----- Original Message -----
From: "Gail & Scott Finke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Both your replies to the original query were fascinating! I loved all the
quotes. But now I am interested in a different item listed above. When you
say that in the 13th century the solution to desired body shaping was
breast
wrapping, what exactly do you mean? I'm sure they did something, but I am
not familiar with this.
That's a reference to a few mentions I've run across in books, or quotes
from others who've read them. The one that sticks in my head best is from
the 13th century, because it's the first mention I found--it's mentioned in
"A History of Private Life, Vol II" (p363) and is from "La Cle' d'Amour"
which is an anthology of 13thC works in the tradition of Ovid, containing
advice on all sorts of things. I don't have an exact quote, but in this
work, women whose breasts are too large are advised to bind them.
Other references:
Somewhen in the middle of the 12th century, an abbot, Gilbert of Hoyland,
(created abbot 1150, died 1172) writes in "Sermones in Canticum Solomonis"
that:
"The breasts are most pleasing when they are of moderate size and
eminence...They should be bound but not flattened, restrained with
gentleness but not given too much license."
This article:
Waugh, Christina Frieder. "Well-Cut through the Body: Fitted Clothing
in Twelfth-Century Europe", Dress (volume 26) 1999
(sorry, don't have any more info on it) discusses breastbinding in the
12thC, and contains another Gilbert of Hoyland quote:
"I refer you to the devices of women, who cultivate and develop physical
beauty and have mastered this art. For what are they more anxious to avoid
in embellishing the bosom, than that the breasts be overgrown and shapeless
and flabby?.....Therefore they constrain overgrown and flabby breasts with
breast-bands, artfully remedying the shorcomings of nature."
Line 13329 ff. from The Romance of the Rose, written about 1360, from the
Charles Dahlberg translation [This is what my notes say, but this is from
the second half, and I think that part was written at the end of the 13thC.
Could this have been added in to a later version? or did my source just
look at the wrong date?]:
"If her breasts are too heavy she should take a scarf or towel to bind them
against her chest and wrap it
right around her ribs, securing it with needle and thread or by a knot; thus
she can be active at her play."
There's something about Eleanor of Aquitaine (12thC) and also an 8thC
Lombardic reference, but I can't put my hands on them at the moment. Wish I
could!
-E House
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