Transactions of the Burgon Society Volume 5 Article 5 1-1-2005 Layer upon Layer: The Evolution of Cassock, Gown, Habit and Hood as Academic Dress Alex Kerr University of Oxford Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/burgonsociety Recommended Citation Kerr, Alex (2005) "Layer upon Layer: The Evolution of Cassock, Gown, Habit and Hood as Academic Dress," Transactions of the Burgon Society: Vol. 5. https://doi.org/10.4148/2475-7799.1038 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Transactions of the Burgon Society by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Transactions of the Burgon Society, 5 (2005), pages 42–58 Layer upon Layer: The Evolution of Cassock, Gown, Habit and Hood as Academic Dress by Alex Kerr Writers on the history of academic dress sometimes mistake which medieval garments were the antecedents of those worn in modern times. This happens especially when they misinterpret the evidence from memorial brasses and other pictorial sources. The situation is complicated by the fact that several Latin terms are used for a single article of dress in early university and college regulations and one term may refer to quite different articles at different periods. Now, as then, it is common to use words for clothing in both a narrow and a broad sense: for example, in modern English we use ‘jacket’ and ‘coat’ with various meanings, some of them overlapping or interchangeable. Similarly, in writing about medieval dress ‘gown’ or ‘robe’ may be a very specific item distinct from ‘cassock’ or ‘habit’ at one point, but any long, loose garment at another.