Dear listmembers
The knowledge of different orders, and their habits, has interested me for
quite a while. It was also an essential question in my youth, when a Danish
historian wrote a dissertation about John Bale:
Thora Balslev Blatt: The Plays of John Bale. A Study of Ideas, Technique
and Style. Copenhagen 1968.
John Bale (who was a monk himself before the Reformation) wrote long lists,
describing the orders (65 in total), their origin and their clothing or
distinctive appearence. The lists survived [Oxford Bodleian, MS Bodley 73
ff.43-48], and are partly reproduced in the book. A transcript is found in
an Appendix (The author, who no longer is alive, was so kind to hand all
her material over to me in 1972). John Bale even supplied his lists with
small drawings of special signs born upon the chest. He made extensive use
of his knowledge in a play he called "Kynge Johan", where he takes the part
of the reformist, and calls the orders "Secta".
Such lists were quite common among monks in the 15th century. In the Royal
Library in Copenhagen is there another very long list of orders, in a
manuscript from the monastery in Cismar (from which I have made my own
transcription, if anybody has specific questions).
This just as a reminder, that there were more than two orders in the Middle
Ages
and that there also were several "black" and several "white" monks.
The Gilbertines f.ex. used to be called "The White Gilbertines", although
John Bale (who surely knew them at first hand) says they are dressed in
grey (which perhaps can be interpreted as a testimony that they certainly
not were clean and freshly washed: "Ordo semprynghamitarum incepit anno
Domini Mcxlviii in Anglia sub sancto patre gilberto, habent cappas griseas
apertas cum barbis et cum baculis in manibus").
The Dominicans were called "The Black Brothers" in Denmark, and the name
still stick to some of the buildings.
It can sometimes be quite difficult to recognize the clothing of the orders
in pictures from the 15th century for two reasons:
1. They did not all have the same tailor (and rules were not as strict as
they are today)
2. The mediocre painters were not always able to render the difference
Hope this helps to complicate the too simplified discussion about blacks
and whites. That the terms should have implicated any kind of racism is an
absurd anachronism, as it has already been pointed out by D.S. Bruce and
others.
The Canon Regulars (OSA), who governed most of the major cathedrals, were
white indoors, and black outdoors (they had a black mantel over their white
superpelliceum).
Have a nice weekend
Erik Drigsdahl
_____________________________________________________________________
Mag.art. Erik Drigsdahl CHD Center for Haandskriftstudier i Danmark
Kapelvej 25B 3.tv Phone: +45 +35 37 20 47
DK-2200 Copenhagen N Email: <[log in to unmask]>
DENMARK http://www.mobilixnet.dk/~mob75182/
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