Beneath the Great Courtyard of the Belvedere in Vatican City lies the Secret Vatican Archive. Though no official index or inventory of its contents exists for public inspection, its collection runs through some 25 miles of shelving and contains not only all of the Catholic Church’s official records, but thousands of documents pertaining to important events in world history as well - including English monarch Henry VIII’s petition for a marriage annulment from Pope Clement VII.
Since that time, the Archive’s overseers have granted scholars access to their collection on an application-only basis; on average, only two hundred historians from outside of the Catholic hierarchy are permitted entrance each year. Among the records that those select few have inspected are accounts of the goings-on behind the canonization of saints, architectural schematics for Vatican City’s buildings, chapels and infrastructure, transcripts and evidence from the trials of Galileo and the Knights Templar and papal reports, correspondence and diaries.
The wide-ranging subject matter and depth of the Vatican’s closely guarded collection has made it ripe for conquest by would-be conquerors. In 1810, during Napoleon’s occupation of Rome, the Emperor annexed the Archives in his bid to create a world library and had its contents packaged and shipped to Paris by wagon. After his fall in 1814, it was immediately recalled to Rome – but only after many “unimportant” pieces of parchment were sold off to French paper manufactures in bulk. One story tells of the Archive’s former prefect visiting Paris to oversee its restoration, only to discover that a seven hundred-volume registry of papal bulls had been distributed as wrapping paper to butcher shops throughout the city.
Appearances have evolved dramatically over time, however, one of the most extravagant and over the top periods was the Elizabethan era. During this time the female appearance was controlled to such an extent that cosmetics become dangerous and sometimes even lethal.
During the Elizabethan era a good complexion was considered to be highly important. So much so that many recipes began circulating describing the best mixtures to remove freckles, pimples and pox-marks. One such recipe by Hugh Platt in his book, Delights of Ladies detailed “Wash the face and body of a sucking child with breast milk or cow milk or mixed with water every night and the child’s skin will wax fair and clear and resist sunburn”.
Other recipes including mixing lead with marble and heating the mixture for several days until only a powder is left. This is then mixed with vinegar to create a thick paste which could be applied to the face, neck and bosom leaving the skin looking white and blemish free. However, the use of lead in the cosmetics could often cause the skin to burn and peel away. At the every least it would become shrunken and gray. Egg white could also be used on the skin to create a ‘glazed’ look and to hide wrinkles. Elizabeth I is known for her skin, which she insisted be covered in white paste to hide her pox-marks. (The Queen suffered smallpox at the age of twenty-nine which left her skin badly blemished.)
Perhaps another reason for the extreme beauty aids used at this time was due to the increasing importance of painted portraits. We certainly see pasty white faces in Elizabethan portraits and portraits dating back to as far as 1521. Even the men are depicted dressed in their finest, displaying their wealth and apparent good looks.
While the Queen herself was the most influential in the Elizabethan fashion market, not everyone approved of the time and effort put into cosmetics and clothes. Thomas Becon, using the Bible as him main source, wrote “I will… that women array themselves in comely appeal, with shamefacedness and discrete behaviour, not with braided hair, gold or pearls or costly array.” While Thomas Tuke’s book, ‘A Discourse against Painting and Tincturing of Women’ first published in 1616, stated “Fucus is paint, and fucus is deceit, and fucus they used, that do mean to cheat”. Even one of Shakespeare’s sonnets scorns and makes fun of the ideals of Elizabethan beauty;
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more fair than her lips fair
If snow be white, why then her breast is dun,
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head…”
Several male writers thought that cosmetics and clothing hid the true nature of a woman and their beauty was used to entice rich men into marrying them. Certainly, Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boylen was beheaded for bewitching the Henry VIII. One reason for this is that the white paste used to cover blemishes hid the humble women’s blush. Blushing was seen as a sign of innocence, a quality much desired in a woman. Nevertheless, writers like Becon and Tuke did nothing to change Elizabeth’s ideals of beauty nor her life long quest for perfection.
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Further reading:
‘Women According to Men, the World of Tudor-Stuart Women’ by Suzanne W. Hull
About the Author
Charlotte Gardner, a guest blog writer, is currently studying archaeology at the Australian National University. In her spare time she likes to read and write about eccentric historical moments. Her love of old buildings and older stories was sparked when she visited Italy. One of Charlotte’s greatest wishes is that in a few thousand years her skeleton will be dug up by an archaeological investigation team and put on display in a national museum. You may contact Charlotte via email at: charlotteg86@gmail.com.
On June 29, 1613 during the first on-stage production of Henry VIII, the Globe Theater of Shakespeare fame burned to the ground. Quickly erected and quickly raised, the theater reminds fans of the Elizabethan era that even the best figures from history had their problems.
Shakespeare and his band of thespians known as “The Chamberlain’s Men” performed theater in the round which meant that the audience and the actors had the intimate experience of close proximity. There were no female actors at the time as such a practice was illegal and viewed as obscene. So whether the character was Romeo or Juliet, the actor was male and this was not strange. In fact, the tradition of male actors playing female leads continues today in British pantomime (Christmas Plays) performances.
As theater developed into its modern form, the plays, performances and skills of the various actors and writers were a constant source of conversation. Those who performed best, created the most drama and put on the most captivating stories were rewarded with packed houses and good reviews in the morning papers. For this reason, special effects played a large role in productions and Shakespeare and his company were no exception to this as during his life, he was just another writer trying to improve his credentials.
Without modern safety equipment such as fire extinguishers and smoke alarms and without the close proximity of a municipal fire brigade, devastating structural fires were common during the period. In fact it would be only a few decades later that the Great Fire of London (1666) would take place, raising a vast portion of the capital to the ground.
The term “Renaissance”, or rebirth, was coined by historians in the mid 19th century to describe the period in Western European history that was characterized by a resurgence of ideas, philosophies, and culture from the classical period. A golden age of cultural, intellectual and ideological movements occurred between roughly the early 14th to the late 16th century in Europe that drew on many elements of classical Greek and Roman history. From the decadence of the Middle Ages and the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church increasingly exerted a dominant influence on European life and became the defacto broker of power in Europe. So it was that within this cultural setting, the dominant ideas of the Renaissance emerged from the collection of city-states in Italy and proliferated throughout Europe via the well connected commercial routes of the time.
Florence, in particular, was emerging as a powerful city-state through its commercial strength as a textile producer and banking center. Its burgeoning economy and growing mercantile class made it a focal point for the cultural transformations that would be associated with the Renaissance. The fall of the Byzantine Empire also fueled change in Western Europe as exiled Greek scholars established themselves in the west, bringing with them copies of classical philosophical texts, literature, and salvaged art works and opening to the Europeans a door to the riches of the classical Greek and Roman periods that had been lost through the centuries of internal tribal warfare and barbaric invasions.
Money from the new middle classes went towards commissioning artists and architects to create masterpieces in quantity and scale unmatched till then. Artists such as Giotto, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Lotto, da Vinci, Michelangelo, to name a few, elevated art to a new level and form of cultural expression. The Renaissance began to flourish in the kingdoms to the north of Florence as well, with new ideas and momentum of change spreading along trade routes. Venetian Italy and the regions of the Netherlands also were transformed by new ideas, aesthetics, and commerce.
“…swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God’s help will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But whereas — after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine…”
The book was based on his own observations. After discovering the moons of Jupiter by using a telescope and charting the activity of the planet Venus, Galileo became convinced of the rightness of Copernicus’ concept. He created charts, took calculations and earned his title as the father of physics.
Why the determined physicist wrote and signed the confession is a matter of the adverse effects of torture. Whether it was only the threat of torture or the physical act itself, the reputation of the diabolical Inquisition was ubiquitous. Galileo made his confession and was then put under house arrest. He went home to Sienna, Italy to live out his days.
