet Arnold, Medieval Europe c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell ed. and commentary, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d: The University Press, 2014), 67–74, with colour plates figs 4–5 and a fif- Inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes prepared in July 1600 edited teenth-century drawing, fig. 6. The definitive study of the garment from Stowe MS 577 in the British Library MS LR 21121 in the Public type remains that by Klemens Honselmann, Das Rationale der Record Office, London, and MS V.b.2 in the Folger Shakespeare Bischöfe (Paderborn: Verein für Geschichte und Atertumskunde Library, Washington DC (Leeds: Maney, 1988), 145, 147. Westfalens Abt. Paderborn, 1975).