It was not until the thirteenth century that the ladies of Europe blossomed forth in gloves—not of the mitten variety, but boasting four fingers as well as a thumb. The first to be introduced for the fair sex were made of linen, of simple design, and reached to the elbows to accommodate the short-sleeved gowns of the period. Not before Queen Elizabeth’s time, however, did the elaborately embroidered, bejeweled and perfumed glove captivate woman’s fancy and satisfy her feminine dreams of beauty and extravagance.
Chapter III.
THE LANGUAGE OF GLOVES
“Right, Caxon, right as my glove! By-the-by, I fancy that phrase comes from the custom of pledging a glove as a sign of irrefragable faith.”—The Antiquary: Sir Walter Scott.
We are so matter of fact in these days that, rarely, if ever, do we speak in symbols. The elaborate code of the glove has almost entirely dropped out of use. “And speaks all languages the rose,” the poet reminds us, but it is doubtful whether the most romantic of flowers ever conveyed such wealth of meaning, even between tongue-tied lovers, as the glove. Certainly, in addition, the latter has expressed a far greater variety of lofty sentiments not connected with affairs of the heart. In the Church, on the throne, in civil law, on the bench, in private breaches of honor, at festivals of rejoicing and in the last solemn rites accorded to the dead, gloves for many centuries were an important part of the ceremonial, and still, to-day, are not without meaning.
Sometimes it is claimed that gloves became a symbol in the Church long before kings singled them out to embody a monarch’s good faith or the royal consent. Of course kings wore gloves before the Christian Church came into being. But, as we have seen, the ancients seem to have attached less allegorical significance to gloves and to have regarded them more as a personal luxury. In the Orient, however, as the Bible shows, challenge by the glove was a recognized institution. Also, in the sales of lands, the purchaser was given a glove to symbolize delivery or investiture—of which the passage from Ruth which heads the previous chapter is, probably, the most famous instance. From the Oriental custom Mediæval Europe derived the challenge, so picturesquely employed in history and in literature. A certain charter of the thirteenth century also names a case of re-investiture, or restitution of property, symbolically expressed by the person restoring the lands casting his glove upon the ground.
If the Greeks and the Romans were somewhat literal and coldly materialistic in their attitude toward gloves, it remained for mediæval Europe to raise them to a cult. In the Middle Ages men had a passion for glorifying the common utensils of life. Whether it was the clergy or royalty which first seized upon gloves to exalt them into the realm of the mysterious, causing them to be scarcely less revered than the king’s or the bishop’s own person, it would be difficult to say. But, as the gloves bestowed upon the kings of olden France at their coronations were blessed and presented by the archbishop of the realm—who, in this act, was simply following the ancient Eastern practice of performing investiture—it would appear that gloves were granted by the Church to the thrones; and that thus the monarch received this sign of his sovereignty as the gracious gift of the Spiritual Power, which enjoyed precedence in honoring the glove.
Certainly gloves were a mark of religious dignity at an extremely early period, and played a distinctive part in the rites and services of the ancient Church. Officiating priests invariably consecrated the Holy Sacrament with gloves on their hands. This custom still obtains in the Church of England. Moreover, the laity always drew off their gloves within the sacred portals, where it was sacrilege to cover worldly hands even as the Fathers covered theirs.
To teach truth by sight was one of the great endeavors of the mediæval Church. We should not forget that the masses of the people in those days were untaught and childlike in their mental processes. The clergy were profound scholars, but they understood how to appeal to the minds of their communicants; they knew that their imaginations should be impressed, that sacred imagery should be indelibly stamped upon the sensitive-plate of the soul. Not lipparables only, but allegories for the eye—visible symbols—conveyed sacred meanings where words could not. Thus art became the handmaiden of religion, and familiar objects were invested with hidden significance. In this catalogue gloves were by no means forgotten.
Bruno, Bishop of Segni, tells us that the gloves of the clergy were originally made of linen to denote that the hands they covered were chaste, pure, without blame. In 1287, Durandus, Bishop of Mende, went to great pains to prove that the sacred chirothecae—for the old Latin name had been kept—were white. He says: “It was specified that by these gloves the hands would be preserved chaste, clean during work, and free from every stain.” The gloves which encased the hands of Pope Boniface VIII., at the time of his burial, were of white silk, beautifully worked with the needle, and ornamented with a rich border, studded with pearls.
Considerably later—exactly when is not known—ecclesiastical gloves ceased to be invariably white, but changed their hue, like the other vestments, according to the current church seasons. Then the gloves of the church became glorious indeed in color, texture and design! St. Charles Borromeo prescribes that “they shall be woven throughout, and adorned with a golden circle on the outside.”