along with imitations of oriental silks that were fabricated in Lyon and Tours after the
opening of fabric workshops there under Louis XI in 1466 and in 1480. The dukedom of
Burgundy was particularly wealthy and reputed for its magnificent fashions.
Donald L.Wright, Jr.
[See also: ARMOR AND WEAPONS; CLOTHING, JEWISH; JEWELRY AND
METALWORKING; TEXTILES; VESTMENTS, ECCLESIASTICAL; WOOL
TRADE]
Beaulieu, Michèle. Le costume antique et médiéval. 4th ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1967.
——. “Le vêtement.” In La France et les Français. Encyclopédie de la Pléïade (1981), pp. 237–52.
——, and Jeanne Baylé. Le costume en Bourgogne de Philippe le Hardi à la mort de Charles le
Téméraire (1364–1477). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956.
Demay, Germain. Le costume au moyen âge d’après les sceaux. Paris: Dumoulin, 1880.
Ruppert, Jacques. Le costume. 5 vols. Paris: Flammarion, 1931, Vol. 1: L’antiquité et le moyen âge.
CLOTHING, JEWISH
. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 forced Jews to wear a distinguishing mark on their
clothing that in France often took the form of a circular badge of red and white.
Otherwise, their clothing was much like that worn by Christians, since religiously
mandated elements of everyday dress were relatively few, strongly conservative, and for
the most part unobtrusive. A beard and sidelocks (pe’ot) were traditionally required for
men, but in the Middle Ages they were never exaggerated in the manner of those worn by
Hasidic men in eastern Europe in the 16th to 20th centuries. Fringes (ziziot) knotted in a
specific way were required on each corner of any fourcornered garment worn by a man;
since few medieval garments were four-cornered, medieval Jews regularly wore a special
fringed undergarment (arbah kanfot, tallit kattan) to ensure the observance of the
commandment. Headcovering practices varied widely in medieval France, so except for
certain occasions Jews would not have been particularly distinguishable on this basis.
Jewish women had no distinctive clothing per se, but married women were required to
cover the hair, and men and women alike were enjoined to dress modestly. Both men and
women were also prohibited from using certain fabrics by the biblical injunction against
the commingling of wool and linen in garments.
Thus, Jews would not have stood out dramatically from their neighbors. Christian
illuminators often needed to invent exotic, orientalizing, or bizarre garb when they
wished to identify Jews in a negative or mocking way. Yet Jews observed another, less
obvious admonition with regard to clothing, based on a traditional interpretation of
Leviticus 18:3, which prohibits the emulation of the practices of the “nations” among
which Jews find themselves. This was interpreted by medieval teachers, following Tal-
mudic dicta, as a prohibition of the hairstyles, the fashions of dress, and the customs of
headcovering of the dominant population. As a result, the garments of the masses
throughout the Middle Ages seem to have been relatively conservative due to a concerted
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