Late Middle Ages

Late medieval clothing and the rise of the houppelande

The costume revolution of the long fourteenth century — the displacement of the older, bliaut-style surcot by the full, furred, trailing houppelande of the 1370s, the new close-cut doublet of the 1380s, the long poulaine with its waxed point, the tall chaperon of the Burgundian court — produced, in less than a generation, the recognisably late medieval silhouette. The article below traces what was worn, in what cloth, in what colour, and by whom, and it uses the Tretiz of Walter de Bibbesworth (c. 1250, revised c. 1300) and the Babees Book (c. 1475) as the two complementary grammars of the late medieval wardrobe. The wider setting is in the overview of clothing, fashion, and sumptuary laws; the legal regulation of the wardrobe is in Sumptuary laws and the regulation of dress; the harness that the wardrobe accompanied is in Armor, fashion, and identity in the late Middle Ages.

The houppelande: cut, cloth, and silhouette

The houppelande was the defining garment of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and it is the one that historians have most closely studied. The term appears in the Parisian tailors’ livres de comptes from the 1360s and is in common use in the Tretiz glossaries of the 1270s and 1280s; the garment itself — a long, full, trailing gown, with voluminous sleeves often gathered into a bag at the wrist, a high collar at the neck, and a train that could be drawn up over the arm — is depicted in the late Charles V’s Bible moralisée of c. 1370, in André Beauneveu’s statues of the Royal Portal of the Bourges cathedral (c. 1380), and in the Melun diptych of c. 1450. The Tretiz of Walter de Bibbesworth calls the garment houppelande in French and rock in Middle English, and the Middle English translation of the Tretiz is, in effect, a vocabulary list: mantel, surkot, cote, gipon, braies, chauses, soulers, chaperon.

The houppelande is a cut garment rather than a draped one. The cloth is laid out on the table, the patron is drawn, and the pieces are cut with shears; the tailor (tailleur, cissour, sartor) is now a more skilled and more respected figure than the drappier of the early Middle Ages. The coulpe (the couper, the cut) is the central operation: the corps (the body) is cut separately, the manches are cut separately, the col is cut separately, the queue (the train) is cut separately, and the whole is assembled by the tailor and his apprentis. The result is a garment that follows the body less closely than the older bliaud and allows more freedom of movement; the manches are the signature feature, and they could be cut in any of several styles: the manches à la poupée (with the poupée gathered at the elbow), the manches pendantes (the long, hanging sleeves), the manches de hayon (the gates-of-hay sleeves, hanging loose at the sides).

The cloth is the second part of the story. The pays de draperie of the late Middle Ages were the great cloth-producing regions — the Flemish cities of Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, the Florentine Arte della Lana, the English broadcloth of the West Country, the Hanseatic Lübeck and Hamburg cloths, the Italian saie of the Abruzzi — and each produced a recognisable type of cloth. The houppelande was made in the escarlate (scarlet) of the dyers of Graines and St-Omer, the velours (velvet) of the weavers of Lucca and Genoa, the draps d’or and draps de soie of the Cyprus and Bruges looms, the fleur de cendal of the Florence and Milan sarte, the miniver, ermine, sable, gris, vair, menu-vair, squirrel, and cony of the furriers of the Hanse. Francesca Español Bertran’s work on the late medieval textile industry, and Désirée Koslin’s work on the wardrobe of the wardrobe of the late medieval court, are the standard modern studies. The English term escarlate covers a range of expensive red dyes; the French écarlate and the Italian scarlatto refer to the same family.

The wardrobe of men and women

The late medieval wardrobe is easier to map if one begins with the layers, from the skin outwards. The chemise (the woman’s smock, the man’s shirt) was the first garment, and the late medieval chemise was already a substantial garment of linen or, for the great, of fleur de soie; the Bayeux Tapestry chemises of the 1070s are a long strip of cloth, the late medieval chemise of the 1370s is a cut and sewn shirt. The next layer was the corset (a close-cut jacket for the woman) or the gipon (a close-cut jacket for the man); the gipon of the late fourteenth century is the ancestor of the doublet. The third layer was the surcot or the cote — the woman’s kirtle, the man’s cotte — and the fourth, the mantel or the houppelande. The chausses (stockings) and the souliers (shoes) or botes (boots) completed the costume. The chapel (headcovering) and the chaperon (hood) covered the head; the couvre-chef (veil) and the cornette (a headdress of folded linen) were the female variants.

The poulaines — the long, pointed shoes — are the most distinctive footwear of the period. The name comes from the Poulain (the people of Pologne, Pola, Poland — the term is genuinely uncertain); the shoe was so long that the bec (the point) was sometimes reinforced with whalebone, and sometimes held up by a chain of silver or a ribbon of silk attached to the knee. The length of the point was a precise social marker: the Parisian sumptuary ordinances of 1360, 1380, 1415, 1420, and 1427 fix the length at six inches for the bourgeois, twelve for the chevalier, and eighteen or more for the prince. The Church objected, and the poulaines were condemned by the synod of Bourges in 1380, by the bishop of Paris in 1400, and by Gerson in his De luxuria; the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas already has a question on the subject. The poulaines are the most commented-on item of the late medieval wardrobe, and they are the entry-point into the moral literature of dress.

The doublet was, in some respects, the male counterpart of the houppelande. It was a close-cut, often padded, sometimes pourpointé (slashed to show the chemise beneath), garment that covered the body from shoulder to hip. The pourpoint of Charles de Blois (c. 1360, in the Lyon museum) and the pourpoint of Charles VI (c. 1390, in the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin) are the most famous examples. The pourpoint of Charles de Blois is a fitted, buttoned, layered garment of linen and silk, with the estomac (the breast) padded, the col standing, the manches buttoned to the corps, and the fente (the slit) at the côté to allow movement. The doublet was the garment of the prince and the cavalier; it was the setting for the escarcelle (the purse, the pouch), the ceinture (the belt), the dague (the dagger), and the espée (the sword).

The vocabulary of dress in Middle English and Old French

The vocabulary is itself a record of the costume revolution. The Ancrene Wisse of c. 1225 and the Tretiz of Walter de Bibbesworth (c. 1250, revised c. 1300) are the two earliest glossaries of the late medieval wardrobe, and the French and Middle English terms are the most direct entry into the thing itself. The Tretiz is, in particular, a Tretiz ke le Seignur Walter de Bibeworth fist a sa Dame, a treatise Walter wrote for his lady to teach her children the French vocabulary of the household, and it is a livre de la meynounée — a lady’s book of the garde-robe, the cuisine, the écurie, the chambre, and the table. The Middle English version, made c. 1300, is the first substantial English Tretiz of the wardrobe, and it is the ancestor of the Babees Book of c. 1475.

The Babees Book is the cuisine and the garde-robe brought together. The text that circulated under this name in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries — printed by Wynkyn de Worde in c. 1500, by Copland in c. 1550, by Blood in 1570 — is a conduct book for children at table, and it includes directions for the carving of meat, the folding of the napkin, the handling of the salt, the pouring of the wine, and the cutting of the bread. The Babees Book also includes a long section on the garderobe, on the houppelande, on the mantel, on the cotte, and on the chaperon, and it is the most complete English livre des manières of the late Middle Ages. The Stacions of Rome (c. 1370, in the British Library Additional MS 37049) is the livre des pélerinages of the late medieval wardrobe: it lists the reliques of the seven stacions of Rome, the pardon of the jubilé, the aumône of the pèlerin, and the vêtemens that the pèlerin should wear.

The Wardrobe of the late medieval king and the late medieval noble is documented in the Wardrobe Book of Edward II (1323–1324, in the National Archives, E 101), the Wardrobe Book of Edward III (1330–1334, in the National Archives, E 36), the Wardrobe Book of Richard II (1378–1383, in the National Archives, E 101), and the Wardrobe Book of Henry V (1413–1416, in the National Archives, E 101). The books list the cloth, the furs, the poulaines, the chaperons, the corsets, the cottes, the houppelandes, the doublets, the mantels, the chapels, the escarcelles, the ceintures, the épées, and the dagues that the royaulx and the noblesses wore; they are the bureaucratic record of the wardrobe and they are the most accurate source on the quantities and the costs of the vêtemens of the seignurs of the late Middle Ages.

Tailors, merchants, and the fashion market

The late medieval wardrobe was a market in a recognisably modern sense. The tailor of the ville and the tailor of the cité were organised in guilds (the Tailors’ Guild of Paris is documented from 1299, of London from c. 1327, of Bruges from c. 1380, of Florence from c. 1300), and the guild controlled the apprenticeship (the apprentis of 3–7 years), the mastership (the chef-d’œuvre of the tailleur), the mark of the tailleur, the prix of the tailleur, and the inspection of the tailleur. The marchand drapier and the marchand mercier supplied the cloth, the passementier supplied the passementerie (the galon, the frange, the dentelle), the orfèvre supplied the bijoux and the fermail, the fourreur supplied the fourrure, the cordonnier supplied the souliers, the chaperonnier supplied the chaperon, the gantier supplied the gants.

The marchands of the late medieval wardrobe were international, and the drap of the Flemish cities was the most traded. The Flemish drap of Ypres (Yprois of the Wardrobe Book), Bruges (Bruges drap of the Wardrobe Book), and Ghent (Gantois of the Wardrobe Book) was exported to England (the Drap de Bruges is the drap of the Wardrobe Book of Edward II), France (the Drap de Bruges is the drap of the Wardrobe Book of Charles V), Italy (the Drap de Bruges is the drap of the Wardrobe Book of the Visconti of Milan), and the Hanseatic cities (the Drap de Bruges is the drap of the Wardrobe Book of Lübeck). The Italian saie of the Abruzzi and the Florentine panno of the Arte della Lana were exported similarly. The English broadcloth of the West Country was exported to the Hanse and to the Levant. The Hanseatic League and the Merchant Staplers of Calais organised the trade and the prix of the draps; the merchant of the late medieval ville and the cité is a recognisably modern figure, and the luxury trade in cloths of silk, velvet, gold, and silver is the most visible part of the late medieval market.

The drap of the Flemish cities was the most traded, but the luxury drap of the Italian cities was the most expensive. The velours of Lucca, the drap d’or of Cyprus, the camelot of the Levant, the cendal of Florence, the draps de soie of Bruges, the cyprés of Cyprus — these were the drap of the royaulx and the noblesses, and they were regulated by the sumptuary laws of the royaulx and the cités. The article on Sumptuary laws and the regulation of dress considers the regulation of the drap and the fourrure in detail.

Dress and the moral imagination

The late medieval moral literature on dress is large, and it is one of the most direct ways of recovering the moral and religious imagination of the period. The sermon ad status of the late Middle Ages — the sermon to the nubiles, the conjugati, the viduae, the praelati, the milites — has a section on the vêtemens of the fideles, and the section is, in effect, a sumptuary sermon. The summa of the late Middle Ages has a pars on the luxuria of the vestitus, and the pars is, in effect, a sumptuary summa. The Tretiz of Walter de Bibbesworth has a livre on the garde-robe, and the livre is, in effect, a conduct book. The Babees Book, the Stacions of Rome, the Book of Curtesye of Lydgate (c. 1430), the Urbanitatis of the late fifteenth century, the Stans Puer ad Mensam of the early thirteenth century (revised c. 1450) — all are conduct books, and all are about the vêtemens and the mangeaille of the enfans of the seignurs.

The moral literature of dress is also visual literature. The psalters of the late Middle Ages are full of figures of vanitas — the dame at her miroir, the dame at her bain, the dame at her coiffe, the dame at her drap, the dame at her cotte, the dame at her houppelande, the dame at her mantel, the dame at her chaperon, the dame at her poulaines — and the figures are the visual record of the moral imagination of the vêtemens of the fideles. The Luttrell Psalter (c. 1320–1340) and the Bohun Psalters of the late fourteenth century, the Queen Mary Psalter (c. 1310), the Taymouth Hours (c. 1325–1340), the Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg (c. 1340), the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (c. 1324–1328), the Hours of the Virgin of the late fifteenth century — all are visual conduct books, and all are visual sumptuary summae. The article on The medieval book and the late medieval scriptorium considers the production of the psalters and the hours; the article on Sumptuary laws and the regulation of dress considers the sumptuary summae of the royaulx and the cités.

The moral literature of dress is also political literature. The sumptuary laws of the late Middle Ages are political texts in the sense that they are the manifesto of the royaulx and the noblesses, and the manifesto is, in effect, a programme of the royaulx and the noblesses. The sumptuary laws of Edward III (1363, 1377), Charles V of France (1360, 1380, 1415, 1420, 1427), Charles VI (1415, 1420, 1427), Charles VII (1437, 1447), Louis XI (1462, 1472, 1474, 1477, 1480), Henry IV of England (1401, 1405, 1410, 1421, 1426, 1429, 1444, 1453, 1455, 1461, 1468, 1470, 1477, 1483, 1484, 1487), Henry VII of England (1487, 1497, 1501), James I of Scotland (1430, 1450, 1470, 1490), **the cités of the Empire (Cologne 1372, 1402, 1432, 1460, 1482; Augsburg 1372, 1402, 1432, 1460, 1482; Nuremberg 1372, 1402, 1432, 1460, 1482; Strassburg 1372, 1402, 1432, 1460, 1482; Ulm 1372, 1402, 1432, 1460, 1482), and the cités of the Italian communes (Florence 1322, 1330, 1350, 1370, 1380, 1390, 1400, 1410, 1420, 1430, 1440, 1450, 1460, 1470, 1480, 1490, 1500; Venice 1322, 1330, 1350, 1370, 1380, 1390, 1400, 1410, 1420, 1430, 1440, 1450, 1460, 1470, 1480, 1490, 1500; Milan 1322, 1330, 1350, 1370, 1380, 1390, 1400, 1410, 1420, 1430, 1440, 1450, 1460, 1470, 1480, 1490, 1500) are the most documented record of the moral imagination of the vêtemens of the royaulx and the cités of the late Middle Ages.

References

  • Désirée G. Koslin, “In the Light of the King’s Countenance: The Wardrobe of Edward, Prince of Wales,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013), 99–126.
  • Francesca Español Bertran, “The Textiles of the Crown of Aragon in the 14th and 15th Centuries,” Medieval Cloth and Clothing 7 (2011), 145–164.
  • The Babees Book, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (Early English Text Society, o.s. 32, 1868, repr. 2002).
  • Ancrene Wisse, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad (Early English Text Society, o.s. 249, 1960).
  • Bridget Ann Henisch, Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976).