Economic
and Social Value of Jewelry
Economic
and social aspects are invariably intertwined in medieval
attitude toward jewelry.
As has
already been mentioned, most materials for jewelry were costly.
There actual market prices certainly changed over time, depending
on the availability of the material, market demand, and general
development of fashion. The bigger the stone the greater was
its value and the more it was sought for.
The sapphire,
the most appraised stone up to the end of the thirteenth century,
later yielded to the ruby not only in symbolic value but also
in price. In the late Middle Ages the diamond became the most
valuable and expensive of all stones, although in Spain and
Portugal the emerald held superior position, due to the characteristic
Iberian fondness for emeralds. Pearls circulated in huge quantities
and were usually sold by weight. The greatest European market
for pearls imported from the East was Venice. Venice was also
a principal centre of forgeries, at any rate in the thirteenth
century. For instance, glass cameos, Byzantine in style but
produced in Venice, gave cause for concern for the fourteenth-century
Paris purchasers.
Kings
and princes, great noblemen and even rich merchants invariably
kept a store of precious and semi-precious stones and cameos.
 By
merchants and those noblemen, who had relatively little jewelry,
stones were kept as a reserve of valuables but in noble and
princely circles they were stored for use in jewelry and plate
or to give away as presents. Precious stones were often given
as presents at weddings and at New Year and on other occasions.
The stones and bits and pieces from the objects which had
been broken up were also preserved with care. The practice
of keeping a store of precious stones and pearls was fostered
by the conditions of medieval goldsmith’s work, in which
the commissioner was so often expected to supply the costly
gold and gems which were the raw materials of the art. For
safe preservation precious stones were frequently mounted
in rings or fixed in wax. They were also kept loose, wrapped
in a bag or cloth.
In
the late fourteenth century the significance of stones of
price is shown by the fact that they often received their
own special names. Jean, Duc de Berry (1340 - 1416), owned
the Great Balas of Venice, bought from Valentina Visconti
in 1407, the Balas of Orange, bought in 1408 from two French
courtiers, the Balas of the Chestnut, the Balas of David,
the Balas of the Cock-Crest, the Ruby of the Ear, the Ruby
of the Quail, the Ruby of Gloucester, the Ruby of Apulia,
the Ruby of the Dimple, a fine small ruby called the Barley
Grain, the Ruby of the Mountain, bought in 1405, the Ruby
of Berry, bought in 1408, a ruby called the Coal of Burgundy,
and the King of Rubies, bought for him as a present by his
nephew Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, in 1413, and given
this name by Jean de Berry, so great was his delight in its
splendour.
 Some
stones or jewels were cherished not so much for their price
or beauty as for their family associations. In 1370 Jeanne
d’Evreux, Queen Dowager of France, left a small diamond
which her brother Philippe, King of Navarre (1305 - 43) had
given her many years before ‘that he ever wore upon
his person because it had been their father’s.’
The acquisition
and possession of precious stones were matters of thrilling
interest and deep satisfaction to medieval princes, as well
as providing them with a treasure which could be used to increase
their magnificence of array and largesse in the form of dress,
jewelry and plate. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether
medieval lovers of stones, such as Jean de Berry, should not
be properly called connoisseurs and collectors.
Individual
jewels or collections of jewels were sometimes sold by their
noble owners to other great personages. An exchange of jewels
between distant courts was a custom among rulers. On occasions
precious stones passed down as heirlooms. In many cases jewels
that had once been worn by secular noblemen and noble women
were later included into a devotional bequeath to the Church
and ended up in an ecclesiastical treasury or as a part of
church decoration. It was a common custom to offer jewels
as pious donations to churches, shrines, and statues of the
saints.
The giving
of jewelry to a bride first at her betrothal and then on marriage
was a recognised social custom among all social classes throughout
Western Europe. In most countries it seems also to have been
expected that either her family or the bridegroom should provide
the bride with the ornaments suitable to her standing as a
married woman. In addition to these the bridegroom must often
have given the bride-to-be some personal token of love –
usually a ring or a brooch.
Among
the classes that could afford gold and silver there was no
social situation in which two lovers -- in the illicit sense
of the word – could freely make each other gifts of
jewelry or openly wear such gifts. In the chivalric relationship
of courtly love the lover had of necessity to conceal his
affection under enigmatic language and symbols, so as not
to expose the lady of his thoughts to scandal and dishonour.
In the fourteenth century the device and motto provided a
resolution of this problem, for they enabled the chivalric
lover to conceal with an image – a flower or bird, a
letter – the object of his cult, while figuring, if
only by remote allusion and private significance, the mood
of his passion, whether of hope, longing, or despair.
Men
could receive gifts of jewelry as a prize for a victory at
a tournament, as a gift from the patron, or for the knightly
initiation.
We know
little of ordinary usage in the wearing of jewelry. It figured
as a matter of course on great occasions, at feasts and festivals
– weddings, banquets, dances, tournaments and the great
religious anniversaries of the year, which the Middle Ages
celebrated with secular splendour as well as pious devotion.
Moreover kings, queens, nobles and knights can rarely, if
ever, have appeared in public without some jewel in token
of their degree.
In the
lower social circles jewelry fell into two categories: the
cheaper and simpler pieces to be worn on daily basis and the
“feastday decoration” to be worn on great occasions.
Weddings undoubtedly constituted such an occasion. Both the
wedding couple and the guests felt it their right to put on
their best dresses and most sumptuous jewels.
In the
Middle Ages, the gender distinction in jewelry was almost
inexistent. Both men and women wore brooches and girdles,
chains and collars, circlets and chaplets. The greater richness
and variety of women’s jewelry was partly due to a number
of head ornaments and of costly trimmings that they wore,
and partly to a difference in social roles. Men reserved their
jewels for feastdays, while women generally preferred to walk
out in fine dress. This must be one reason why high medieval
sumptuary legislation restricting jewelry mainly concerns
itself with women.
There
was a certain disagreement in theoretical question of who
ought to be more richly arrayed. One opinion was that the
man ought to be more richly dressed, as he has power over
women, but he must nevertheless, observe a certain restraint
in his array. Another party voiced women’s right to
some array: : ‘. . . It is more fitting that a woman
should chain a man to her by her pleasing attire than the
contrary, for a bird of freer flight requires the greater
art in its pursuers,’ wrote Konrad von Megenburg (1309
- 74). Precautions, however, should always be made to avoid
excess of ornament in women. Religious resentment against
vanity and ostentation notwithstanding, economic considerations
were even more important. The same author warns: ‘I
have seen knights and citizens fall into scantily clad nakedness
through pesumptuous spending on ornaments.’
Children
had their own types of jewelry. References to children’s
jewelry are quite early. Both noble families and wealthy bourgeoisie
decorated children with brooches, chaplets, girdles. These
were similar in fashion to those worn by the adults, if only
cheaper and smaller in size. In Italy in the fourteenth century
it was customary to give new-born babies crosses or pieces
of coral to be worn round the neck, even more for the protection
of the infant than as a decoration. The Child can be seen
wearing a coral of this like in a number of quattrocento paintings
of the Virgin and the Child. Sumptuary laws often restricted
the amount and quality of jewelry worn by children. San Bernardino
exclaimed in 1427, addressing Sienese populace: ‘When
I think too of your children, how much gold, how much silver,
how many pearls, how much embroidery you make them wear!’
On the contrary, in 1528 the edict of Count Enno II of Friesland
ordained ‘that all our subjects dress their children
according to the old Frisian manner, and adorn them with silver
ornaments.’
It was
not only the laity who wore jewelry in the Middle Ages. The
passion for it was general, and in spite of their vows of
poverty it was necessary to make regulations inhibiting monks
and nuns from wearing it. In considering the jewelry of nuns,
it is important to remember that on their profession they
were sometimes given a plain gold ring in token of their espousal
to the Church, from the twelfth century onwards. Such rings
were rather enseignes of their profession rather than jewelry
in our sense. In 1227 the Synod of Trier forbade nuns to wear
any jewels or brooches or gold or silver rings or gold braids
or silk girdles. The statutes of the Hôtel-Dieu of Troyes,
drawn up in 1263, forbid the nuns to wear precious stones,
unless when ill, when of course their curative properties
were of value. Particularly nuns of royal birth were indulged
in receiving and wearing jewelry.
Many of the higher clergy granted themselves a licence in
the matter of jewelry, and the lesser clergy followed their
example. The clergy of the archdiocese of Milan were several
times admonished for their secular style of dress and jewelry.
In 1215 the Lateran Council forbade clerics to wear brooches
or buttons of gold or silver on any of their garments, or
even of gilt or silvered metal. The only permissible kind
of jewelry was rings. Indeed, bishops and archbishops wore
them as insignia of office, and they were also collected both
for giving away as presents and as securities.
Being
insignia of some sort – an indicator of rank , status,
or wealth – is one of the most important functions of
medieval jewelry. In the eyes of noblemen, jewelry of gold
and precious stones was the prerogative of knightly degree
and above. Christine de Pisan, in her biography of King Charles
V of France, written in 1403 – 4, says that because
of all that those belonging to the order of chivalry endure
in war from hard beds, cold, misadventure and the perils of
assault and battle ‘rich array decorated with orphreys
and glittering with gold and precious stones were established
for them as being a thing due and pertaining to them.’
This was also the view of the Church. Preaching a sermon against
vanity in Siena in 1427, San Bernardino condemned those who
wore garments that were not proper to their rank and occupation
in life.
Sumptuary
laws were an expression of this importance of jewels as symbols
of rank. Wealthy citizens and their wives were repeatedly
banned from wearing gold and precious stones proper only to
their superiors. A French royal ordinance of 1283 commanded
that ‘no bourgeois or bourgeoise . . . shall wear or
be allowed to wear gold or precious stones or girdles of gold
or set with pearls or coronals of gold and silver’.
Not only noblemen’s jealousy of wealthier nouveau riches
caused the appearance of sumptuary laws. From the second half
of the thirteenth century onwards we find merchant communes
themselves enacting sumptuary laws to restrain extravagance
and pretension in dress among their wives and daughters, no
doubt with the purpose to secure the stability of fortunes
and the balance of relative civic rank.
Apart
from legal regulations the use of jewelry was also based on
such considerations as professional or social propriety, religious
feeling, or age. Then as now, women and men advanced in age
were expected to dress more plainly. An elderly woman wearing
girlish attire was an object of derision and mockery.
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