end of the 13th century France Lausanne, Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire, U 964 - Biblia Porta fol.178r http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bcul/U0964

One of the things that I really like about the 13th-early 14th century are the many varied ways to wear you hair - and headwear. Contrary to popular ideas hair was not always totally cover4d, not even on married women. I've written some about it on the page about my 13th century outfit with a Barbie pink gardecorps, but I thought that it would be nice with a blog post which focuses on this and show some more period examples. Unmarried women I'll start with (presumably) unmarried women, who are often seen with their hair hanging or, much more rarely, braided. Braid with gold ribbons and a circlet from the end of the 13th century, ow maybe her hair is just wrapped in ribbons and not braided. In any case it's not hanging loosely. Lausanne, Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire U 964 - Biblia Porta fol. 178r On of the young women ion this awesome French 13th century image of the Devil tempting both sexes to have fun same-sex sexuality, also has a single braid or possibly unbraided hair wrapped in ribbons. Wavy/slightly curly hair was popular. Here with a circlet. ca 1300. Codex Manesse/Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandschrift Here we see mother and daugher, showing the difference between a married woman with her chin strap and fillet and the daughter with a circlet in gold, tied with red ribbons. Codex Manesse/Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandschrift Loose hair and circlets in France c 1250. The Maciejowski Bible It is of course hard to be sure about the marital status of all these women, but this woman wearing a hairnet is also probably unmarried, like her friends, since she's wearing only a circlet with her hairnet. It appears that the white wavy fillet and chin strap was a thing for married women. And don't be fooled by all the women with white fillets and/or veils being courted by knights - adoring a married woman was a thing in Courtly Culture. (A book tip: Courtly Culture by Joachim Bumke, a German historian. It is really,really good.) This image show the death of Nabal and what I presume is his wife and daughter, indicating that the white cap today mostly referred to as the St. Birgitta cap, was worn also by unmarried women. You also see that already in France c. 1250 married women wore a chin strap and fillet with loose hair under it. But, really, "everyone" already knows that unmarried women wore their hair uncovered in the Middle ages. The most interesting thing may be the image of the woman at the top with her hair braided in one single braid. This is not a style that we generally associate with the 13th and early 14th century, and one that I will get back to now that I turn to the married women. Married women I promised myself that this post wouldn't be about veils, so I will try to refrain from showing images just because I like the veils, filelts or chin straps. there has to be some hair too. We have already seen that a white fillet, often with a wavy or decorated edge (I write more about that here) was worn by many women together with either a chin band/barbette, or maybe a Birgitta cap under it; the image above could for instance show a cap insted of a strip of linen. On the other hand there are written sources telling about long strips of linen, called gebende, wound many times around the head (Bumke 2000 p 152) and the image may well show this instead. This is a lovely detail shot of Markgrafin Uta from the Naumburg cathedral, showing her wide gebende decorated with gold, but also some of her wavy hair at the temples. Photo from Wikimedia commons A much less well-known figure from the same cathedral is countess Gerburg von Brehna. She's not as pretty, but she has a braid! So, like Uta she has a crown with a pill box cap, a gebende wrapped around her head, and wavy hair showing at the temples, but, since we can see her from the side we also see that she has a single braid hainging down her back. Furthermore, if you look at my favourite of the Naumberg ladies: the happily smiling Reglindis you see that she also probably has a hanging braid. Image from wikimedia commons Oh, what I would give for a side view of Uta's head :) Narrower chinstraps were worn with a fillet and hanging hair as you have seen in the example of the motehr and daughter from the Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandschrift above. The Weingartner Liederhandschrift, which is contemporary to it, but much less fancy seem to favour a slightly...sloppy approach to the white linen fillet. Image from wikimedia commons You also find many examples of hanging hair under a veil in the Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandschrift. With veil and a circlet on top of it. And another one: And one with a pink veil draped over what appears to be a gold coloured band of some kind. No chinstraps as you can see on these images, but veils indicating married status anyway. Hair nets came in many colours, and were frequently worn with chinstrap and white fillet. Two examples from the Murthly Hours, a French mansucript fro the 1280s, show a green and a blue net respectively. And we also see that while prossibly shaped it is defintiely not a cap the woman with the green hairnet is wearing, which makes it less likely that it's a cap in the image of Nabal's death from the Maciejowski bible, since it looks just the same, except that we can't see the top of her head. Detail from fol 6 recto This is a gorgeous manuscript, which can be seen in its entirety at the web site of the national Library of Scotland. Lots of inspiration for illumination there. Another be-netted, fillet wearing...snake. From MS K26 at St.John's College, Cambridge. And a Norwegian early 14th century example, showing decorated hairnet, chin strap and fillet. So, hairnets are definitely an option, for married as well as for unmarried women - there are also quite a few of them preserved. This one is from the church of St. Truiden in Belgium, dated to the 13th century (link to museum site): And the same goes for this one, from the cathedral of St. Paul (link to museum site). As you see, they are first knotted and then embroidered. I'm ending this post with an image from the Rheims Missal 1285-1297, showing maybe a "Birgitta cap" with a fillet with wavy or dagged edge and a gebende. And wavy hair at the temples.

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Women hunting deer in dresses. Like you do. Hello friends! Welcome to the High Middle Ages! The weather was nice! People started having babies! Folks started clearing land! Governments stabilized! Universities were formed! Spain was called Al-Andalus, Germany was known as the Holy Roman Empire (though neither holy, Roman, or an empire), and all the Scandinavians were now Christian. Generally speaking, it wasn't a bad time to be alive. Sure, there were a few crusades, war and death, but there was FOOD. And, usually, not starving to death makes folks more cheerful. Also, when there's plenty of excess food, your community can do things like let artists paint and sculptors sculpt and scholars study. And, important to fashion development, it let inventors make stuff. Cool stuff. Fashion stuff. Before, everyone had always woven fabric on vertical looms. Like this: You begin to see why they never wanted to cut the fabric. But, some clever woman or man figured out how to make horizontal looms with foot shuttles. This, as you might imagine, GREATLY improved the speed and quality of fabric available. Oh, and I forgot to mention the conversion from distaffs: Which, admittedly, looks pretty glamorous.. to spinning wheels. Sure, spinning wheels are far less relaxing than distaffs, but the quantity and quality of thread which could be spun was massively improved. Which means it was possible, if you were rich, to have really NICE clothes, clothes which were brightly colored and felt good, clothes which you got to impress the neighbors with. Clothes which looked like this: Quick! Look at their faces and tell me which one is the girl. Hard to say, right? Well, I found this quote: "Men’s clothes were generally shorter, but the body shape that the clothes emphasized, and also partially created, was the same. In addition, the beauty ideal appears to be virtually identical for both sexes, something that also can be seen in mediaeval literature where a young man frequently is mistaken for a young woman. This confusion is possible because the concept of human beauty was the same irrespective of sex; a beautiful young man was expected to look the same as a beautiful young woman. This can be tied to what historian Thomas Laqueur termed “the one-sex model” or “the Aristotelian model”. This is the medical and scientific view of sex as a difference in degree of development and not as a difference in nature. The degree of masculinity and femininity was determined by the balance of the different humours that were thought to govern the body. According to this view, that which today is seen as primary and stable, biological sex, was seen as mutable. The basis for what was perceived as masculine and feminine was instead men’s and women’s social roles and the hierarchy between them. This was also the starting point when the body was interpreted; woman was not inferior to man because her body was weaker, but her body was weaker because she was inferior to him. This fact explains several phenomena in mediaeval dress. That the cut and appearance of most garments were largely identical is a natural consequence of a common ideal of appearance and beauty for both men and women, based on the one-sex model. It also explains much of the critique directed at fashionable dress. When it was branded as indecent that a woman wore a belt on her hips, as happened in the second half of the fourteenth century, it had nothing to do with exposure of or emphasizing of sexed body parts, or with sexuality. Instead it was the symbolic value of a belt worn at the hips, the traditional placement of the sword-belt, with its implications of knighthood and masculinity that made it unseemly for a woman." Source: Developments in dress history” at Brighton University December 8th-10th 2011 Eva I Andersson PhD Q: Is this a man and two women, three women, or three men? A: Yes! Crazy, right? Anyway, the guys who worked in the field still wore the same stuff they had pretty much always worn since forever: "I've been workin on the wheat farm, all the live long day.." This means a tunic, leggings, and some linen underpants. Though, these items might also be called a blouse, trousers, and braies. Peasant women wore an undertunic (or chemise, or chainse, or smock) made of linen, and then one or more ankle-length tunics (or gowns or kirtles.) "Peace out, homies!" Later on women started wearing surcoats. I'm including this medieval glamour shot cause I think it's kind of funny. Surcoats were basically long tunics with no sleeves. Eventually men started wearing them, too. Hawt So, what's different about this stuff compared to the Dark Ages? Well, the hats are new, right? "What about our hats?" "You mean these old things?" Pretty exciting, huh? Well, not only are the hats kind of ridiculous, they tell everyone looking at them that the wearer of such a hat is IMPORTANT!!! The High Middle Ages was when Sumptuory Laws were first invented. These laws, passed by kings and lords, basically said that only certain (rich or noble) people could wear certain kinds of fabric (silk, gold, brocade, velvet) or certain colors (purple, red, gold.) This is brocade. The idea of weaving this WITHOUT a horizontal loom makes me want to cry. There were also rules about how married women did their hair vs unmarried women, and what court officials wore vs what rich tradesmen could wear, and even what color cloak scholars could wear. (Red. Scholars wore red.) There were even rules about how short a man's tunic could be, with only noblemen allowed to have a tunic so short it showed his bottom. The crusades happened at this time, which means stuff like turbans and silks came to Europe. Obviously there had to be rules because if everyone was in a turban then chaos would ensue, right? (Oh, and watch this video about the crusades because it's super cool: http://youtu.be/X0zudTQelzI ) Really, what this means is, no matter where you were or what you were doing, EVERYONE knew EXACTLY who you were JUST by the clothes on your body. "Just me, a rich unmarried woman, hanging out with my two math teachers and a couple of guards being watched by a crowd of creepy praying guys." Kinda interesting, huh? But, they also had to invent sumptuory laws because something else was invented in the high middle ages, and it's the reason we are here. That's right. They invented FASHION. "Because we are FABULOUS!" Now, fashion in the high mids didn't change every few months or every few years, like it does now. Clothing still took a long time to make. Fashion, instead changed every generation. That's right, the kids didn't want to look like their parents, so they changed stuff. Sleeves got really long. "You kids today with your long sleeves and uncovered hair...!" Dresses got tight in the waist. "You kids today with your long sleeves and tight dresses...!" And, some unmarried girls even went so far as to wear ONLY ONE TUNIC. "You knew I looked scandalous, you just didn't know why.." For men, the skirts just kept getting shorter and shorter with fancy socks until eventually, the mens' hemlines were back at Greek levels of naked. (Though, they were totally wearing tights underneath so maybe it wasn't AS naked.) "Hey baby..." And, yes, you caught me. I cheated with the above picture because it's a fashion from the 1400s, which is later than what we are discussing today. However, it shows the evolution. You may also have noticed the lack of cross gartering. This is because folks figured out how to keep their socks up by tying them to their underwear. I totally wasn't kidding. Amazing. I believe that's enough for now about the High Middle Ages, a time of food and plenty, war and strife, and some fabulous new inventions. Now go take your test! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qkxKNI-CuKBJffm6Uqo9CNUZP-hFtYnT2YMrGfVJlpg/viewform

Here’s links and descriptions of a dozen great websites for finding interesting historic documents in World history.

After a ten-year quest for access, Siloe, a small publishing house nestled deep in northern Spain, has secured the right to clone the 'book that no one can read'.