Monday, August 20, 2012

More on Late Medieval Underwear

It seems that a lot of people have been blogging and commenting about late medieval underwear lately, so a post collecting this information may be useful to those of my readers who are  interested in medieval costume.

One of my favorite costume scholars, pearl, recently posted a link to this short paper that she wrote about the photograph of a chemise that appears in Carl Köhler's classic work, A History of Costume. What she discovered is that the black-and-white photograph of a sleeveless "Chemise of the Fourteenth Century" that is now found in the Dover edition of Köhler was actually added by an editor during the late 1920s which, as pearl points out, explains why there is so little information about the garment in Köhler's book. Pearl traces the photograph back to Moriz Heyne, who says that the chemise in question, like the Lengberg undergarments, was found in a castle in Thuringia, Germany. Interesting reading!

Katrin Kania graciously responded to my questions about men's underwear in late medieval Germany in this recent post on her blog. It appears from Katrin's post that there are a small number of well-known pieces of late medieval German art that show some men in bikini-shaped garments like the Roman subligar. Some of these artworks plainly show men wearing a garment that closely resembles the Lengberg piece. not just in shape, but even with regard to the fact that it ties on only one side.
"The Men's Bath" (Wikimedia Commons)
After reading Katrin's post, I went digging for a bit more information.  I did not have any luck with searching the German-language art database she recommended, but I did find a number of underwear images in the costume guide of a well-known reenactment group, The Company of Saynt George. Pages 10 and 11 of the Company's costume guide for men (which can be downloaded for free here; the women's guide is presently being rewritten) includes about 12 different period images of men in underwear, with the sources identified. Most of the images show men in short underpants shaped not unlike modern "tighty-whitey" briefs, but there are at least two different images showing the bikini-like version. The Guide states:
"The Women's Bath" (Wikimedia Commons)
"Artworks of the period usually show two kinds with some subtle variations: A. Close fitting short like garments with a pleated "pouch" on the front. This style seems to be the most common type of braies. B. "Bikini" pants with ties appear in Swiss, German and Italian sources but not as frequently as the previous style."
So I was wrong to assume, as I did in this post, that the Lengberg "bikini" garment was female underwear. Moreover, as a commenter correctly advised me, there is no artistic evidence that women wore such bikini undergarments in medieval Europe. We see naked women in medieval German art from time to time, but not women in underpants. Here's an interesting example. A woodcut print and a pen-and-ink drawing by late 15th-early 16th century artist Albrecht Dürer highlights this interesting contrast. In the woodcut "The Men's Bath" (1507), Dürer clearly shows at least two men in bikini-like briefs; one standing on the left-hand side (he's lounging against a wooden pillar) and one in the middle of the picture (you can see the briefs, framed by the faces of the two men in the center foreground).  In contrast, in the drawing "The Women's Bath" (1496), we see women, most of whom are wearing headdresses, but are otherwise naked--they are wearing no briefs of any kind.

On the other hand, no one expected the bra-like garments found in Lengberg until 2008 when they were pulled from the walls of the castle. The blog Medieval Silkwork has recently featured two different posts about late medieval women's underwear. One shows period images of sleeveless shifts, with a high waistline, that are closely fitted through the bust, while the other discusses written sources that speak about breast binding and "breast bags." Both are well-written and illustrated, and very worthwhile reading, as is the essay showing the blogger's reconstruction of a fitted support garment similar to the Lengberg "long-line bra" garment, which can be found here. To me, the Medieval Silkwork essays suggest that the final chapter about women's underwear in 15th-16th Germany may not yet been written. The artwork shows sleeveless shifts, some of which likely were cut to provide breast support, but not garments that resemble the bra-like garments from Lengberg. Maybe the fact that the period art we have doesn't show women in briefs doesn't completely align with what women wore.

Now I'm looking forward even more eagerly to reading Professor Nutz's NESAT paper!

14 comments:

  1. One must ask what was worn monthly to hold the various absorbent materials in place.... which brings up the possibility of chemical testing for the extant pieces.... surely there would be traces of SOMETHING, blood, semen, urine, whatever, that could be used to decide the wearer....

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  2. Kim, you have a good point. Katrin Kania's post suggested that women might have used such a bikini-like garment at least to deal with menstrual protection. Of course, the history of menstrual protection is yet another subject, one that poses difficulties because of its private nature.

    I don't know whether any of the underwear finds have been tested for blood. On the other hand, I'd expect stains from blood to still be darker than the normal color of linen and still noticeable after 500 years; if there had been such a stain on the Lengberg bikini, it would have been remarked upon. So there may have been no reason for such testing.

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  3. I am going to echo your point- we don't have women in underpants in artwork (EXCEPT where the woman is shown as dominating males, "wearing the pants"), but we don't have the bras in artwork, either (just some weird shaped boobies standing up like they are in an invisible bra). (and wouldn't baby diapers fit this trend? most art babies are naked or swaddled, but babies make a lot of waste and some sort of rag wrapped around their bum like a diaper sure would make sense and prevent washing the whole of the swaddling ten times a day!)

    In the latest data about the Lengburg panties, they did do a chromosomal test on the fabric (looking for XX or XY) and it turned out inconclusive. (regarding staining to be present, you'd think there would be skidmarks, too, considering the writings of medieval monks, but linen washes and sun-bleaches so nicely, that added to the length of time it would be hard to find. Shoot, the Renaissance shirts that their wearers were killed in and the shirts then put in a church reticule unwashed, the blood stains barely stand out from the stains of sweat and time)

    I would think they would want *something* to hold menstrual rags, but who knows; i'd have to find the source again but I recall an early 19th/late 18th C writing describing country girls in eastern europe working in weaving houses that had to spread hay on the ground to soak up menstrual blood because they thought wearing underpants would caused the flow to back up and kill them. (way later than these underpants, though).

    I guess I'm saying- I agree, the story of late medieval underwear is far from fully written!

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  4. Hm, what does inconclusive mean? No complete chromosomes? And yes, skidmarks seem a possibility too. Gosh, who would think underwear could provide such entertainment, much less consternation?

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    1. oops, thought i hit reply, kim! but it ended up as a new comment- see below.

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  5. @Kim, inconclusive means they did not get enough of a sequence to verify male or female. It may have something to do with the fact X chromosomes last longer after death/removal from living body than Y chromosomes. It's why matrilineal DNA is easier to sequence than patrilineal- the wimpy Y just doesn't last.

    (for what it's worth, I'm a practicing archaeologist with specialty in hunter-gatherers, especially pre-Columbian North American hunter-gatherers... I can talk for HOURS about poo and other bodily functions and the data we can get from it!)

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    1. @synj-munki: Believing as I do that archaeology is rapidly changing what we thought we knew about early costume, I am very pleased to have archaeologists comment on this blog. (Katrin Kania is also an archaeologist, as you may know.) Thanks for your comments.

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    2. hey, no problem! as i said above, i mostly do pre-Columbian hunter-gatherers, but really I am a student of all of humanity- especially thanks to my 4-field anthro schooling (classic American style anthro teaching includes cultural anthro, archaeology, physical anthro, and linguistics).

      I also just love to do raw, unadulterated research when I have the time. I can get lost in stacks at a research uni or in links galore for hours... days... and add that to a penchant for dressup and big boobs that need support, well, you get me!

      I found your site because i recently joined the SCA as a beginner heavy fighter and was looking for a really good examination (with experiments) of all the apron dress data, since I had the bright idea of using the apron dress like a jack of plates for fighting. (if you are interested, i'm doing a mashup of finds from birka and hedeby, with concessions to armor requirements)

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    3. Thanks, way back in the dark ages, when I was in pg school, DNA was really in its infancy, and now it is a truly remarkable tool. So much has changed in the last 30 or so years! Still don't get all that much DNA out of 13 million year old rhinos, tho! :)

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  6. This is a subject where I feel woefully ignorant and I’m hoping that someone here will be able to help. Is there any evidence that women of mid to late C15th England (but anywhere in Western Europe will do in desperation) wore pads of cloth (probably linen) under their armpits to protect their outer clothes from sweat?

    If not, can anyone think of a plausible term that could be used to describe such an item, as ‘pad’ and ‘wad’ were words not yet in use, as far as I understand?

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  7. I know of no such thing before the 1950s, sorry. My impression is that the purpose of wearing a shift was to absorb sweat, but I don't know of anything suggesting that there was reason to believe that medieval women were concerned about absorbing sweat from their armpits in particular.

    As for names that might have been use for such an item (assuming it were used), "cloth" or "rag" both come to mind; I doubt there would be a specific term since there's no evidence that such an item was in common use.

    As for whether "pad" or "wad" were words in use, you might want to take a look at the OED and see what it has to say about the etymology of those words; perhaps one or both of them was in use in Middle English. Good luck!

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  8. Thanks for that, Cathy. According to my OED, neither 'pad nor 'wad' seem to have been in use before the mid C16th in English.

    The shift would have absorbed some sweat but I would be surprised if some other way was not found to protect the clothing of the nobility. Somewhere - a long time ago - I read that women in the C18th and C19th used removable triangles of padded cloth under their arms for just such this purpose.

    Bother, either I shall have to skirt around the subject (pun intended)or beg a degree of artistic licence.

    Thanks for a great blog, btw.

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  9. I'm glad I could be useful.

    I had not heard that women used padded cloth triangles under the arms of their dresses in the 18th and 19th centuries; do you recall what book or article you found that statement in? I'd love to read it.

    As for the medieval women, here's two things to think about:

    1) Shifts could be worn in multiple layers, depending on circumstances.
    2) The most ornate medieval garments were worn over multiple layers of clothing. Thus, there would be several layers--shift and kirtle, say--protecting such garments from sweat.
    3) We don't know what the prevailing attitude of medieval women--even noble ones--to having sweat odors in their garments. It might not have been a big deal to them. It seems unlikely that they would have our modern urge to keep their clothing pristine indefinitely.

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  10. Thanks for that, Cathy. According to my OED, neither 'pad nor 'wad' seem to have been in use before the mid C16th in English.

    The shift would have absorbed some sweat but I would be surprised if some other way was not found to protect the clothing of the nobility. Somewhere - a long time ago - I read that women in the C18th and C19th used removable triangles of padded cloth under their arms for just such this purpose.

    Bother, either I shall have to skirt around the subject (pun intended)or beg a degree of artistic licence.

    Thanks for a great blog, btw.

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