Abstract
The medieval universe was understood to be fraught with ulterior meaning that was decipherable through other signs. From an Augustinian perspective, the entire created world was filled with vestigia or “footsteps” leading humanity back to its creator. The way an individual dressed was expected to be complicit with this divinely instituted semiotic system: In other words, clothing was meant to mean. Gender, birth, age, and (especially germane to our purposes) proximity to the holy were all salient factors in determining the symbolic freight of the wearer’s garments. This is the context in which we should approach the paraphernalia attending the priest’s exercise of his sacerdotal function, particularly articles of clothing. Not only did each article bristle with meaning, but the actual rite of dressing was an essential, arguably the essential, element in the making of a cleric. What follows is an examination of how clerical identity is constructed through the superimposition of layers of symbolically laden fabric even as it is deconstructed through the inverted ritual of divestment. The subtle shifts in protocol and increased formality of the later Middle Ages are assessed here in terms of the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s willingness to employ harsher disciplinary measures against its own—a tactical decision that was part of the larger struggle against heresy.
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Notes
Janet Mayo, A History of Ecclesiastical Dress (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984), pp. 11–12.
See Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, eds., Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique du dixième siècle 40.79–82, Studi e testi, 226 (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1963), 1:152–54.
See Jan Michael Joncas, “A Skein of Sacred Sevens: Hugh of Amiens on Orders and Ordination,” in Medieval Liturgy: A Book of Essays, ed. Lizette Larson-Miller (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 85–120.
D. A. Wilmart, ed., Precum Libelli Quattvor Aevi Karolini (Rome: Ephemerides liturgicae, 1949), p. 49. I would like to thank Jonathan Black for this reference.
See E. Vacandard, “Déposition et dégradation des clercs,” Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey 1925-), cols. 451–65;
R. Genestal, Le Privilegium fori en France du Décret de Gratien à la fin du XIVe siècle, vol. 2, Le Privilège en matière pénale (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1924), see bk. 1, on degradation. Note that until the twelfth century, there was no formal distinction between deposition and degradation (Vacandard, “Déposition,” col. 461). For exceptions in the early church, see col. 455. Also note that Durandus alleges that this stigma can be removed by the pope (Pontifical romain 3.7.25, p. 608).
Louis Saltet, Les Réordinations: Etude sur le sacrement de l’ordre, 2d ed. (Paris: Victor Lecoffre and J. Gabalda, 1907), pp. 231–36.
Marc Dykmans, “Le rite de la dégradation des clercs,” appendix in Le Pontifical romain révisé au XVe siècle (Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985), p. 165.
See Roger Reynolds, “Rites of Separation and Reconciliation in the Early Middle Ages,” in Segni e riti nella chiesa altomedievale occidentale, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto medioevo, 33 (Spoleto: Sede del Centro, 1987), 1:421. For other instances, see Dykmans, “Le rite,” pp. 159–60.
This is the reason given by Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis 1.30, in Opera omnia, CCCM, 156 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998), p. 23. But also see the summary of Formosus’s rehabilitation which claims he was guilty of perjury and lay communion. This council, thought to be held in Ravenna in 898, is dated 904 in Rome, in Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. 18, col. 221. On the controversy regarding whether there were actually one or two such councils, see J. Duhr, “Le concile de Ravenne en 898: La réhabilitation du Pape Formose,” Recherches de science religieuse 22 (1932): 541–79.
On this fresco, see J. Duhr, “Humble vestige d’un grand espoir,” Recherches de science religieuse 42(1954): 361–87;
Horace Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925), 4:47.
H. Leclercq, Histoire des conciles (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1911), 4,2:712.
See André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 147–55.
Auxilius, In defensionem sacrae ordinationis papae Formosi 1.10, in Auxilius und Vulgarius, ed. Ernst Dümmler (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1866), p. 71. On Auxilius’ efforts, see Saltet, “Les Dépositions,” pp. 156–60.
See Bernard Gui’s prescriptions for sentences on posthumous condemnations in Practica inquisitionis hereticae 3.1, ed. Célestin Douais (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1886), p. 85.
Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 180–81;
See Alan Friedlander’s, The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle Against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2000).
Alan Friedlander, ed., Processus Bernardi Delitiosi: The Trial of Fr. Bernard Délicieux, 3 September–8 December 1319 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1996), p. 211;
See R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 62–64.
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© 2004 E. Jane Burns
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Elliott, D. (2004). Dressing and Undressing the Clergy. In: Burns, E.J. (eds) Medieval Fabrications. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09675-3_4
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