Abstract
At its most general, investiture involves re-clothing a person in special garments for an occasion before an audience that acknowledges and celebrates the new and “suitable” persona. Today, if we think of investiture at all, what comes to mind are coronations of European royalty and the ceremonial surrounding the installation of a new pope. A bit more consideration, however, brings investiture much closer to home. Judges and academics are robed, as are barristers in England. Recall that brides are dressed in a once-only gown and “shown” in it before an approving audience. Catholic clergy receive robes for their ranks and change them for various occasions. The Masonic orders use elaborate robes to designate ranks and functions. Some Jewish rabbis don robes for services. A bit further afield, robes would probably be given to the architect on completion of a building in Saudi Arabia. All of these investitures have roots that go well back into the Middle Ages where, as we shall see, robes were far more than “apparel.” The ceremony surrounding robes brought together the high art of luxury fabrics and the high-stakes politics of kingship.
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Notes
Gul-Badan Begam, The History of Humayan, trans. A. S. Beveridge (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1989), pp. 107–109.
Abu I-Fazl, Ain-I Akbari, trans. H. Blochman (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1997), p. 96.
Tuzuk-I-Jahangiri, ed. and trans. Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge (Delhi: Mushiram Manoharlal, 1968), pp. 69, 114, 126.
One full set of newswriter’s letters is translated in Jadunath Sarkar, House of Shivaji (Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar, 1955).
An even fuller account of the incident is found in Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times (Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar, 1961), pp. 103–17.
Ibn Batuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325–1354, trans. H. A. R. Gibb (London: Hakluyt Society, 1929), p. 325.
See also Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, 1989), chapters 1 and 2.
See also Dennis Sinor, ed., Cambridge History of Inner Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 97–117.
See the narrative translated in Charles A. Robinson, History of Alexander the Great (Providence: Brown University Press, 1953), pp. 120, 126, 150.
Robes, for example, played no part in negotiations with the Greek states upon his succession. See Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History, Book 7, trans. C. Bradford Wells (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Loeb Classical Library, 1963), 7: 119–156, 217.
Considerable scholarly writing, both in English and German, has addressed the chronology and reliability of the contemporary writers on Alexander. A substantial critical literature likewise addresses the question of what sections of the extant histories (including Diodorus) derive from which source. For example, Hammond finds the quote in question derived from Cleitarchus, a source prone to inflate and embellish everything from battles scenes to Alexander’s nobility of action. See N. G. L. Hammond, Three Histories of Alexander the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 59. For a sampling of these debates, see A. B. Bosworth, From Arrian to Alexander (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) and Lionel Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (Chico, California: Scholars Press, reprinted edition, 1983).
For a discussion of the Chinese sources on the Yuezhi, see John M. Rosenfield, The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 281.
More than 250 examples of Kushan coins are illustrated in Rosenfield, following p. 377. Some are also illustrated and discussed in The Crossroads of Asia: Transformation of Image and Symbol (Cambridge, England: The Ancient India and Iran Trust, 1992), pp. 63–88.
These issues are argued in the articles reprinted in Carey A. Moore, ed., Studies in the Book of Esther (New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1982).
Esther, trans. Carey A. Moore (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971), pp. 62–63.
See Nielson C. Debevoise, A Political History of Parthia, reprinted edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969) and Richard N. Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia (Princeton: Marcus Weiner Publishers, 1996). See also F. Grenet and N. Sims-Williams, “The historical context of the Sogdian ancient letters,” Studia Iranica 5 (1987), pp.101–22.
See the excellent review article by Anna Muthesius, “Crossing traditional boundaries: Grub to glamour in Byzantine silk weaving,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991): 326–65.
V. Pavani, “Vestments,” Encyclopedia of the Early Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
John Moorhead, Justinian (New York: Longman, 1994), p. 117.
The emperor, at the top of this hierarchy, was robed in a complex and luxurious yearly rhythm. The descriptions in the Book of Ceremonies, however, present many problems. There are no remaining Byzantine court fabrics, and the visual record is relatively skimpy. See Elizabeth Piltz, “Middle Buzantine Court Costume,” in Henry Maguire, ed., Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1979), pp. 39–53.
From the Book of the Prefect, translated in Andre Guillou, “Functionaries,” in Guglielmo Cavallo, ed., The Byzantines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 201.
The Chronicle of John Malalas, trans. Elizabeth Jeffreys and Roger Scott (Melbourne: Australian Association of Byzantine Studies, 1986), pp. 233–34.
Irfan Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 1984), p. 55. The source is the Vita Constantini.
Al-Qur an: A Contemporary Translation, trans. Ahmed Ali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 18.
Mark Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (London: Macmillan Press, Inc., 1996), p. 39.
For a fascinating analysis of the divergence between Byzantium and the West of anointing in kingly accession ritual of this period, see Janet L. Nelson, “Symbols in Context: Rulers’ Inauguration Rituals in Byzantium and the West in the Early Middle Ages,” in Derek Baker, ed., The Orthodox Churches and the West (Oxford: Ecclesiastical History Society, 1976), pp. 97–120.
Speros Vyronis, “Byzantine civilization, a world civilization,” in Angelilki E. Laiou and Henry Maguire, Byzantium: A World Civilization (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), pp. 19–37.
See Donald M. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
I found useful the introductory review article by Richard A. Jackson in Heinz Duchhardt, Richard A. Jackson, and David Sturdy, eds., European Monarchy: Its Evolution and Practice from Roman Antiquity to Modern Times (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992). Also see Janos M. Bak, “Coronation studies—past, present, and future” in Janos M. Bak, ed., Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) pp. 1–13.
For example, the dress of pious women and nuns was the site of considerable tension and politics within the medieval church. There was an appropriation of mourning and other “plain” garments by married women seeking direct spiritual association with Christ. St. Augustine and St. Jerome, of course, disapproved. See Dyann Elliott, “Dress as mediator between inner and outer self: The pious matron of the high and later Middle Ages,” Medieval Studies 53 (1991): 279
See, for example, the famous cope of Henry VII woven in Florence around 1500 CE (currently in the collection of Stonyhurst College). It was emblazoned with the king’s devices—the portcullis of the city of London and the Tudor rose. Illustrated in Jennifer Harris, ed., Textiles, 5,000Years:An International History and Illustrated Survey (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993), p. 170.
The Illustrated Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Observations of Thirteenth-Century Life, trans. Richard Vaughan (Cambridge, England: Alan Sutton, 1984), p. 77.
Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapters 1 and 2.
The letters are translated and the incident thoroughly discussed in S.A. Skulker, “Three letters from the Ottoman ‘Sultana’ Safiye to Queen Elizabeth” in Samuel M. Stern, ed., Documents from Islamic Chanceries (Oxford: Bruno Cassier, Ltd., 1965), pp. 119–59. The garments appear in an inventory of Elizabeth’s clothes. See Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Un-lock’d: The Inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes Prepared in July, 1600 (Leeds: Money, 1988).
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Gordon, S. (2001). A World of Investiture. In: Gordon, S. (eds) Robes and Honor. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-61845-3_1
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