Scabbard Scarlet

477 scarlet specified in medieval regulations as unfulled and None of the later medieval and modern Euro- of long-staple wool, and followed a suggestion pean terms for ‘scarlet’, for either the textile or of Marta Hoffmann that they were also woven the colour (nouns and adjectives), has any ante- in balanced four-shed twill. They therefore cedents in the ancient and early-medieval worlds. considered that some of the 2 × 2 twills from The first documented use of a word related to → London could have been says (and may also subsequent European nouns for the textile itself is have been of a mixed spinning). The use of the found in the Old High German text Summarium word for fine worsteds and cloths mixed with Heinrici (1007–1032). In the section De diversi- worsteds seems to have increased late in, and after tate vestimentorum, the author used the Old High the end of, our period. German word Scarlachen to define a textile term The two meanings are difficult to distinguish from the still widely-used Etymologiarium of in literature, except by context, which is probably Isidore of Seville (570–636): ‘Ralla vel rullo quę why these words ultimately fell out of use, though vulgo rasilis dicitur’. Rasilis (from radere) meant say (wool) seems to have lasted longer than ‘scraped, smoothed, shaved’, and a later English say (silk). medieval Latin word list defined ‘ralla’ as ‘shaving The Anglo-Norman Dictionary’s suggestion of cloth’. Presumably the author of the Summarium ‘linen’ as a meaning seems entirely unfounded meant a shorn cloth, because the OHG ‘schar’ and is not supported by their own attestations. meant ‘shorn’ (from shearing: scheren, in modern German) and lach meant cloth (Tuch in modern Bibliography German). Certainly this OHG word is the source Crowfoot, E., Pritchard, F. and Staniland, of subsequent medieval and modern terms for K., Textiles and Clothing c. 1150–c. 1450, Medi- scarlet in many Germanic languages. In Middle eval Finds from Excavations in London 4 (Lon- English texts, it appears in a wide variety of forms don: 1992), 40–1. Kurath, H., Kuhn, S.M., (influenced by Romance as well as Germanic Reidy, J. and Lewis, R.E., ed., The Middle English languages): scharlette, scarlatte, skarlote, skarlet, Dictionary (Ann Arbor, MI: 1952–2001), s.v. sai scarlat, and scarlet. (n (2)), sai(e). Munro, J.H., ‘Three centuries of This etymology, beginning with the OHG luxury textile consumption in the Low Coun- Summarium Heinrici, seems to support a long- tries and England, 1330–1570: trends and com- favoured explanation for the true essence of parisons of real values of woollen broadcloths the medieval scarlet: as a very fine → woollen (then and now)’ in Ed. K. Vestergård Pedersen → broadcloth, subjected to repeated shearings. and M.-L.B. Nosch, The Medieval Broadcloth. The theory was first proposed by Henri Pirenne Changing Trends in Fashions, Manufacturing and then elaborated by Jean-Baptiste Wecker- and Consumption (Oxford: 2009), 1–73, at 9. lin in Le drap ‘escarlate’ au moyen âge (1905). Rothwell, W., Trotter, D., et al., ed., Anglo- Both Pirenne and Weckerlin observed that the Norman Dictionary, Publications of the Modern medieval Flemish term scharlaken or scaerlaken Humanities Research Association, 17 (I) (2005–), was composed of two substantives: schar—shear 1 s.v. seie, saie . Walton, P. ‘Textiles’ in Ed. (from scheren: to shear a cloth) and laken—cloth J. Blair and N. Ramsay, English Medieval Indus- (in both medieval Flemish and modern Dutch). tries (London: 1991), 319–54, at 342. That explanation does not differ in any essentials Mark Chambers from the interpretation of the OHG Scarlachen or Elizabeth Coatsworth sharlachen given here; and it is important to note that this OHG text was unknown to both Pirenne Scabbard and Weckerlin. In their view, the most luxurious and most See → weapons as items of dress. costly of all medieval woollens were those that were highly shorn; and →only those woollens made Scarlet from the finest English wools, then the world’s best, could undergo such thorough, intensive The medieval scarlet was a woollen textile and shearings. Further observing that Flemish towns not originally a colour; subsequent use of the term dominated the manufacture and international ‘scarlet’ as both a noun and adjective for that vivid trade in fine woollens from the 11th to 14th cen- red colour was derived from the textile’s name. turies, they concluded that their cloth merchants scarlet 478 had succeeded in imposing this Flemish term on, traditional vertical loom, which produced essen- not just Germanic, but virtually all West European tially light worsted fabrics, producing instead a languages, even if Latin and Romance forms of radically different cloth: the first genuine heavy- the term came to diverge from the Germanic weight woollens. They differed from → worsteds terms, especially in their endings or suffixes. in being extensively fulled and subjected to fin- Finally, well-known medieval descriptions of ishing processes including being repeatedly tea- this textile in a wide range of colours—not just selled and shorn (scharlachen), with foot-long scarlet-red—further convinced them that the razor-sharp steel shears, to remove the ungainly medieval textile owed both its name and its value nap of the fulled, tentered cloth, thereby obliter- to this extensive shearing. To explain how the ating the patterns, which were visible in medieval colour term ‘scarlet’ arose and how it came to be (unshorn) textiles. The result was a texture often linked to the textile, Weckerlin offered the follow- as fine as silk: hence the significance of shearing, ing simple hypothesis (not based on any textual in OHG schar-lachen, and in the Germanic textile evidence): since the colour scarlet, in medieval terms that evolved from it. Europe, symbolized both divinity and regal, From about the same time as the Summarium indeed imperial, supremacy—as indeed still the Heinrici may be found the first use of the term preferred colour for robes of the papal curia— ‘scarlet’ in a Latin text, according to Weckerlin international cloth merchants eventually insisted c. 1050, but used as an adjective: ‘tres pannos scar- that all scarlets, as the luxury cloth sans pareil, be litinos anglicanos’. His source cannot, however, dyed exclusively with the agent that produced be found; the next oldest known text comes from that regal colour. a Cluny abbey charter of c. 1100, used as noun— Seductive and enduring as the Pirenne-Weck- and one linked to the red colour: ‘de scarlata rubea erlin hypothesis may be, it raises a number of tunicam’. Other less common medieval Latin serious problems. The first is the inconvenient forms are: scarlatum, scarletum, scarlaccum, scar- fact that those who dominated the cloth industry lateus, scarletus, escallata, escarlata, escarletum, and international trade of Flanders, especially at squallata. Subsequently, variants of these terms the renowned Champagne Fairs, from the 11th to were adopted by all the Romance languages. early 14th centuries, were chiefly francophones: While the Latin and most of the Romance terms from Arras, Douai, and Lille in particular. It is retain the ‘scar’ prefix of the Germanic terms, they highly improbable that they and the Italian mer- all contain ‘lat’ in the ending or suffix—missing in chants with whom they dealt would have adopted the Germanic languages (except English). a linguistically awkward Flemish term. The sec- The probable origin of that ‘lat’ suffix is the Ara- ond is that Romance-language terms for ‘scarlet’, bic name for a widely-manufactured and -traded and the English term, differ in significant respects textile dating from about the 9th century, of from the Germanic forms. which the principal feature was its scarlet colour: The most serious flaw, however, is the conten- siklāt (later and then more commonly siklātūn). tion that the high cost and high value of scarlet Many dictionaries still favour, as the origin of the lay in their shearing processes, for ‘scarlets’ were European terms for ‘scarlet’, the Persian (Farsi) subjected to shearing processes that did not differ word sakirlāt; but the first Persian usage cannot in quality, skill, or frequency, and certainly not in be dated earlier than c. 1290. Almost certainly relative costs, from the finishing processes for any derived from the Arabic siklātūn, the Persian other fine woollen textiles. Moreover these costs sakirlāt was likely also influenced in its formation rarely accounted for more than 2.5–3.5% of the by extensive Italian commerce in 13th-century wholesale price. Persia, and hence by the Italian word scarlatto. Rather, the origin of the Germanic names for The problem, however, in trying to establish the scarlet, commencing with the OHG scharlachen Arabic term siklāt as an origin, or ancillary influ- in the Summarium Heinrici, likely refers to the ence, for the Romance-language terms for ‘scar- novel textile product of the recently introduced let’, is that these Islamic textiles were all silks. horizontal treadle → loom, first described in Some philologists now contend, however, that a mid-11th-century Talmudic commentary by the Arabic term was itself derived from the Late Rabbi Solomon Izhaqi (Rashi of Troyes, c. 1040– Roman term sigillatus or Byzantine Greek word 1105). This new loom ultimately displaced the σιγιλλατον: which was indeed a luxury and a royal 479 scarlet woollen textile, one decorated with seals or rings Most medieval woollens began as ‘blues’: their (sigilla: seal). wools were first dyed in woad, which required no Clearly, however, the distinguishing feature of → mordant and thus was much easier to work the Islamic siklātūn (and Persian sakirlāt) silks than wools with other, mordant-based dyes. These was that they were very high-priced, luxury tex- woollens were then redyed in the piece, after fin- tiles dyed scarlet-red in → kermes.

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