one of the anti-Calvinist satires that brought the academy
into disfavor with the authorities; in other respects the
tragedies, which also include Ithys (1615) and Polyxena
(1619), exhibit the usual Senecan bias towards bloodcur-
dling horrors. Coster’s farces, including Teeuwis de Boer
(performed 1612), are written in the old rederijker mode
(see CHAMBERS OF RHETORIC) and show little awareness of
Renaissance trends.
Coster’s Academie See DUYTSCHE ACADEMIE
costume With the disappearance of ancient Roman dress,
even in Italy, the standard differentiation between male
and female clothing was established in the early Middle
Ages throughout Europe: men in trousers (or hose) and
women in skirts. In the later Middle Ages clothing became
one of the principal indicators of social class, and sump-
tuary laws were in force in most countries to ensure that
the distinctions were observed. These laws also operated
to protect home-produced textiles against encroachments
by foreign goods. Another area with which sumptuary
laws were often concerned was the banning of fashions
that might encourage sexual license: low-cut dresses for
women, exaggerated codpieces for men.
Sheep for wool and flax for linen had been familiar in
Europe since prehistoric times. Silk came from the East as
a luxury import until silkworm eggs were brought to Con-
stantinople around 550 CE, and from there spread around
the Mediterranean shores. Genoa, Venice, Florence,
Lucca, and Milan were famous silk-manufacturing centers
in the Middle Ages, and in 1480 Louis XI of France set up
silk weaving at Tours, an initiative followed in 1520 by
Francis I, who started the Rhône valley silk industry,
based on Lyons and staffed by Genoese and Florentine
weavers. Furs, mainly from central and northern Europe,
were worn both as necessities and luxuries; as an item of
male attire the wearing of certain prestigious furs was re-
stricted to those of royal blood, and sumptuary laws often
regulated very minutely the type and quantity of fur al-
lowable to any particular social class.
By the late 14th century international vagaries of fash-
ion can be discerned. Peasant dress varied according to lo-
cality and was more dependent upon local products, but
the clothes of the prosperous merchant classes and of the
aristocracy show pronounced and well-documented
trends. Ostentatious impracticality in dress displayed the
leisured status of well-born ladies, who wore trailing
skirts, long sleeves, and elaborately horned or pinnacled
headdresses, which reached a (literal) peak of extrava-
gance in 15th-century France and Burgundy. At the same
time courtiers affected the poulaine, an extremely long
and tapering toe to the shoe; such shoes were known as
“crakows,” a word which, like “poulaine,” indicates the
Polish origin of the fashion. An English statute of 1464
banned any cobbler or leatherworker from making
poulaines more than two inches long. By the end of the
century abruptly squared-off toes became the rage.
In the 16th century men’s outer clothes were fre-
quently “slashed,” that is decorated with numerous paral-
lel cuts to show off the garment underneath; this fashion
was even imitated in ARMOR. Later they also practiced
“bombasting” or stuffing their garments with cottonwool
or similar padding. A corresponding move away from the
natural line of the body is seen in women’s use of the far-
thingale or hooped petticoat in the same period. Costume
became a major form of display in Renaissance courts,
particularly on such state occasions as the FIELD OF THE
CLOTH OF GOLD. JEWELRYwas attached to it in profusion,
modest lace collars or frills swelled to huge ruffs, and the
art of the embroiderer in gold and silken threads was lav-
ishly employed. At a slightly lower social level the law of
the land still tried to tie the wearing of certain garments to
social or military obligations; thus a Tudor gentleman
whose wife wore silk petticoats and velvet kirtles, the
cloth for which was an imported luxury, would be ex-
pected to provide one light cavalry horse with its accou-
trements in time of war.
Further reading: Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s
Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds, U.K.: Maney, 1988); Carole
Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence (Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002): Ann Rosa-
lind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and
the Materials of Memory (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce (1571–1631) English
politician and bibliophile
Born in Denton, Huntingdonshire, the son of a wealthy
landowner, Cotton was educated at Cambridge University,
and then moved to London where he began his political
career in 1601 as member of parliament for Newtown. By
this time he had begun to assemble one of the finest col-
lections of books and manuscripts ever seen in private
hands. Used by many contemporary scholars, such as
BACON, CAMDEN, and SPEED, it contained such items as the
Lindisfarne Gospels and the manuscript of Beowulf. Al-
though initially on good terms with JAMES I, Cotton was
arrested in 1615 for involvement in the poisoning of Sir
Thomas OVERBURY(1613). Released soon afterwards, he
was later suspected by Charles I of sedition and arrested
once more in 1629. Although released in the general
amnesty of 1630 he was denied access to his own library.
The collection itself was placed in the British Museum in
1753 where it remains today.Council of Ten The Venetian body mainly responsible
for state security. Its establishment dates from the investi-
gation into Baiamonte Tiepolo’s conspiracy (1310). Mem-
bers were chosen for one year and could not serve
consecutive terms of office. The numbers on the council11222 2 CCoosstteerr’’ss AAccaaddeemmiiee