̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Victoria Bartels

Arms and the man: how a culture of warfare shapes masculinity

amb206 — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 11:10:05 +0000

Brawls tend to take a familiar pattern. Verbal insults are traded and physical violence erupts. Something like this happened in the graveyard of a church in Florence on 30 March 1561. It began when a man named Niccolo di Piero Parenti called another man, Piero di Domenico, un asino (an ass). Both men soon drew their swords. Two others joined the fray – and Piero was wounded (his big toe was badly cut) leaving him unable to walk properly.

A remarkably detailed report of this encounter between a pair of hot-headed Florentines appear in the annals of the Otto di Guardia e Balia, records kept by the magistrates responsible for overseeing criminal affairs and law enforcement in Tuscany under the Medici, the dynasty which ruled this domain for close to three centuries.

Few scholars have investigated the archives of the Otto di Guardia which represent a vast and under explored historical source. But in 2015 Victoria Bartels, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History, spent two months studying these hand-written records. It was an undertaking that required not just a grasp of 16th century Italian but the determination to track down the meanings of dozens of obscure or archaic terms – from verbal jibes to items of armour. She was amused to discover that the insult poltrone translates as ‘armchair’ and means something akin to slob.

Bartels’ research into the usage of weaponry in Renaissance Florence forms one strand of a dissertation in which she will explore the relationship between men and armour (as well as martial fashion trends) in the 16th century. Her quest to understand more about the ways in which men used these items as masculine signifiers during this period takes her on a voyage into art, literature and archival documents that have survived more than 400 years of history.

Late Renaissance Italian culture was characterised by warfare. ̽��ֱ��so-called Italian Wars involved much of Europe and a preoccupation with armed struggle and violence was reflected in pastimes (such as jousting) and in male deportment and dress. Weapons (like those drawn in the graveyard in March 1561) were prohibited in 16th century Florence in order to maintain peace. But exceptions could be made and the contents of the Otto di Guardia archives suggest that many were.

As well as holding records of thousands of incidents of violence, the Otto archives also contain a huge collection of letters called suppliche (supplications) that petition the Duke for exonerations, sentence reductions, or the granting of certain privileges. Among these documents are numerous letters in which men wrote to ask the Otto for permission to wear or carry, in public, weapons that were banned.

Speaking today, at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Boston, Bartels will show for the first time how these letters shine a light on the ways in which Renaissance men used weapons and armour in their daily lives to promote a masculine image – and how entrenched the notion of honour was in early modern society. ̽��ֱ��supplications are rich in information not only about what offensive and defensive arms men sought to wear but where in town they wished to go and how they wanted to be seen.

“ ̽��ֱ��supplications are very specific in what they set out – and these details are what make them so valuable. In order to be given permission to bear arms a man had to specify with some precision what items he wanted to carry, when he wanted to be able to carry them, and why. ̽��ֱ��letters include a plea from a Portuguese priest who asks for permission to carry a dagger, and his man servant to carry a sword, for protection against a rowdy group of farmers and youths who are demanding his removal from a small parish church,” says Bartels.

“As a historian interested in the cultural history of arms and armour, it’s fascinating to hold in my hands letters that describe a whole range of situations and discuss both the usage and significance of these objects. ̽��ֱ��accounts written by notaries follow a template of sorts. However, each story is tailored to the individual behind the request. Although the level of detail varies, these documents provide historical information that we might not otherwise encounter. Every piece of material included, or withheld for that matter, assists us in our quest to understand period norms.”

Successful supplicants were awarded licenses by the Otto. Bartels’ research in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze led to the discovery of one such license – a copy of a document issued in March 1557. ̽��ֱ��license in question was granted to a painter called Maestro Giovanni Fiammingo Pittore. It gives his address and age (35 years) and describes his appearance (“black hair, black bushy beard, white in the face, medium stature”) and gives him permission to carry “an armed jacket, sword, and dagger”.

It is interesting that Maestro Giovanni was a painter and, as such, attuned to the powerful symbolism of arms and armour. ̽��ֱ��irony of portraying civilians equipped for combat was not lost on another artist. In 1584 Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo wrote that “merchants and bankers who have never seen a drawn sword and who should probably appear with quill pens behind their ears, their gowns about them and their day-books in front of them, have themselves painted in armour holding generals’ batons” (translation by Carolyn Springer).

Portraits and inventories reveal how a culture of warfare, tied up with notions of chivalry revived from earlier times, permeated deep into the male psyche and into male fashion – especially among the elite. An inventory of the guardaroba (wardrobe) of Lorenzo de’ Medici, as shown by Mario Scalini, itemised various pieces of armour including the de facto ruler of Florence’s leg armour that he wore around the city for decorative purposes.

Jousts, melees, and other tournament games were fabulous excuses for donning steel. ̽��ֱ��author Antonio Bendinelli recorded a tournament held in 1574 for Don Juan of Austria. Bartels says: “He discussed the appearance of each contestant over a span of 45 pages, commenting on the colour and material of their armour, clothing, and plumes. In contrast, he summed up the actual joust in just 20 lines, as historians Richard and Juliet Barker have pointed out.”

Looking manly, and impressing the opposite sex, meant adopting a martial style. ̽��ֱ��celebrated Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini suggested that cavaliers wore mail armour to impress women and, in 1538, the artist himself is recorded as possessing an entire wardrobe of mail. However, being perceived as overly militaristic also had its drawbacks. In Baldassare Castiglione’s ̽��ֱ��Book of the Courtier (1528), a female character explains to a surly, overly militaristic man: "I should think that since you aren't at war at the moment and you are not engaged in fighting, it would be a good thing if you were to have yourself well greased and stowed away in a cupboard with all your fighting equipment, so that you avoid getting rustier than you are already."

For statesmen, the consequences of going without armour could be deadly. In 1476 a grim fate befell the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who was assassinated in one of the city’s churches. “We know from a courtier’s account that the Duke had decided against wearing his corazina [upper body armour] the morning of his death because it made him look portly,” says Bartels. “His decision was a revealingly human, but fatal, trade-off between form and function. His desire to look slim and dashing in public may have cost him his life.”

16th-century notions of gender welded manhood and masculinity with arms and armour. In a letter written in 1572, Antonio Serguidi noted that Duke Cosimo I wept with pride when he saw his youngest son Giovanni kitted out in armour, and holding a pike and mace. ̽��ֱ��putting on of armour was a mark of adulthood – and, perhaps, was a rite of passage with no return. ̽��ֱ��showy masculinity of martial dress, however, trod a delicate line along a sliding scale – with restraint at one end and acts of violence at the other.

Citing the scholars Lyndal Roper and John Tosh, Bartels suggests that a man’s level of manliness was never fixed but existed in a state of flux. “Violence, albeit in appropriate circumstances, appears to have been one method of demonstrating one’s masculinity. Yet to receive the benefits of this cultural capital, violent acts had to be performed publically under socially agreed terms, and especially in front of other men,” she says.

“Arms and armour seem to have been visible manifestations of this concept. Even if men didn’t fight, the objects they carried made it look as though they would and likely influenced their comportment and behaviour. Today we see these items in static museum displays – but to those who saw them worn their potentially lethal function was never in doubt. However, these same objects simultaneously conjured up notions of civility and chivalry, making the symbolism of arms and armour somewhat contradictory, similar to the period’s understanding of masculinity itself.”

̽��ֱ��gaining and defence of honour – whether for an individual, for family or for state – was the ultimate goal of the Renaissance man. ̽��ֱ��Otto di Guardia’s archives in Florence reveal that Niccolo, who engaged in a brawl with Piero almost exactly 455 years ago, was the only person to be charged with a crime. He was ordered to pay a fine for the insulting word he used and for the injury to his opponent’s foot. Though others joined the fracas, they were let off.

As Bartels explains: “Niccolo was convicted because he sullied the honour of Piero. As seen in other parts of Europe at this time, the authorities were sympathetic to fighters who were provoked by the spewing of verbal insults.”

Victoria Bartels will give her talk, ‘Men of Steel‘, today at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Boston. She is contributing to a session called ‘Encountering the Renaissance, Honoring Gary Radke III: Regulating and Shaping Gender and Sexuality’.

Inset images: Titian, Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, 1536-38 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence); Parrying dagger with scabbard, Italy or Germany, ca. 1590 (Wallace Collection).

̽��ֱ��trappings of violence were embedded into the culture of 16th century Europe. Victoria Bartels, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History, has conducted research in a Florentine archive to show how, even at a time when the bearing of arms was prohibited, men negotiated ways to sport their daggers and swords in public.

Violence, albeit in appropriate circumstances, appears to have been one method of demonstrating one’s masculinity. Yet to receive the benefits of this cultural capital, violent acts had to be performed publically under socially agreed terms, and especially in front of other men.

Victoria Bartels

Left: Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of a Gentleman with His Helmet on a Column, ca. 1555-56. Middle: Giovanni Battista Moroni, ̽��ֱ��Gentlemen in Pink, 1560, Palazzo Moroni, Bergamo. Right: Moretto da Brescia, Portrait of a Man, 1526, Oil on canvas.

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What goes up must come down: a brief history of the codpiece

amb206 — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 10:00:01 +0000

In the Elizabethan play Wily Beguiled, a character named Will Cricket boasts that women find him attractive because he possesses “a sweet face, a fine beard, comely corpse, and a carousing codpiece”. Wonderful things have been said about the codpiece, not least in response to the television dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Explaining the deliberate downsizing of Thomas Cromwell’s codpiece, actor Mark Rylance opined that modern audiences, especially in America, “may not know exactly what’s going on down there”.

An item of male dress that was briefly de rigeur some five centuries ago, the codpiece both covered, and drew attention to, a part of the anatomy that couldn’t even be mentioned in polite society. Writing in the 1580s, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (translated by Donald Frame) summed up the curious case of the codpiece as “an empty and useless model of a member that we cannot even decently mention by name, which however we show off and parade in public”.

At a conference later today (30 April 2015), Victoria Bartels, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History, will offer new insights into the popularity of a must-have item for the man about town, with a special focus on references to the codpiece in European literature as well as representations in early modern portraiture and prints.

Bartels' dissertation investigates the militaristic influences found in civilian male dress in 16^th century Italy and Germany, and the codpiece is a prevalent component of her research. At a conference on history and gender, she will propose a novel explanation for its seemingly rapid demise in the last quarter of the 16th century when it shrank to a shadow of its former self, before disappearing completely by 1600.

Fashions can be charted in terms of upward and downward movements as well as shifts in emphasis from one part of the body to another. ̽��ֱ��historical consensus on the origin of the codpiece is that it was devised to fill a gap and, initially at least, preserved men’s modesty. From these practical beginnings, the codpiece (‘cod’ was slang for scrotum) became a fashion item in its own right.

In the 15th century men’s dress comprised doublet or tunic (worn on the top half of the body), hose (bottom half) with a mantle or cloak (worn over the outfit). Hose were two separate wool or linen leggings that fastened into the doublet, rather in the style of fisherman’s waders. As doublets became shorter, and the length of mantles also decreased, the tell-tale bulge (or more) of gentlemen’s privy parts became evident beneath their under-shirts.

“It’s hardly surprising that this revealing style was not to everyone’s taste – and that moralists were quick to condemn it,” says Bartels. In a sermon of 1429 (translated by Michael J Rocke), San Bernardino of Siena admonished parents who kitted their sons out in “a doublet that reaches only to the navel [and] stockings with a little piece in front and one in back, so that they show a lot of flesh for the sodomites”. In 1463 in England, Edward IV’s parliament made it compulsory for a man to cover “his privy Members and Buttokes”.

Pictorial and textual evidence suggests that the early codpiece was constructed from a triangular shaped piece of cloth called a ‘braye’. ̽��ֱ��bottom tip of the triangle was stitched to the hose and the remaining corners fastened to the doublet to form a kind of gusset. This soft triangular flap was superseded by a stuffed and padded shape designed to hold what Montaigne coyly called “our secret parts” and John Florio’s Italian-English dictionary lists as “pillcocke or pricke”.

Masculinity was big in 16^th century Europe – along with notions of chivalry, honour and romance. Codpieces were speedily hijacked for the purpose of proving masculinity in the most blatant of manners. ̽��ֱ��most elaborate versions were singularly showy and portraits show that in the mid-16^th century the codpiece reached epic (if not priapic) proportions. No expense was spared: codpieces were made in luxury silk velvet, bejewelled or embroidered. Even young boys were obliged to wear them.

Bartels says: “Ideas about masculinity were closely linked to notions of martial strength. ̽��ֱ��defensive codpiece was an integral part of the costume worn by German and Swiss mercenaries. On the battlefield, the armour codpiece was both protective and assertive.” In a satirical text by French author Francois Rabelais, a character asserts that men’s genitals require great protection in battle just as nature has equipped nuts and seeds with “belles et fortes braguettes naturelles”.

There are few extant codpieces. Rare survivors include the metal versions made to wear with suits of armour (Henry VIII’s armour codpiece is on display at the Tower of London) and the prettified wool and velvet codpieces adorning the ‘plunderhosen’ of Svante Stensson Sture and his two sons in Sweden’s Uppsala Cathedral.

Costume historians have long argued that the codpiece fell from favour as the result of the vogue for femininity that swept through the French and English courts. Elaborate ruffs and ballooning breeches heralded a shift in focus to the face and hips. “It’s evident in the late-16th and early 17th-century portrait miniatures of decorous young men by Nicholas Hilliard and similar painters that the style of men’s fashion was taking a new direction,” says Bartels.

However, fashion is more subtle than we think. Drawing on detailed investigation of contemporary sources, Bartels argues that codpiece entered a third – and hitherto overlooked – phase in its evolution. During the last quarter of the 16th century, she suggests that the codpiece was squeezed downwards and diminished in size, and then finally supplanted, by the emergence of another trend known as the ‘peascod’ belly.

“ ̽��ֱ��peascod was a style of doublet constructed by skilful use of padding and stuffing to achieve a rounded and tapering look akin to the fecund shape of a peapod ripe for picking,” she says.

“Both fashions protruded and competed for the same bodily real estate – the codpiece was reduced to accommodate the peascod. ̽��ֱ��markedly subtler version of the codpiece possessed a smaller silhouette and was often hidden by the billowing breeches on either side. Even in the northern countries, where it was not uncommon to see bows ornamenting the codpiece, this later version remains relatively concealed.”

Bartels' research suggests that the peascod was as imbued with notions of virility as the codpiece. ̽��ֱ��two are often mentioned together, and compared, in early modern texts. “ ̽��ֱ��peapod was a potent sexual symbol, likened to male genitalia. Moreover, the pea field was a convenient spot for canoodling and the phrase ‘shelling peas’ was employed as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. In Thomas Ingelend’s 1570 play ̽��ֱ��Disobedient Child, a character after mishearing his colleague confusedly asks ‘…with my madame laye in the peeas?’,” she says.

“An exploration of handkerchief designs in ̽��ֱ��Fair Maid (1607) by the historian Juana Green shows that the peapod motif was not just a virility symbol but could also represent betrothal, marriage and fertility. I think it’s fascinating that both styles possessed strong sexual connotations. However, I’m also interested in exploring their subtle differences – and how these two distinct fashions were read by contemporaries.”

Exaggerated peascod doublets became, like codpieces, the object of mockery. In a poem from 1580 the Cambridge scholar Gabriel Harvey derides the use of “largebellid kodspeasid dubletts, unkodpeasid halfhose”. Also in the 1580s, the moralist George Stubbes declared: “Now what handsomenesse can be in these Doublets, which stand of their bellies as big or much bigger than a mans codpiece.”

Some 30 years later Robert Hayman wrote in his poem Two Filthy Fashions:

Of all fond fashion, that were worne by Men.
These two (I hope) will ne’r be worne againe:
Great Codpist Doublets, and great Codpist britch,
At seuerall times worne both by meane and rich:
These two had beene, had they beene worn together,
Like two Fooles, pointing, mocking each the other.

There’s ample historical evidence that men have always agonised about their masculinity – and especially the question of size. A late 15^th century manuscript entitled Detti Piacevoli recounts the following joke (translated by Barbara Bowen): “A woman was asked what kind of penises women preferred, big or small or medium-sized. She answered: ‘Medium ones are the best.’ When asked the reason, she replied: ‘Because there aren’t any big ones’.”

Fashion is all about communication. “We use dress to construct an outward image of our perceived inner selves. ̽��ֱ��items we choose to adorn ourselves with are loaded with complex cultural messages.” says Bartels. “For me, the interesting thing about 16^th century male fashion is the way in which it reveals what was important to men at this time – their preoccupation with masculinity, military prowess and virility.”

Inset images – Portrait of a Young Man, credit Wikimedia Commons; Portrait of Antonio Navagero, credit Wikimedia Commons.

Only briefly in vogue, the codpiece has left a rich legacy in art, literature and – most recently – in televised costume drama. In focusing her attention on this ostentatious male accessory, PhD candidate Victoria Bartels has developed some new ideas about its evolution (and demise) as a symbol of virility.

We use dress to construct an outward image of our perceived inner selves. ̽��ֱ��items we choose to adorn ourselves with are loaded with complex cultural messages.

Victoria Bartels

Left - Wikimedia Commons; centre - ̽��ֱ��Master and Fellows of Trinity College; right - Museo del Prado, Madrid

Left - portrait of Charles V; centre - portrait of Henry VIII; right - portrait of Pedro Maria Rossi

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