orientalizing costume in early fifteenth-century french manuscript painting (cité des dames master,...
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Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-Century French Manuscript Painting (Cité desDames Master, Limbourg Brothers, Boucicaut Master, and Bedford Master)Author(s): Joyce KubiskiSource: Gesta, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2001), pp. 161-180Published by: International Center of Medieval ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/767244Accessed: 22/06/2010 17:55
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Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-Century French Manuscript Painting (Citd des Dames Master, Limbourg Brothers, Boucicaut Master, and Bedford Master)*
JOYCE KUBISKI Western Michigan University
Abstract
A group of miniaturists working in or near Paris between 1400 and 1415 significantly expanded the existing pictorial repertoire of orientalizing costume. They depicted elements of the eastern fashions worn by peoples with whom the French aristocracy had had recent contact-in battle and through diplomatic embassies-including Central Asian tribes that had settled in Hungary, the predominantly Turkish armies of Islam, and members of the Byzantine court. While the miniaturists often mix together garments from a variety of different cul- tures into an eclectic costume, the individual elements of the clothing are authentic representations of foreign dress. This approach, which paradoxically allowed individual features of dress to be identified while, at the same time, obscuring cul- tural origins in an exotic, fantastical mix, merges easterners into an indistinct, entirely foreign other.
Introduction
In the early years of the fifteenth century, a group of Parisian illuminators--the Cite' des Dames Master, the three Limbourg brothers, the Boucicaut Master, and the Bedford Master-greatly enriched the French pictorial repertory of eastern dress.' While representations of eastern clothing had appeared in western art for hundreds of years, these minia- turists distinguished themselves from their predecessors by depicting an unprecedented quantity and variety of oriental- izing fashions.2 These exotic costumes have long been noted, with scholarly opinion divided as to how realistically French artists rendered foreign dress. The prevailing opinion is that the costumes are predominately fantastic in design-the end result of a little knowledge and a lot of imagination.3 A few scholars have suggested that western artists did at times base their representations on actual items of eastern dress. However, even those who argue for occasional accuracy have offered in defense of their claim only the drawings of Byzantine court costume made in the mid-fifteenth century by the Italian artist Pisanello, as well as rather general references to turban-bearing Saracens.4
This reexamination of the eastern fashions depicted by the Cite' des Dames Master, the Limbourg brothers, the Bouci- caut Master, and the Bedford Master will demonstrate that these artists strove to represent accurately aspects of contemporary
clothing worn by a wide variety of eastern people including Turks, Mongols, Mamluks, Persians, Byzantine Greeks, and ethnic groups in Eastern Europe including Cumans and Walla- chians. Significantly, and for reasons that will be explored, the artists rarely represented a complete ethnic costume. Often they would depict a foreign hat but not the distinctive garments, shoes, and accessories culturally associated with the hat, dress- ing their figures instead in simple tunics. At times they took features from a variety of foreign and domestic wardrobes and combined them into a rich melange. For example, a single figure might wear a Turkish hat, pseudo-Roman armor, and an elaborately dagged French gown, while carrying a Byzantine shield. In these cases, the individual details of the dress are authentic, while the complete ensemble is fantastical.
Modern evidence for our illuminators' knowledge of east- ern dress derives mainly from pictorial sources and, in rare instances, from literary descriptions. Especially valuable are eastern representations of eastern clothing, for these provide independent witnesses to motifs found in French manuscripts, allowing direct comparisons to be made. There is, of course, always a danger in assuming that medieval representations of dress are reliable indicators of what people actually wore. Cos- tume historians are aware that artists may have represented traditional or archaic fashions rather than contemporary cloth- ing or altered contemporary dress for iconographic purposes. Moreover, they may have had incomplete knowledge of the clothing they were seeking to depict, or they may have been little interested in representing it with much detail.5 A depend- able history of medieval dress can only be constructed when pictorial evidence is compared with archaeological material and written documents. Several generations of such research into late medieval representations of dress in both Europe and the Islamic world support the conclusion that art in this era can be a reliable indicator of contemporary clothing, if each claim to authenticity is tested. It should be noted that this study is not concerned with the complexities of eastern self- representation but with how French artists deployed their knowledge of eastern dress.
The eastern sources drawn upon in this study include Hungarian representations of Cumans, a population of Cen- tral Asian nomads living in Hungary, as well as Byzantine
GESTA XL/2 @ The International Center of Medieval Art 2001 161
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FIGURE 1. Cite des Dames Master, Princes of the East in Thomas of Saluzzo, Chevalier errant, Paris, Biblioth que nationale de France, MS fr. 12559, fol. 162 (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France).
self-representations and Italian portraits of Byzantine person- alities. For costumes of people living further to the east in Asia and to the south in North Africa, we must weave together a variety of kinds of evidence. The Islamic world was a syn- cretic blend of Arab, Berber, Persian, Turkish, and Mongol cultures, and the clothing worn reflects this eclecticism. Turk- ish influence on fashion was especially strong from the late eleventh century on, as Turkish military dynasties came to control much of the Middle East. Another influx of Central Asian fashion followed in the wake of the Mongol invasions, particularly when the Mongols ruled Persia, from the late thir- teenth to the mid-fifteenth century.6 This sharing of vestimen- tary traditions means that Europeans during the late Middle Ages would have seen the eastern other wearing a richly varied array of clothing.
A question fundamental to this undertaking is how French miniaturists at the beginning of the fifteenth century would have acquired information about foreign dress. The compari- sons made here between western and eastern depictions of ori- ental costume are not meant to imply that the illuminators had ready access to eastern pictorial sources. Although a more detailed discussion of possible sources will follow in the con-
clusion to this paper, it can be noted at the outset that depic- tions of orientalizing clothing in French miniature painting increased dramatically following two significant events at the turn of the century: the Battle of Nicopolis, which took place in 1396, and the residence of the Byzantine court in Paris from 1400 to 1402.
On September 26, 1396, a pan-European army was defeated by the Ottoman Turks at Nicopolis, located on the Danube in modern day Bulgaria.7 Although the crusading co- alition included Hungarian, Wallachian, German, Bohemian, Styrian, English, Polish, Spanish, and Italian forces, the larg- est single contingent was made up of Burgundian and other French knights led by Count John of Nevers, son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy.8 The Turkish sultan, Bayezid I, held the wealthiest of the captives for ransom, including about three hundred French knights.9 The vanquished crusaders spent nine months in Turkish custody in Adrianople, Gallipoli, and Bursa before they were released to Venice, where they re- mained until their ransom was paid in full. They did not return home until February of 1398, almost two years after their date of departure. Shortly after this ill-fated crusade, the Byz- antine emperor, Manuel II visited Europe with the hopes of
162
enlisting aid for yet another crusade against the Turks.10 This was the first time a Byzantine emperor had traveled so far west. He arrived in Paris on June 3, 1400, and was lodged at the Louvre as a guest of Charles VI. Other than a brief trip to England in the early winter of 1400, Manuel and his retinue of about fifty remained in Paris for over two years, departing again for Constantinople on November 21, 1402. Most of the Valois court was in Paris during this time, including the dukes of Berry and Burgundy, who were closely guarding royal in- terests as their nephew, Charles VI, slipped deeper into insan- ity. These two events brought diverse eastern cultures directly into the quotidian experience of the French aristocracy. The simultaneous multiplication of eastern dress in French painting suggests this contact provided artists with both information and inspiration.
The Cite des Dames Master
One of the earliest witnesses to the new French experi- ence of eastern dress is a richly illustrated copy of Thomas of Saluzzo's Chevalier errant now in the Bibliotheque natio- nale de France." Thomas was the marquis of Saluzzo, a city in northern Italy with strong ties to France. He made several trips to Paris in his lifetime, including an extended stay in 1401 during the residence of the Byzantine court. Saluzzo wrote the text of the Chevalier errant in French between 1394 and 1396 while he was imprisoned by his political rival, the duke of Savoy. His chivalric allegory incorporates historical and con- temporary characters including Genghis Khan, Murad I, Philip the Bold, and Saluzzo himself. The manuscript under consid- eration was the author's personal copy, most likely illuminated during his fourth and final trip to Paris from 1403 to 1405.12 Millard Meiss has attributed its ninety-four miniatures to the Cite des Dames Master and his workshop.13 This illuminator specialized in the production of secular works written by European authors, and he and his shop typically dressed the European protagonists, whether contemporary, allegorical, or historical figures, in French fashions. When illustrating the Chevalier errant, however, he was called upon to depict a convocation of the Princes of the East (Fig. 1). This is one of the most remarkable miniatures of the time, not only for the variety of its eastern costume but also for the amount of au- thentic detail it incorporates. The princes, set in a grassy oasis and surrounded by tents, wear costumes that have specifically Byzantine, Mamluk, Mongol, Turkish, Cuman, and Wallachian features. A lion, a leopard, and two Persian carpets appear as well, creating an exotic melange for the medieval viewer. The exoticism is sharpened through contrast with the facing min- iature, in which an associated illuminator has painted the Princes of the West dressed entirely in western clothing and placed in a typical European setting.14
So precisely accurate are details of the princes' costumes that it is possible the Citd des Dames Master intended to create sartorial portraits of distinct ethnicities, or even personalities.
FIGURE 2. Pisanello, John VIII Palaeologus, Portrait medal, ca. 1438/9,
Musde du Louvre, Inv. MRR 330 (photo: Rdunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY).
For example, the inner figure of two conversing men in the lower left corner of the miniature may be a portrait of the Byz- antine emperor, Manuel II. This figure wears a popular Byz- antine hat with a high rounded crown and a pointed brim that projects over the face, shielding the eyes from the sun. Per- haps this is the hat that Pseudo-Kodinos said was worn by emperor and court officials alike in the Palaeologan era-a hat called the skiadion in reference to the shadow the brim casts over the wearer's face.15 Although hats like these can be found in Byzantine art as early as the twelfth century, that de- picted by the Cite des Dames Master specifically documents the influence of Turkish, Mongol, and Persian fashions during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Under Asiatic influence the crown became higher and was divided into verti- cal sections decorated with gold cording; the brim was always divided into front and back sections that could be indepen- dently folded up or down (Fig. 5e).16 Although no Byzantine representations of this traditional hat with the Asiatic crown survive from the early fifteenth century, there are several ex- amples from mid-century. Manuel Laskares Chatzikes wears one in the funerary portrait painted in the church of Panta- nassa in Mistra shortly after his death in 1445.17 The most famous depictions are owed to Pisanello, who documented the costume of the Greek court during its residence in Flo- rence at the time of the Council of Reconciliation (1438/39). In Pisanello's drawings and in a portrait medal, Manuel's son, John VIII Palaeologus, wears a hat that mirrors closely the one painted by the Citd des Dames Master (Fig. 2).18
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The garments worn by the fictional prince of the East accurately reflect Byzantine fashion. He wears a tunic closed down the front with gold frog buttons, a fastening system used by the Saljuq, Ayybid, Mamluk, and Ottoman Turks of the late Middle Ages-one of many Asiatic fashion features adopted by the Byzantine court.19 Over this garment, he wears a mantle with exceedingly long sleeves. Slit at the height of the elbows to allow the forearms to emerge, the sleeves fall al- most to the ankles, tapering slightly along their length. Hang- ing sleeves are an ancient eastern tradition, traceable to the fourth century at least in ancient Persia, and they continued common among Turks and Persians in the Middle Ages. Long, slit sleeves appeared in Byzantine art as early as the eleventh century and remained popular throughout the fifteenth century. Similar mantles are depicted in the fourteenth-century funer- ary portraits at the Kariye Camii in Constantinople, and, in one of Pisanello's drawings, the emperor John VIII Palaeolo- gus wears a mantle with overly long and very wide sleeves.20
Notably, the Cite des Dames Master has dressed his "Byzan- tine" figure entirely in white, including his hat, and shown him with a long white beard. Perhaps the miniaturist, or Thomas of Saluzzo himself, retained a specific memory of Manuel II, who made his entry into Paris on June 3, 1400, according to the chronicle of Saint-Denis, "dressed in his imperial garb of white silk [and] seated . . on the white horse presented to him by the king." The chronicler also notes the emperor's "modest stature, distinguished by a manly chest and by yet firmer limbs, though under a long beard and showing white hair everywhere."21
In at least one other instance in the Princes of the East miniature the Cite des Dames Master seems to have been at- tempting to represent a particular ethnic identity. The African figure standing between the two seated groups of men wears identifiable articles of Egyptian Abbasid or Mamluk dress. The clothing style of both dynasties was affected by the in- corporation of Central Asian fashions of the Turkish mili- tary, especially after the Turkish Mamluks (1250-1517), former mercenaries, replaced the Islamic Abbasids. The figure painted by the Cite des Dames Master wears a distinctive turban, ovoid in profile with a long end-piece that trails down the back. This style of turban originated in Baghdad during the early Abbasid period and then migrated to Egypt where it was used at court well into the Mamluk period.22 The Egyptian prince also, ap- propriately, carries his saber over his shoulder in a baldric rather than on a sword belt. The baldric was used by the first caliphs in the seventh century, but in the Arab world it had fallen into disuse by the eleventh century, except in a few tribal areas in the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. It contin- ued to be a part of the Abbasid caliphs' ceremonial dress, and Mamluk sultans soon copied this custom, although they pre- ferred the sword belt in combat.23 The garments worn by this prince include a short tunic with bell-like sleeves worn over a long under-tunic. While Islamic fashion often layered gar- ments, such short tunics were usually worn over trousers.
Nevertheless, the cut of the over-tunic corresponds to written descriptions of Mamluk dress, which characterize the style of over-garment worn by high-ranking shaikhs as having wide sleeves and a single opening over the shoulders.24 Like the one painted by the Cite des Dames Master, these over-garments were often finished with a decorative banding around the neck and sleeve hem.25 We may note that Ottoman foot soldiers also employed the baldric, which the French crusaders could thus have seen at Nicopolis, and Byzantine Greeks visiting the French Court may have worn short tunics over longer ones, since this was common Byzantine dress.26 Nonetheless the illuminator's combination of wide-sleeved coat, turban with trailing end-piece, and saber and baldric worn by this African figure may indicate authentic knowledge of contemporary Egyptian ceremonial dress.
The accurately clad "Byzantine" and "Mamluk" princes provide the most complete sartorial portraits in the miniature. It proves impossible to determine the precise ethnicity of the other princes, since their costumes are not finished with the same amount of detail, and the artist mixes features from a variety of ethnic sources or incorporates features that are om- nipresent in the Islamic world. Nonetheless it is possible to confirm the accuracy of individual articles of dress. Although partially obscured by his companions, the central figure of three seated on a carpet wears a turban decorated with a large jewel as well as a caftan, side-wrapped and fastened under the left arm. The form of the caftan is well-attested: found in many eastern wardrobes, including Persian, Turkish, Mongol, Mamluk, Cuman, and Byzantine, it is a narrow tunic typically closed by a side fastening under the right or left arm, although central openings were also used.27 The Cite des Dames Master's caftan is quite similar to one represented in an early fifteenth- century Turkish copy of the Romance of Alexander the Great (Fig. 3). Dated July 13, 1416, this manuscript includes an ac- count of the life of Bayezid I (d. 1402), the sultan who de- feated the Nicopolis crusaders, and it is one of the earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts written in Turkish.28 The necklines of the caftans both in this manuscript and in the Princes of the East miniature are decorated with a simple scalloped edging. Although the caftan would have been one of the eastern garments most commonly seen by western cru- saders and adventurers, like many other articles of oriental dress, it is not, to my knowledge, represented in French art until the early fifteenth century.
The turban worn by the prince in the caftan, decorated with a large jewel, also finds many parallels. Of course the turban itself was a ubiquitous head covering among Central Asian, mid-eastern, and North African peoples. It had an an- cient heritage and was often used in western art as a sign for "Saracens." Previous to the fifteenth century, the turbans rep- resented by western artists were rather generic in form. The Citd des Dames Master, however, has represented ten turbans in this one miniature that demonstrate in a remarkable way the wide variety of turban-wrapping techniques used in the
164
Islamic world. It suffices to compare the Princes of the East miniature with drawings that replicate the turbans found in Islamic sources of diverse provenance dated between 1330 and 1420 (Fig. 4). The Abbasid or Mamluk turban with the trailing end-piece has already been discussed. The jeweled tur- ban was another element of Abbasid dress that was adopted by the Mamluks. The most extraordinary of these was an enor- mous turban wound into an ellipsoidal shape, which was worn by the caliph. The entire turban was ornamented with jewels, while a large, single gem was centered at the caliph's fore- head.29 Another common practice was to twist the winding cloth into a thick cord and to wear it as a headband. This is how the turban of another African prince, standing at the far right, was painted by the Cite des Dames Master. Another practice was to wrap the cord around the bottom half of a hat or helmet, creating a thick brim (Figs. 4a, b, f). This type of hat-turban combination is worn by one of the four princes seated at the center of the miniature: the figure also has hair plaited in a long single braid reaching halfway down his back, a traditional hairstyle of many ethnic groups indigenous to the Asian Steppes, including Turks, Cumans, and Mongols.30
The miniaturist has dressed six figures in a garment deco- rated with a pointed collar. This is a feature of Turkish and Persian dress, where the collar is quite thin, and also of Byzan- tine and Bulgarian dress, where the collar is larger and stiffer. These garments usually fasten down the front with a series of closely spaced buttons that at times continue decoratively along the inner edges of the collar. In Persian and Turkish examples, the garment may have a side closure. Collar and lining are often in a color contrasting with the main body of the gar- ment, which may be worn as either a tunic or a coat. In Byz- antine art it is worn as an outer garment, as demonstrated by the funeral portraits in the Kariye Camii and by Pisanello's portrait of John Palaeologus (Fig. 2).31 The Cite des Dames Master has not reproduced the garment with the same detail found in either the eastern or the Italian renderings, although several are decorated by tiraz bands. Standard features of both Islamic and Byzantine dress, used to decorate clothing or tur- bans, tiraz bands are richly embroidered strips of cloth, often incorporating inscriptions, most commonly placed on the upper arm of a garment (Fig. 3).32
In his depiction of foreign military dress and equipment, the Cite" des Dames Master is selective. A figure in full armor is never represented; rather, small details such as swords and shields are deemed sufficient to signify the eastern other. Over- sized and dramatically curving sabers appear twice: one is held by the figure wearing the turban with a trailing end-piece and the other by the central figure in the group to the far right. This weapon came out of the Central Asian Steppes and was employed by both Turkish and Mongol tribes as early as the eighth century. By the fourteenth century it was in common use throughout the Middle East and had made an appearance in Byzantium and Eastern Europe.33 The saber-bearing figure on the left also holds a kite-shaped shield, while his neighbor
................
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FIGURE 3. Romance of Alexander the Great, Paris, Biblioth que natio- nale de France, MS turc. 309, fol. 114v (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France).
to the right carries a small round one. It is difficult to assign a specific ethnicity to these shields as both were employed at various times in the East and in the West. However, these items, like others in the miniature, likely had eastern conno- tations: at the turn of the century, the Byzantine army was using a full-length kite-shaped shield with this concave pro- file, while Central Asian tribesmen wielding the composite bow preferred a small circular shield for protection.34 The costume of the figure with the saber and kite-shaped shield displays another unusual feature. His legs are wrapped with strips of cloth from the ankle to the knee. This is an Irano- Central Asian feature that was transferred to the Arab world by the Turkish military dynasties. Worn with sandals, the leg- gings held the voluminous fabric of Turkish pants against the calves; they took the place of expensive leather boots and were typically worn by the infantry.35 The figure represented by the Cite des Dames Master is barefoot.
165
The rather generic quality of many of the garments and much of the military equipment depicted by the Citd des Dames Master leaves his distinctive hats and turbans as the most significant markers of foreign identity in the Princes of the East miniature. The focus on hats as signifiers may reflect the recent popularity of hats in French courtly fashion:36 view- ers would have been primed to revel in these exotic displays. A tall pointed hat topped with a feather and, more improbably, a small fleur-de-lys crown and surrounded by a wide, turned-
up brim split in the center is worn by one of the four seated
princes. This hat and a variety of related hats appear in Turkish
manuscripts, as well as in Turkish-influenced Persian manu-
scripts produced under Mongol (Ilkhanid or Timurid) hegem- ony during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Fig. 5). By this time Iran had become a melting pot of Persian, Turk- ish, and Mongol peoples united by a common Islamic faith.
Many of the medieval hats are still worn today in Turkey and
Mongolia, pointing to an origin in the Central Asian Steppes. They were, and still are, typically made of wool felt or, in cases where the crown was divided into vertical segments, of
quilted fabric. The crowns vary in shape and size from low and rounded to very tall and pointed. The brims come in a
variety of profiles ranging from flat, triangular, scalloped, and
zigzagged to crescent-shaped. They are often divided into two or four parts that can be alternately turned up or down. Brims may also be constructed of fur or fashioned from the
winding cloth of a turban, as represented in the Turkish Romance of Alexander (Fig. 3).
A rich source for the study of these hats and other fea- tures of late medieval Islamic dress is the Demotte Shahnama, where thirty-seven different types of headgear are depicted. 37
The Shahnama itself is a record of Iranian pre-Islamic history and legend gathered together in about the year 1000 at the Turkish court of Mahmad of Ghazna, ruler of the northeastern
province of the Persian world. The Demotte Shahnama is a
copy of this text produced between 1330 and 1360 under the
Mongol Ilkhanid rulers of Persia. The tall pointed hat with the wide brim represented by the Cite des Dames Master is similar to one that appears in the Persian manuscript (Fig. 51), except that the French miniaturist has lined the brim with ermine and placed a fleur-de-lys crown at its pinnacle, un-
doubtedly to indicate the princely status of the wearer. And indeed two other western-styled crowns appear in the minia- ture. One of these, worn by a figure at the far upper left, sits atop a turban. Despite these iconographic intrusions, the simi- larities between eastern and western representations of "Per- sian" headgear are often so striking that we must conclude that the Citi des Dames Master and his fellow artists knew these hats through either material, visual, or descriptive sources.
Another unusual hat in the Princes of the East miniature, worn by the figure on the extreme right, can be identified by comparison with images in the Hungarian Illuminated Chron- icle, painted ca. 1360 (Figs. 6, 7).38 The hat has a tall, pointed crown bent into a slight curve and a flat brim which has been
a b
c d
e f
FIGURE 4. Islamic turban styles: a. Kalila wa Dimna, Istanbul, Topkapu Saray Museum, MS Revan 1023, Persian, 1413; b. Nihayat al Su'l (Furusiyah), Lon-
don, British Library, Add. MS 18866, Mamluk, 1371; c. Demotte Shahnama, Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS pers. 111, ca. 1330-1360; d. Demotte Shahnama, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 22.392, ca. 1330-1360; e. Painted Leather Ceiling, Palace of the Lions, Alhambra, Granada, late fourteenth cen-
tury; f Demotte Shahnama, Iran, private collection (Grabar and Blair, 1980, p. 149) (drawings by Karen Bondarchuk).
divided into front and back sections. It is similar to the pre- viously discussed hat and to others that appear in Persian, Mongol, and Turkish art; its distinctive profile, however, is most frequently encountered in Hungarian art, where it is used generically to designate the eastern foreigner and more
specifically to represent Cumans. Their hats typically have a
166
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FIGURE 5. Turkish, Mongol, and Persian Headgear: a. Khvajiif Kirmdni, Khamsa, London, British Library, Add. MS 18113, fol. 12, ca. 1396; b. Demotte Shah- namah, New York, Metropolitan Museum ofArt, 52.20.2, ca. 1330-1360; c. Demotte Shahnamah, Paris, Vever Collection, ca. 1330-1360; d. Demotte Shahnamah, Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS pers. 111, ca. 1330-1360; e. Khviiji Kirmani, Khamsa, London, British Library, Add. MS 18113, fol. 12, ca. 1396;f Demotte Shahnamah, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 30.105, ca. 1330-1360; g. Demotte Shahnamah, Geneva, Muse'e d'art et d'histoire, 1971-107/2a, ca. 1330-1360; h. Khvdjii Kirmdni, Khamsa, London, British Library, Add. MS 18113, fol. 12, ca. 1396; i. Demotte Shahnamah, Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institute, Freer Gallery of Art, 23.5, ca. 1330-1360; j. Demotte Shahnamah, Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS pers. 111, ca. 1330-1360; k. Shahnama, Leningrad, State Library, MS Dorn 329, fol. 65v, ca. 1333; 1. Demotte Shahnama, Paris, private collection (Grabar and Blair, 1980, p. 144); m. Demotte Shahnamah, Geneva,
Musde d'art et d'histoire, 1971-107/2a; n. Demotte Shahnamah, Iran, private collection (Grabar and Blair, 1980, p. 149); o. Shahnama, London, British Library, detached miniature, 1948-12-11-022, ca. 1340; p. Shahnama, Leningrad, State Library, MS Dorn 329, fol. 65v, ca. 1333 (drawings by Karen Bondarchuk).
167
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FIGURE 6. The Cuman king Ladislaus IV, Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, Budapest, National Szdchenyi Library, cod. lat. 404, fol. 64v (photo: National Szdchdnyi Library).
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steeply pointed crown that is either straight or slightly curved; the brim is bisected into two sections that can be flat or trian- gular in profile. Cumans are represented, too, as wearing nar- row caftans, normally closed at the side, and soft leather boots. Cuman garments and hats were often decorated with large silver or gold disks, and, as among Turkoman and Mongol peoples, the men wore their hair in a single long braid.
Cuman costume was some of the first orientalizing dress to appear in western art, which is not surprising considering the Cumans' longstanding presence as auxiliary forces in the Hungarian army.39 A nomadic tribe, possibly of Turkoman ori- gin, they dominated the Central Asian Steppes until the com- ing of the Mongols in the eleventh century. At that point, they began a slow migration westward, settling predominantly in Hungarian territory during the thirteenth century. In the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries, they participated in military campaigns in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Italy, where their unusual costume was noted.40 In July of 1396, the cru-
168
saders heading for Nicopolis convened at Buda, where King Sigismund of Hungary joined their ranks. Although the Cu- mans were no longer a distinct auxiliary force under Sigis- mund, they remained a part of his army. Since royal law allowed them to retain their ethnic customs and dress, at least until the late fourteenth century, it is probable that the French at Nicopolis saw their distinctive attire on the field.41 It is noteworthy, therefore, that French artists never reproduced an entire Cuman costume but rather focused their attention on the exotic hats. The Cite des Dames Master dressed his figure with the Cuman hat in a short, generically styled tunic rather than a caftan decorated with gold disks, although the figure holds a small round shield, the most common shield type for any of the equestrian archers originating in the Central Asian Steppes, including Cumans.42 Whether the miniaturist was at- tempting to create a Cuman sartorial portrait based upon accu- rate, but limited, knowledge of Cuman dress, or if he wanted to produce a more general orientalizing figure, is not easy to determine.
Another unusual hat appears both in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle and in the Princes of the East minia- ture. Tall and bulbous, made of fur, with or without a small brim, it is worn by the figure standing at the far left, next to the man wearing the Byzantine skiadion. In the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle it is used exclusively to represent Ru- thenians (Russians) and Wallachians (Fig. 8).43 Under King Sigismund, the Wallachians had become an auxiliary force in the Hungarian army, and they fought alongside the Hungarian king at the Battle of Nicopolis. Their unusual headgear would have been a familiar sight to the crusading armies that con- verged at Buda in 1396. The Wallachian hat does not appear in French art before the early fifteenth century, at which point it shows up in many places. The Cite" des Dames Master uses it again in Christine de Pisan's Le livre de la mutacion de For- tune, and the Limbourg brothers give it to a figure witnessing St. Augustine's baptism in the Tres Riches Heures.44
The Limbourg Brothers
The Limbourg brothers, because their commissions focused on sacred texts, never had a similar opportunity to represent contemporary easterners. However, they used ori- entalizing dress to represent a wide array of historical for- eigners, including ancient Romans, Old Testament prophets, and biblical Jews. A copy of the Bible moralisle, most cer- tainly painted by the Limbourgs, has been identified as the bible Philip the Bold paid Jean and Paul to decorate during the years 1402 and 1403.45 The manuscript follows the standard format for a Moralized Bible, with two parallel columns of images and accompanying texts juxtaposing an illustrated biblical passage with illustrated commentary on it. The Lim- bourgs finished only the first three gatherings and the under- drawings for a fourth; nevertheless, the twenty-four completed folios contain almost 400 individual scenes, and more than
half of these small scenes incorporate items of eastern dress. The Limbourg brothers approached the task of representing eastern garb differently from the Cite des Dames Master, who was working on his miniature of the Princes of the East at about the time the Limbourgs stopped work on the Bible mo-
ralisde. The Limbourgs, at least in this early manuscript, fo- cused on headgear. They dressed their protagonists in standard biblical robes, pseudo-Roman armor, or contemporary French dress.
On the first folio, the artists painted several hats of Cen- tral Asian origin (Fig. 9). In the second scene of the first col- umn, which offers moralizing comment on the Creation, the figure on the far left wears what can only be a Turkish shar- bush (Figs. 5j, k).46 This head covering was part of the mili- tary uniform of a Turkish soldier and could be seen anywhere in the Asian Steppes or Near East where Turkish hegemony had been established. It would have been long familiar to Euro- pean crusaders, yet it does not appear in French art until the fifteenth century. The crown was constructed of sections of felt or more luxurious fabrics so as to produce a rounded pro- file. A pronounced upturned brim at the front was often cov- ered with tooled and gilded leather or a metallic plate, and the edge of the brim could be trimmed with fur. A silk button or metal knob often decorated the top. The Limbourgs' sharbush contains all the essential details of this distinctively Turkish hat. Beneath the sharbush this figure wears a face veil that has slipped down below his chin. Male veiling was accomplished by pulling the outer mantle upward to cover the head and face or, alternatively, by winding the free end of the turban cloth around the face-as was done among the Berbers of North Africa, so as to protect the face from the sun and sand. From North Africa, the fashion traveled to Spain where the cloth was typically slipped under the chin (Fig. 4e). Next to the figure with the sharbush is one wearing a hat that appears in Persian Ilkhanid art. It has a tall, rounded crown and a large floppy brim that undulates around it in curves and counter- curves. A similar hat, with a slightly shorter crown can be found in the Demotte Shahnama (Fig. 5i). It resembles the hat topped by a fleur-de-lys crown painted by the Citd des Dames Master, which also finds a parallel in the Demotte Shahnama (Fig. 51).
Other precisely rendered examples of headgear are found in the Limbourg's Bible moralisle on folio 10, in the third scene of the second column, where Jacob and his family meet Esau for the first time in twenty years (Fig. 10). Members of Esau's retinue wear a variety of exotic hats. While they un- doubtedly are meant to designate the figures as Jews, they also evoke the Jews' geographical origin in the East and call to mind the Islamic other. One of the Old Testament figures wears an unusual type of turban. Concentric rings of successively smaller size are placed one on top of the other, much like a child's stacking toy. Although I have not found an example of this type of turban in an eastern source, the design is not im- probable and could have been constructed by twisting the
169
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fr. 166, fol.12, detail (photos: Bibliotheque nationale de France).
winding cloth of a turban into a thick cord and wrapping it around a tall felt hat.47 Another figure in this equestrian group wears a tall hat with a crown resembling a truncated cone with a stiff, bisected brim. This hat, too, is one of the seem- ingly endless variety of headgear worn at the late medieval Persian court: a similar hat without the bisected brim can be found in the Demotte Shahnama (Fig. 5m). Another figure wears a helmet which traces its origins to Central Asian mili-
tary dress, specifically to a Mongol helmet with a low, rounded helm (or slightly pointed helm) and two circular plates hang- ing from each side to protect the face and neck (Fig. 50).48 After the Mongol invasions, this helmet type came to be used by many Islamic armies. The Limbourgs' example is decorated with a turbaned brim, a common practice among the Muslim forces.
Yet another accurately observed exotic hat appears in the miniature of Jacob and Esau: a Greek hat is worn by the fore- most equestrian figure (Fig. 10). It has a crown rising to a low point and an unusual bisected brim, in which the two halves curl separately into loose volutes. A hat with a similar scrolling brim but with a low rounded crown appears on another folio of the manuscript (Fig. 11). Both are similar to hats sketched by Pisanello in his preparatory drawings for the medal of John VIII Palaeologus. Pisanello actually drew several versions of the hat, with the curving sections of the brim shown rolling in different directions (Fig. 12). Another Italian rendering of this hat can be found in a portrait of the Greek scholar Johannes Ar-gyropoulos, who taught Greek at the University of Florence in the 1450s.49 Although I have yet to find an example of this volute-shaped brim in Byzantine art, its appearance in the
West-to designate otherness in French art and to identify Greek personalities in Italian art-coincides so closely with
periods of western residence of the Byzantine court in Europe that it must faithfully mirror contemporary Greek dress.
In the work the Limbourg brothers undertook for John, Duke of Berry, between 1405 and 1415-particularly the Belles Heures and the Trks Riches Heures-the artists adopted a different approach to representing the exotic.50 Rather than move in the direction of the Cite' des Dames Master, toward the depiction of a complete eastern costume, the Limbourg brothers intensifed their eclectic approach to wardrobe con- struction, mingling eastern details of dress with other signs of alterity. In the miniature of the Buffeting of Christ in the Belles Heures, for example (Fig. 13), the artists included mul-
tiple eastern motifs: a variety of turban-wrapped headgear, a Persian hat with a floppy brim, a face with distinct Mongol features, a tunic girded in eastern fashion with a sash rather than a belt, and a shield with a distinct Byzantine profile.51 Features of ancient Roman armor are intertwined with some of the most extravagant features of contemporary French cloth- ing, such as the dagged hemline on the soldier in the fore- ground.52 The Jewish high priest wears a bishop's miter.53 Throughout, the Limbourg brothers draw upon already fa- miliar formulae for denigrating Christ's tormenters, including indecently exposed body parts, exaggerated gestures, and gro- tesque expressions. Yet they were the first to use such a profuse and eclectic sign system to signify otherness. Prominent in this mix is the new, fifteenth-century vocabulary of eastern dress.
A comparison of the miniature from the Belles Heures with a miniature in the Trks Belles Heures de Notre Dame,
170
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painted for the Duke of Berry about fifteen years earlier by the Master of the Parement of Narbonne, illustrates the extent of the Limbourg brothers' innovations,54 as well as the way they have increased the quantity and variety of signs of otherness.55 For example, in the miniature of Christ before Caiaphas in the earlier manuscript, the only orientalizing feature appears in a bas-de-page image of Christ before Annas (Fig. 14). Whereas the soldiers surrounding Christ are dressed for the most part in contemporary French clothing, without the orien- talizing accessories and fragments of Roman armor used by the Limbourg brothers, Annas wears a pointed hat bent into a sweeping arabesque, surrounded by an upturned brim of a contrasting color. This hat is a typical example of the orien- talizing fashions that appear in late fourteenth-century French art. The hats have crowns that vary from the modestly rounded to the extravagantly elongated, encircled by upturned brims that were often cut into a hard-edged saw-toothed pattern or a softer, inverted scallop. In this context, Annas' hat is cer- tainly intended to represent a Jewish pointed hat, although it
is unknown if Jews ever wore such headgear. In form it is related to the felt constructions of Central Asia that are de- picted in Hungarian images of Cumans, as well in Persian, Mongol, and Turkish art. Although I have yet to find a pre- cisely similar hat in any eastern source, it seems to combine the tall curving crown of Cuman hats with the serrated brim found in Persian manuscripts (Figs. 7 and 5b, d, f). This may suggest that artists in the fourteenth century were unclear about the exact details of eastern dress. It is interesting to note that these saw-toothed and scalloped brims appear much less frequently in the fifteenth century when eastern fashions were updated to reflect the new French experience of the East.
The Boucicaut and Bedford Masters
The eclecticism of the Limbourg brothers finds parallels in the work of other fifteenth-century French illuminators, who used dress to comment upon their protagonists in a wide va- riety of situations. Prominent in the mix are eastern fashions
171
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worn by respected biblical characters as well as by the perse- cutors of Christ in religious texts; in secular texts, foreigners of many different cultures, ethnicities, and time periods were ori- entalized. The artists used this costume symbolically, avoid- ing an authentic representation of the foreigner. Even when French miniaturists were given an opportunity to illustrate eastern lands and peoples, none of them built upon the Cite' des Dames Master's incipient attempts to represent a complete eastern costume. The eclecticism is most obvious in illustra- tions of travel literature, such as the Duke of Berry's copy of the Merveilles du monde, which he received as a New Year's gift in 1413 from his nephew, John the Fearless, installed as
Duke of Burgundy in 1404, the leader of the French troops at Nicopolis.56 This compendium collects a number of travel ac- counts written between the late thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, namely those of Friar Odoric, John Hayton, Marco Polo, Ricold of Montecroce, John of Cori, William of Bolden- sele, and John Mandeville. The manuscript is richly illustrated with 265 miniatures. Although completed by four individuals or workshops, it is thought likely that the Boucicaut Master was in charge of the project, dictating the design and iconog- raphy of the entire manuscript, since his workshop produced most of the miniatures.57 The Bedford Master and his work- shop were also responsible for a large section.
172
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FIGURE 14. Master of the Parement of Narbonne, Christ before Caiaphas, Tres Belles Heures de Notre Dame, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 3093, p. 189 (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France).
Among the miniatures demonstrating the trend toward an exotic mix of clothing is the miniature representing the Festivities at the Court of the Grand Khan by the Bedford workshop (Fig. 15). Two of the dancers wear tall hats with wide brims; one of these is notched in the center front. These hats were also used by the Cite des Dames Master and the Limbourg brothers, and they find parallels in the Demotte Shahnama. The turban's winding cloth in one case is worn as a headband and, in another, as the base of a spectacular hat with a large scalloped brim similar to one found in an early Ilkhanid manuscript (Fig. 5p). The garments worn by these figures are quite unusual, with elements of both eastern and
western dress. Many are extravagantly dagged, a distinctly European feature, not encountered in the Islamic East.
Another miniature in the Merveilles du monde, this one painted by the Boucicaut workshop, shows how this oriental- ization could work in concert with both text and extra-textual elements to produce a strong message of eastern alterity. The image of Muslims praying before idols shows a variety of Mongol and Turkish dress, including a style of Mongol head- gear not previously discussed (Fig. 16). Worn by three of the protagonists in the miniature, the hat is similar to one still worn in Mongolia today. It typically had a low rounded crown and was distinguished by a fur brim that could also function
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as earflaps.58 These could be secured over the ears by a tie under the chin, as demonstrated by the praying figure on the far right. When untied, the earflaps curled gently upward, as seen in the case of the praying figure on the far left and one of the figures washing in the stream. In warmer weather, the fur brim could be folded up and secured to the crown. There is a curious relationship between the distinctly Mongol cos- tume and the text by Ricold of Montecroce that it illustrates. Vicki Porter has observed that, while the text discusses the Islamic tradition of washing before prayer, it does not suggest that Muslims worshiped idols.59 The artist's insistence on this falsehood reflects medieval attitudes that associated all non- Christian religions with the practice of idolatry. The juxtapo- sition of Mongol costume with idol worship may also reflect contemporary fears about Mongol expansion. This was the age of Timur (Tamerlane), the most aggressive and ruthless Mon- gol ruler since Genghis Khan. Having replaced the previous Mongol Ilkhanid rulers of Persia, Timur's power was felt from China to Europe. He was known for his fervent adherence to Islam and his equally fervent hatred of Christians.60 This rep- resentation of Muslims praying, with its extra-textual linking of Islam and idolatry and its emphasis on Mongol dress, in light of the current French understanding of the Mongol problem, created a potent image of the eastern other.
Conclusion
Many questions remain relating to the sources of knowl- edge tapped by early fifteenth-century French illuminators when they depicted eastern dress, as well as the possible func- tions and meanings of exotic sartorial eclecticism. Certainly the miniaturists could have drawn upon eastern pictorial sources as models for their orientalizing costume. Manuscripts, in par- ticular, were a common vehicle for the transmission of visual information in the Middle Ages, particularly over long tem- poral or geographical distances. While it is possible that Byz- antine, Islamic, and Hungarian manuscripts provided artists with sartorial models, on balance, this seems unlikely. In the first place, it is extremely rare for Byzantine courtly dress to appear in manuscripts: in sacred texts, biblical characters are consistently dressed in traditional robes, not contemporary clothing, and, in their official portraits, members of the imperial court always wear official attire. It is only through Pseudo- Kodinos's descriptions that we learn about the more casual dress of the Palaeologan court. In other words, it seems more likely that clothing, not images of clothing, served as the illu- minators' chief source of information. It is highly probable that both the Cite des Dames Master and the Limbourg broth- ers saw members of the Byzantine court during their Paris resi-
174
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FIGURE 16. Boucicaut Workshop, Muslims praying, Merveilles du monde, Paris, Biblioth que nationale de France, MS fr. 2810, fol. 292v (photo: Biblio- theque nationale de France).
dence between June 3, 1399, and November 21, 1402. Most of the Valois family was in Paris during these years, as both the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy had set up households in the capital; since the Cite' des Dames Master worked consistently for the royal family, it is likely that he was in Paris during this time.61 The accounts of the Duchy of Burgundy also place Jean and Herman Limbourg in Paris during these years.62 Sig- nificantly, the most accurate French representations of Byz- antine clothing and hats are found in the work of these artists.
The transmission of information about contemporary Islamic dress is more complicated. The miniaturists likely bor- rowed from the repertoire of orientalizing costume depicted by the previous generation of French artists; however, this repertoire was limited to hats similar to the one worn by Annas in the Duke of Berry's Tres Belles Heures de Notre Dame (Fig. 14). While early fifteenth-century miniaturists did include some of these hats in their illuminations, they in- cluded elements of eastern costume never before represented in French art. While manuscripts originating in the East could have provided a model for contemporary eastern dress, no fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Islamic text is listed in Valois inventories of the time. Actual items of clothing may have inspired the artists, though we wonder what opportunities they had to see Islamic dress. The odd merchant would have
passed through town, as well as ambassadors and emissaries visiting the French crown. The most significant encounter be- tween the West and Islam during these years took place be- tween the artists' patrons and a Turkish army in the far off city of Nicopolis, and in several other locations within the Otto- man empire, where the captured French knights were impris- oned. But surely, the elite of French aristocracy, although defeated, came home with stories to tell. Indeed, the Duke of Burgundy scheduled a succession of triumphal appearances in the major towns of Burgundy in the spring of 1398 for his son, Count John of Nevers, commander of the French forces. Doubtless the Nicopolis adventure was told and retold during these public appearances, and stories would have circulated in aristocratic circles. Our French illuminators would have heard the tales either at first or second hand. But could these oral histories have communicated the details of Islamic dress?
That question is impossible to answer, but it is worth noting that written accounts of the battle and the imprison- ment of knights do not in any case provide a comprehensive description of dress. Nor do either the fictional or more fac- tual accounts in the travel literature so popular at the time. If the artists were made aware of Islamic dress through descrip- tion, then oral accounts must have supplied more detail than the textual tradition. There is some evidence in favor of the
175
idea that oral recountings, along with certain activities of lei- sure time, transmitted cultural knowledge not recorded in the chronicles.
Germane to this study is a story told about John of Nevers, whose wife gave birth to their son while the Turks held the count ransom. Several years after his return to France, when, as John the "Fearless," he became Duke of Burgundy, he is said to have dressed his young son up as a Turk to play in the Park at Hesdin.63 What did this child's Turkish costume look like? Was it Turkish-made and brought home by the Duke after his captivity or was it purchased at a later time from a traveling merchant? Was it a gift from the Ottoman court? Did the Duke's tailors construct it at the French court accord- ing to the Duke's specifications? Or was it something more casual: a dishtowel wrapped around his son's head in imita- tion of a turban? Although we will never know for certain, the story informs us that Turkish dress held a certain fascina- tion in French popular culture-a fascination that was long lasting. This son grew up to be Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and, like his father, he supported a pan-European crusade against the Turks. He also added to his father's and grandfather's library of travel literature by commissioning memoirs from the various ambassadors he sent eastward. One of his emissaries, Bertrandon de la Broquibre, made his return appearance at court in July of 1433 dressed in "Saracen" clothes, which he then gave to the Duke.64 If a major source for the eastern fashions depicted by early fifteenth-century French illuminators was the recollection of the Nicopolis knights, or souvenirs they brought back with them, then the artists had to rely on partial information. This may account for some of the eclecticism of French orientalizing dress. How- ever, the incredible variety of costume depicted by some art- ists-including Byzantine, Islamic, pseudo-Roman, and French features-would indicate that this eclecticism was more pur- poseful than accidental.
Perhaps one way to understand the rich melange of eastern dress that appears in early fifteenth-century French manu- scripts, particularly those illuminated by the Limbourg broth- ers, is to place it within a modern discourse of otherness.65 More than twenty years ago, Edward Said proposed that one way Muslims were indicated as "other" was by representing them outside the confines of nature-by divorcing them from recognizable human experience.66 This, in some sense, is what the miniaturists have accomplished through their eclectic use of ethnic dress. The odd mixture of costume elements places the protagonists outside of recognizable experience-even of foreign experience. More recently, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen ad- dressed the issue of alterity in the hybrid bodies of medieval monsters.67 The association of monsters and hybrid beasts with the infidel was a commonplace in the travel literature so assiduously read by the patrons of our miniaturists. Building on the suggestion of John Friedman that monsters, particu- larly cynocephali, became a symbol for Muslims, Cohen uses Lacanian psychoanalytical theory to propose that the body of
this symbolic hybrid was both loathsome and alluring. He suggests that, "Muslim monsterization . .. activates not only anxiety (about one's own body, about one's own identity) but also desire (to possess the foreign body, to tame and control its monstrousness in order to hold it close)."68 The eclectic costumes created by French miniaturists might be viewed as sartorial parallels to the somatic hybrid. By creating these "monstrous" assemblages, French miniaturists met culturally produced expectations. The denatured quality of western rep- resentations of eastern dress, then, cannot be understood as merely pejorative, even when the depictions appear in pejo- rative contexts. Rather, like the liminal body of the medieval hybrid, peoples represented in exotic dress inspired fear min- gled with fascination, anxiety coupled with desire.
NOTES
* This research was supported by a grant from the Faculty Research and Creative Activities Support Fund at Western Michigan University. I would like to acknowledge the generous advice on matters of dress offered by Anne van Buren, Annamairia Kovics, and Maria Parani, who all read an earlier draft of this article. I am grateful to the anony- mous readers of Gesta and its editor, Elizabeth Sears, who suggested many needed improvements to the text. Lastly, I would like to dedicate this short study to Catherine Brandt Kubiski, whose eye for fashion
design and skill in its construction first piqued my interest in how the
body is clothed.
1. Although eastern costume was also depicted in French panel painting, the scarcity of extant panels makes it impossible to trace the develop- ment of an orientalizing trend in this medium. This study will focus on eastern fashion as found in manuscript illumination.
2. The term "orientalism," popularized by Edward Said (Orientalism [New York, 1978]), is used throughout this study to refer to medieval Euro-
pean constructs of the East, despite the fact that Said applied it to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when western attitudes to the East were motivated by the politics of colonialism. For reevaluations of Said's work, see J. M. Mackenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts (New York, 1995); and K. Windschuttle, "Edward Said's 'Orien- talism' Revisited," The New Criterion, XVII/5 (1999), 30-38. For recent studies of medieval orientalism, see B. S. Turner, Orientalism: Early Sources, 12 vols. (London, 1999); M. L. Farrell, ed., Early Orientalisms (Baton Rouge, 1992), esp. "Introduction," 5-12, and K. Brownlee, "Cul- tural Comparison: Crusade as Construct in Late Medieval France, 13- 24; J. J. Cohen, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York, 2000), esp. S. Conklin Akbari, "Orientalism and Orientation," 19-34; K. Davis, "Time Behind the Veil: The Media, the Middle Ages, and Orientalism Now," 105-122; and J. M. Ganim, "Native Studies: Orientalism and Medievalism," 123-134.
3. In his classic three-part monograph, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry (London, 1967-68; New York, 1974), Millard Meiss rarely re- fers to the exotic and orientalizing motifs in French manuscript illumi- nation and never attempts to explain them. Nor does Erwin Panofsky in his Early Netherlandish Painting, its Origin and Character (New York, 1953). Ruth Mellinkoff ("Headgear: Holy and Unholy," in Out- casts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle
Ages [Berkeley, 1993], 57-94) suggests that these exotic hats are fan- tastic variations on the Jewish pointed hat. See also G. Soulier, Les influ- ences orientales dans la peinture toscane (Paris, 1924); and L. Olschki,
176
"Asiatic Exoticism in Italian Art of the Early Renaissance," AB, XXVI (1944), 95-106.
4. Stella Mary Newton (Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince [Wood- bridge, 1980], 92-94), suggests that Cuman fashions inspired an orien-
talizing trend in late fourteenth-century Italian art, and she stresses the
importance of Greek fashions on Italian pictures of the Adoration of the Magi (Renaissance Theatre Costume and the Sense of the Historic Past [New York, 1975], 64-76). Charles Sterling (La peinture midie- vale a Paris, 1300-1500 [Paris, 1987], I, 291) notes that several French miniaturists, including the Cite des Dames Master, the Master of Flavius
Josephus, and the Limbourg brothers, may have derived their oriental-
izing costume from Arab and Turkish miniatures; he does not, how- ever, discuss particular items of costume nor their potential sources. For use of the term "Saracen" in medieval French literature, see Brownlee, "Crusade as Construct," 13 n. 4.
5. On the sources and methods employed by historians of medieval dress, see E Piponnier and P Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. C. Beamish (New Haven, 1997), 3-9; A. H. van Buren, "Le sens de l'histoire dans les manuscrits du XVe sibcle," in Pratiques de la culture ecrite en France au XVe siecle, ed. M. Pruato and N. Pons (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1995), 515-528.
6. On the eclectic nature of Islamic dress, see Y. K. Stillman, Arab Dress: A Short History From the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times (Leiden, 2000), 16 and passim.
7. J. Delaville Le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIVe siecle: Expeditions du marechal Boucicaut, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886), I, 221-321; A. S. Atiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis (London, 1934); D. Lalande, Jean II le Mein- gre, dit Boucicaut, 1366-1421 (Geneva, 1988), 57-74; J. Paviot and M. Chauney-Bouillot, eds., Nicopolis, 1396-1996 = Annales de Bour- gogne, LXVIII/3 (1996 [1997]). For lists of fourteenth- and fifteenth- century primary sources that describe the Battle of Nicopolis, see D. Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, 198-201; Atiya, The Crusade of Nico- polis, 212-219. The most complete contemporary account is found in the anonymous biography of John le Meingre II, better known as Boucicaut, marshal of the French troops at Nicopolis, written in 1409. See Lalande, ed., Le livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut, mareschal de France et gouverneur de Jennes (Geneva, 1985). Further French documents include Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys contenant le re gne de Charles VI de 1380 a' 1422, ed. and trans. L. Bellaguet, 6 vols. (Paris, 1839-1852; rpt. Paris, 1994), II, 492- 515; John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain and Adjoin- ing Countries, trans. T. Johnes, 2 vols. (London, 1862), II, 601-608, 622-633, 644-653; and a poem written in 1396 by Phillipe de M6zibres, Epistre lamentable et consolatoire sur le fait de desconfiture lacrimable du noble et vaillant roy de honguerie. The most engaging account is the personal memoir of a German soldier, spared from execution by Bayezid's son because of his young age. See The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427, trans. J. B. Telfer (London, 1879; rpt. New York, 1963).
8. Laland, Jean II le Meingre, 66; Atyia, The Crusade ofNicopolis, 20, 49, 56, 85. Cumans were a part of King Sigismund's army, but no
longer made up a separate auxiliary force.
9. Ibid., 97.
10. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Byzantine emper- ors made extreme efforts to enlist western military aid in fighting the Turks. They personally traveled to Europe with promises of a church reconciliation. In 1366 Manuel's father, John V, visited Budapest and
Rome; between 1438 and 1440, Manuel's son, John VIII resided in Italy (1338-1340). None of these efforts met with success. See J. W. Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425): A Study in Late Byzantine States-
manship (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), 123-199. For the Council of Rec- onciliation of Ferrara-Florence, see J. S. J. Gill, The Council ofFlorence
(Cambridge, 1959); idem, Personalities of the Council of Florence (New York, 1964).
11. Paris, Bibliothbque nationale de France, MS fr. 12559. The other known copy of the Chevalier errant, Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS L. v. 6, was damaged in the fire of 1904: twenty-four of its original twenty- five miniatures survive in poor condition. For a description of all the miniatures in the two manuscripts, see M. J. Ward, "A Critical Edition of Thomas III of Saluzzo's 'Le Livre du Chevalier Errant'" (Disserta- tion, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1984).
12. It was during his 1403/5 trip that Saluzzo secured a marriage contract with Marguerite de Roucy, whose arms are also included in the manu- script. Writing in 1430, della Chiesa reports that Saluzzo brought home from this trip a decorated copy of his own work. The book della Chiesa describes has elements not present in the Turin copy, which also includes the arms of Philip the Bold, who died in 1404 (fol. 161v). See Ward, "A Critical Edition," xiii-xxxvi.
13. M. Meiss, The Limbourg Brothers and Their Contemporaries (New York, 1974), I, 14-16, 157, 159, 377, 381; II, Figs. 18, 47-49, 56.
14. The miniature of the Princes of the West in the camp of Dame Fortune appears on fol. 161v, opposite the Princes of the East on fol. 162. The tents in both are decorated with coats-of-arms: those in the former belong to some of the most important houses of Europe, those on the latter cannot be identified, except for one that refers to the kingdom of Jerusalem. See Ward, "A Critical Edition," cviii-cix, 939-940, 943-944; Meiss, The Limbourg Brothers, 381.
15. Pseudo-Kodinos (Traite' des offices, ed. and trans. J. Verpeaux [Paris, 1966], 132, 141, 145, 147-140, 151, 153-166, 180, 195, 207-208, 227) indicates that the hat was worn by all members of court, including the emperor, but does not describe it. See I. Spatharakis, The Portrait in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts (Leiden, 1976), 53, 263. Similar hats are found in the following manuscripts: Chronicle of Joannes Scy- litzes, mid-twelfth century (Madrid, Biblioteca nacional, MS Vitr. 26-2, fol. 10v; A. Grabar, L'illustration du manuscrit de Skylitzes de la Bib-
liothbque nationale de Madrid [Venice, 1979], P1. 1 and Fig. 1); Book of Job, ca. 1362 (Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS gr. 135, fol. 39; A. Grabar, Byzance et la France mddievale [Paris, 1958], P1. 26); Chronicle of Manasse, ca. 1345 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Slav., II, fols. 24, 117, 183v; I. Dujiev, The Miniatures of the Chronicle of Manasse [Sofia, 1963]); and Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance (Venice, Hellenic Institute, cod. gr. 5, fol. 143, reproduced in N. S. Tra- houlias, ed., The Greek Alexander Roman [Athens, 1997]). I want to thank Maria Parani, who shared information about Byzantine dress from her dissertation while she was writing it. See her "Reconstructing the Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconog- raphy, I Ith -15th Centuries" (Dissertation, Exeter College, University of Oxford, 1999).
16. A similar hat, without projecting brim, was worn in Trebizond, the Chris- tian kingdom lying between Byzantium and the Mongol Empire. In his early fourteenth-century travel account, Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, the Spanish ambassador to the Mongol court of Timur, describes the hats worn by the emperor of Trebizond, Manuel Comnenus III, and his son as "tall hats surmounted with golden cords, on the top of which were cranes' feathers; and the hats were bound with the skins of martens."
See Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court
ofTimour, at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, trans. C. R. Markham (London, 1859; rpt. New York, 1963), 61. Clavijo was also received at the court of Manuel II in Constantinople, shortly after the emperor returned from Paris. Surviving examples of Mongol hats of a similar design indicate that the vertical sections were created by quilting the fabric. See H. H. Hansen, Mongol Costumes (London, 1993), 167-208.
17. For the funeral portrait of Manuel Laskares Chatzikes painted in the church of Pantanassa in Mistra shortly after his death in 1445, see
177
R. Etzeoglou, "Quelques remarques sur les portraits figures dans les eglises de Mistra," JOB, XXII (1982), 513-521.
18. Note that on the reverse of this medal, there is an equestrian portrait of the emperor wearing the older style skiadion without the bisected brim. See L. Puppi, ed., Pisanello (Milan, 1996), 144-146; and M. Vickers, "Some Preparatory Drawings for Pisanello's Medallion of John Palaeo-
logus," AB, LX (1978), 417-425. For the Council of Ferrara-Florence, see note 10.
19. Stillman, Arab Dress, 63; Parani, "Reconstructing the Reality of Images," 66-68.
20. See, for long sleeves in Byzantine dress, ibid., 62-68; in Pisanello's drawings, Vickers, "Some Preparatory Drawings," Fig. 5; in Islamic dress, Stillman, Arab Dress, 65-66; and L. A. Mayer, Mamluk Costume (Geneva, 1952), 22.
21. Chronique du religieux, XXI.1, ed. Bellaguet, II, 754-755; Barker, Manuel II, 397.
22. Mayer, Mamluk Costume, 13, 67. Sumptuary laws regulated the length of fabric that could be wound into a turban and the length of the tur- ban's trailing end-pieces based on social class and religious affiliation.
23. Ibid., 15-16; D. Nicolle, Medieval Warfare Source Book, II: Christian
Europe and its Neighbors (London, 1996), 20, 25, 33, 141, 161. The baldric was rarely used in the West.
24. Mayer, Mamluk Costume, 50.
25. See a fourteenth-century Egyptian copy of the Maqdmat (Vienna, Oster- reichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. A. E 9, fol. 30v), reproduced in Stillman, Arab Dress, Fig. 7.
26. For the baldric, see D. Nicolle, Armies of the Ottoman Turk (London, 1983), 35; for Byzantine short tunics, see Parani, "Reconstructing the
Reality of Images," 62.
27. Hansen, Mongol Costumes, 32-88; Stillman, Arab Dress, 47; Parani, "Reconstructing the Reality of Images," 59, 65-68. Cursory descriptions of the caftans worn in Central Asia are provided in two mid-fourteenth-
century travel accounts. Both authors describe them as side-wrapped garments. John of Plano Carpini (History of the Mongols, trans. in C. Dawson, Mission to Asia [London, 1955; rpt. Toronto, 1980], 7) writes that Tartar tunics of "buckram, velvet or brocade . . . open from top to bottom and folded over the breast; they are fastened on the left with one tie, on the right with three, on the left side also they are open as far as the waist." William of Rubruck (The Journey of William of Rubruk, in ibid., 102), notes that "the Turks tie their tunics on the left, but the Tartars on the right."
28. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS turc. 309. See Inventaire et description des miniatures des manuscrits orientaux conserves a la
Bibliotheque nationale, ed. E. Blochet (Paris, 1898).
29. Stillman, Arab Dress, 54. Clavijo (Narrative of the Embassy, 132, 152) describes jewels on the hats of Timur and his grandson.
30. Carpini (ed. Dawson, Mission to Asia, 7) describes the Mongol braid. See D. Nicolle, The Age of Tamerlane: Warfare in the Middle East, c. 1350-1500 (London, 1990), 15; A. Pil6czi-Horvith, "Le costume Co-
man au moyen age," Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hun-
garicae, XXXII (1980), 408. Islamic Arabs preferred to shave their heads. The braid was already used in mid- to late fourteenth-century western art to represent "Saracens" and "Tartars." See, for example, "Christ in the Temple" in the Trbs Belles Heures de Notre Dame, p. 62
(see n. 54), as well as the fresco of the Pentecost in the Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella (R. Offner and K. Steinweg, Andrea Bonaiuti. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sect. IV, vol. VI
[New York, 1979], 58).
31. P A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1966-75), III, 535-536. For Pisanello, see n. 18.
32. Stillman, Arab Dress, 40-41, and chap. 6, "The Opulent World of Tiraz and Precious Textiles," 120-133.
33. H. R. Robinson, Oriental Armour (New York, 1967), 68; M. Gorelik, "Oriental Armour of the Near and Middle East from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Centuries as shown in Works of Art," in Islamic Arms and Armour, ed. R. Elgood (London, 1979), 30-63; Nicolle, Medieval War-
fare, 73, 161; idem, Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe, 1000-1568 (London, 1988), 34; and I. Heath, Byzantine Armies (London, 1995), 44.
34. For the Byzantine kite-shaped shield, see ibid., 23; Nicolle, Medieval Warfare, 76, 96, 112, 193, 250. For the round shields used by armies of the Asiatic Steppes, see Robinson, Oriental Armour, 68; Gorelik, Orien- tal Armour, 35-40, 53-63.
35. D. Nicolle, Saracen Faris, 1050-1250 (London, 1994), 57; Stillman, Arab Dress, 67.
36. Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, 35-41.
37. The Demotte Shahnama is named after the notorious art dealer, De- motte, who dismembered the manuscript in the early twentieth century for sale. Reproductions of the dispersed folios are gathered in O. Grabar and S. Blair, Epic Images and Contemporary History: The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama (Chicago, 1980). For hat count, ibid., 41. Undoubtedly the clothing is indicative of fourteenth-century fashion; however, there is currently not enough comparable evidence available to make many accurate distinctions between Mongol, Turkish, and Per- sian ethnic features in the manuscript. Studies of Ottoman Turkish cos- tume books, which are dated between the late fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, indicate that details of costume, headgear, and military equip- ment identify the wearer's occupation and rank in a strict professional and social hierarchy. Perhaps similar observations will someday be able to be made about Persian Ilkhanid and Timurid costume. See M. Ser- toglu, "Introduction," in Ottoman Costume Book: A Facsimile Edition of Osmanli Kiyafetleri, ed. E Mehmed (Istanbul, 1986), 13-14.
38. Budapest, National Szechenyi Library, cod. lat. 404. This richly illumi- nated text records the history of Hungary from the tenth to the four- teenth century. For a facsimile, see D. Dercsenyi, ed., The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle (New York, 1970). For dating of the manuscript, see S. Magyarorszaigon, Image and Likeness: Art and Reality in Hun-
gary in the 14th-15th Centuries (Budapest, 1995), English summary, 249. On Cuman dress, see Pail6czi-Horvaith, "Le costume Coman," 403-427, with a bibliography of additional Hungarian sources; and A. Kovics, "Court Fashion and Representation: The Hungarian Illuminated Chron- icle Revisited" (Dissertation, Central European University, Budapest, 2000). I would like to thank Dr. Kovics for allowing me to read the dissertation in progress, as well as for her guidance on numerous points. There were significant ties between Hungary and France, beginning in 1342 when Robert of Anjou, French lord of the Kingdom of Naples, was also made king of Hungary. Between 1374 and 1378, a royal wedding was negotiated between the son of King Louis the Great of Hungary (Angevin line) and the daughter of Louis d'Orleans, brother to King Charles V of France. The untimely death of Louis' daughter ended the
arrangement. 39. Cuman headgear appears occasionally in late fourteenth-century French
miniatures and then more frequently in fifteenth-century works. Cumans are also represented in Italian art.
40. Pil6czi-Horvith, "Le costume Coman," 409.
41. A. Pil6czi Horvith, Petchenegs, Cumans, andlasians (Budapest, 1989); idem, "Le costume Coman," 407-409.
42. Robinson, Oriental Armour, 68; Gorelik, Oriental Armour of the Near and Middle East, 35-40, 53-63.
43. Dercs6nyi, Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, 48, 83 (fols. 72, 73v).
44. Livre de la mutacion, Bibliothbque nationale de France, MS fr. 603, fol. 143v; Trbs Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Chantilly, Mus~e Cond6, MS 65, fol. 37v.
178
45. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS fr. 166. See Meiss, The
Limbourg Brothers, 81-105, Figs. 278-325. See also J. Lowden, The
Making of the Bibles Moralisdes, 2 vols. (University Park, PA, 2000), 252-284.
46. Nicolle, Saracen Faris, 53, P1. E
47. The Limbourg brothers were not the first to represent this turban type in the West. It had appeared in late fourteenth-century French manu-
scripts, notably, the Tres Belles Heures de Notre Dame (p. 62), also owned by the Duke of Berry, perhaps suggesting that the artists used western models for some of their eastern dress. See below, n. 54.
48. Gorelik, Oriental Armour, 40, Pls. 42, 43, Figs. 105, 110, 128, 138-140; D. Nicolle, "Arms and Armor in the Album Paintings," in Between China and Iran: Painting from Four Istanbul Albums, ed. E. J. Grube and E. Sims (New York, 1980), 145-149; Nicolle, Tamerlane, 8.
49. The portrait of Argyropoulos was painted by Francesco di Antonio del Chierico in a copy of Aristotle's De interpretatione, Florence, Biblio- teca Laurenziana, cod. P1. 71.18, fol. 1. See E Ames-Lewis, The Library and Manuscripts of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici (New York, 1984), No. 70; and J. Kubiski, "'Uomini Illustri': The Revival of the Author Portrait in Renaissance Florence" (Dissertation, University of Washing- ton, Seattle, 1993), 189-199, 122-206.
50. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, MS 54.1.1, fol. 131v. The Belles Heures was completed about 1408, the date at which all three Limbourg brothers are first recorded as being in Berry's service, but it was probably begun about 1405. See Meiss, The Lim- bourg Brothers, 102-142; and M. Meiss and E. Beatson, The Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York, 1974). The Tres Riches Heures was begun shortly after the completion of the Belles Heures, but it was left unfinished due to the artists' deaths, most likely during the plague of 1415. The Duke of Berry died in 1416. See Meiss, The Limbourg Brothers, 143-224; M. Meiss, J. Longnon, and R. Cazelles, The Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York, 1969); and, for a complete facsimile, R. Cazelles, Les Trks Riches Heures of Jean du Duc de Berry, with English trans. of commentary by T. S. Fauce (Lucerne, 1984).
51. See for the sash, Stillman, Arab Dress, 64, 99, 164; for the shield, Heath, Byzantine Armies, 23.
52. On dagging, see M. Scott, Late Gothic Europe, 1400-1500, The His- tory of Dress Series (London, 1980), 70, 83, 104, 105.
53. This follows iconographic tradition. See R. Mellinkoff, "Christian and Jewish Mitres: A Paradox," in Florilegium in honorem Carl Norden- falk octogenarii contextum (Stockholm, 1987), 145-158.
54. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 3093 (sur- viving fragment with Hours of Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, and Office of the Dead). While it is generally agreed that most of the miniatures in the Trks Belles Heures de Notre Dame were executed by the artist who painted the Parement de Narbonne-a grisaille painting on silk representing Passion scenes made for Charles V ca. 1370-the dating of the manuscript is controversial. Millard Meiss believes it was begun about 1382. Based on her analysis of French cos-
tume, Anne van Buren dates the manuscript 1390/92. My observations on eastern costume also suggest that these miniatures were painted in the last twenty years of the fourteenth century. Others, including Paul
Durrieu, Charles Sterling, and Eberhard Kinig, assign the beginning or end date of a first painting campaign to 1404, because the last recorded death date in the calendar, that of the Duke of Berry's brother, the Duke of Burgundy, falls in that year. This assumes the calendar was integral to the first painting campaign and posits for the Parement Master a very long (thirty-year) painting career. See M. Meiss, The Late Fourteenth
Century and the Patronage of the Duke (London, 1967), 107-116; A. H. van Buren, J. Marrow, and S. Pettenati, Heures de Turin-Milan:
Inv. No 47, Museo Civico d'Arte, Torino (Lucern, 1996), commentary, 265-268; C. Sterling, La peinture mdie'vale a' Paris, 1300-1500, 2 vols. (Paris, 1987-90), 218-244; E. Kitnig, Les Tres Belles Heures de Notre- Dame du Duc Jean de Berry (Paris, 1992), commentary, 156-168, 216-217. Cf. A. Chatelet's critique of Eberhard's dating in BMon, CLI (1993), 539-540.
55. Both books of hours use many of the signs of otherness noted by Mel- linkoff (Outcasts, passim) to denigrate the other, including vulgar ges- tures, indecent exposure of the body, physical distortions and deformities, and aspects of some of the more extravagant features of French fashion such as particolored, striped, checked, or excessively dagged garments. Mellinkoff has noted (ibid., 73) that medieval signs of alterity could be used both benignly and malevolently depending on the context. When the artists choose to denigrate their characters, they multiply not only sartorial signs of alterity but also gestural and morphological ones.
56. Bibliothbque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810. John the Fearless had commissioned two copies of this Merveilles, one for himself and one for his uncle; only Berry's survives. See J. Guiffrey, Inventaires de Jean Duc de Berry (Paris, 1984), I, 262, No. 982, and 268, No. 1000; Meiss, The Boucicaut Master, 43; V. Porter, "The West Looks at the East in the Middle Ages: The Livre des Merveilles du Monde" (Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1977); and M.-H. Tesnibre, E Avril, and M.-T. Gousset, Le livre des merveilles: extrait du Livre des merveilles du monde, Ms. fr. 2810 (Tournai, 1999). Berry's library already contained an unillustrated copy of Marco Polo's account and an illustrated manuscript of this and other travel narratives. Porter ("The West Looks at the East,"10) suggests that in France, volumes of travel literature were popular gifts, particularly at New Year celebrations; perhaps this is why the most richly illuminated examples were pro- duced in French courtly circles.
57. Ibid., 27. This miniaturist received his appellation from the book of hours he created for the French crusader marshal, Jean le Meingre or Boucicaut, about 1409. While the Boucicaut Hours contains many of the elements of eastern costume discussed above, the artist's orientalism is more conspicuous in the Merveilles du monde. For the Boucicaut Hours, see P Durrieu, Le Maitre des Heures du marechal Boucicaut (Paris, 1906); M. Meiss, The Boucicaut Master (New York, 1968), 7-22, 131-133, Figs. 1-44.
58. Hansen, Mongol Costume, 167, 183-186.
59. Porter, "The West Looks at the East," 104-108. The artists of the Mer- veilles du monde made use of such extra-textual propaganda elsewhere in the manuscript, including equally incorrect references to Muslim can- nibalism (ibid., 104). See also J. H. Moran Cruz, "Popular Attitudes toward Islam in Medieval Europe," in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other, ed. D. R. Blanks and M. Frassetto (New York, 1999), 55-81.
60. Timur was able to defeat the Ottoman Turkish leader who outwitted the French, and Bayezid I died a prisoner of Timur in 1402. See Atiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis, 120.
61. There are no documents related to the Citd des Dames Master. Manu-
scripts are attributed to his workshop on the basis of style alone. Dat-
ing is based on circumstantial information regarding the patrons and at times date when an author completed a given text. It is believed the
workshop was operating in Paris as early as 1400. Meiss, The Limbourg Brothers, 377-382.
62. Ibid., 343.
63. My appreciation to Anne van Buren for this information. See R.
Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London, 1970), 268.
64. Ibid., 270. Le Voyage d'Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquibre, ed. C. Schaefer (Paris, 1892), 61-62, 261; M. W. Labarge, Medieval Trav- ellers (New York, 1983), 184-193.
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65. There is currently a prodigious volume of literature addressing notions of alterity in the Middle Ages. Pertinent to this study are: P. Freedman and G. Spiegel, "Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alter- ity in North American Medieval Studies," The American Historical Review CIII (1998), 667-704; E R. P. Akehurst and S. C. Van D' El- den, eds., The Stranger in Medieval Society (Minneapolis, 1997); and M. Goodich, ed., Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1998).
66. Said, Orientalism, passim.
67. J. J. Cohen, "Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales," in The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York, 2000), 85-104; and idem, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Cohen (Minneapolis, 1996).
68. Cohen, Monster Theory, 132.
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