The history of costume in religious ceremonies and as worn by religious figures, such as priests or shamans or other spiritual leaders, has shown interest in, if not relevance of, distinguishing religious leaders from the greater population and endowing him/her with a certain authority. By virtue of marking distinction, ceremonial costume not only makes others aware of a spiritual figure’s role but can be appreciated to confirm to the wearer his own mission and responsibility to his respective belief-system.
Examples of costume in religion are available from every culture. In the western religions, we are most familiar, perhaps, with the dress of the Jewish rabbi or the Catholic priest or Christian minister, as well as the Muslim imam. The history of Jewish religious dress is more extensive and references to specific garments worn by the Jewish High Priest are even found in the Book of Exodus. According to Rabbinical study, each garment worn by the priest was meant to atone for a particular sin committed by the Children of Israel. The symbolism of different attributes of the garments is rich and has lasted through the Rabbinical tradition of millenia. Similarly, the early Catholic Church defined the ceremonial costume that is retained by Catholic clergy today. 
When fashions began to change in Europe and the simple tunic evolved into more gender-defined garments, with alterations in hemline and waist definition, the clergy held on to the tunic-robe form and in this manner classified themselves apart from the general population. The sacred vestments of the church would evolve to show distinctions in color (green, white, red, violet, and occasionally gold) but over time would essentially remain integral as a tradition. During the period of the religious reforms and the particular religious fervor at the turn of the first millenium, marked by the Crusades and religious pilgrimages, monasticism redefined itself through the establishment of the new mendicant orders. These ascetic orders, such as the Dominicans and the Franciscans, took vows of poverty and relied on the charity of the general populace. They also distinguished themselves in their garments, both from other Church figures and from greater society. Franciscans wore rough brown wool robes with ropes as belts and Dominicans wore white and black robes. Interestingly, the mendicant orders and the institutional church figures both had the intention of catering to the spiritual interests of the population though they did so from very different vantage points, as is apparent through the costumes they inhabited.
During the middle ages the fabrics used most for clothing were wool and linen. The tradition of spinning wool for fiber had existed for more than 5000 years and by the medieval period in Europe wool was established as the standard fabric for all classes. The gradations of thread quality determined the cost of certain types of wool fabric but everyone, from peasant to landowner to royalty, wore wool as a staple of their wardrobe. The peasant classes would afford the coarser wool for their simple tunics, cowls and headwear while the landed classes would have fine garments made of wool woven as fine as silk, dyed in rich hues, and often enhanced with embroidery. Silk as a popular material for costume was not easily available to western Europe until the period of the Crusades when the materials and methods of oriental fashion were brought back by the crusading armies. Linen, too, was used for undergarments but was not as valued as wool because linen threads could not be spun to the same levels of distinction as wool and linen fabrics were not as good as wool in absorbing color dyes.
In medieval Europe the wool trade was particularly a phenomenon of England’s dealing, mercantile class and became its leading industry, at its peak accounting for close to 90% of the revenues. The significance of wool to the development of England’s economy is even manifest in church structures that were built to grandiose scale with money from the wool trade—known as wool churches. England dominated the commercial routes of the material, closely managing exportation and essentially monopolizing distribution.
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Flanders and Italy also became centers of textile manufacture in their own right. Flanders was known for its skilled craftsmen adept at spinning raw wool into yarn and weaving it into rich cloths. The trade in wool also meant specialization of craft and production, and different Flemish towns gained reputations for the | |||||||||
manufacture of particular products. The commerce generated by the textile industry between Flanders and Italy also eventually led to exchange in artistic and cultural ideas toward the end of the Gothic period and what was to become the movements of International Gothic art and the Renaissance.
*image—Brueghel—Village Wedding Feast, 1567
*image 2– calendar page for November of Les Trés Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 1410-1416
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As the European continent fell under the influence of various political/cultural influences during the middle ages, costume would be manipulated to reflect a person’s cultural associations. In the history of costume and culture this is not unusual, as distinctions of status have always been manifest in costume to some extent. However, during the middle ages, as consolidated centers of power and influence developed and larger groups of diverse populations had to coexist, costume came to be a mechanism of enforcing societal norms in a way different from before.
Beginning in the 9th century in southern Europe, (and prior to this in the Middle East and northern Africa), as Islam established itself in political power, Jewish and Christian populations within their jurisdiction were distinguished from their Muslim neighbors by restrictions in clothing. Christian and Jewish populations were ordered to wear signs or markings on their headwear or variably told to wear head-coverings that marked them apart. Later, in the Arab kingdoms of the 14th century, Jews were designated to wear yellow clothing, Christians blue, and Samaritans red.
Changes in clothing styles in the middle ages were not very dramatic until the mid-13th century when the tunic styles that had dominated both men’s and women’s wardrobes began to diversify and manifest unique designs. A dramatic shift in artwork during this same medieval period, when fashion essentially began its history, reflects the changes of those times. What Giorgio Vasari, the Renaissance art historian, classified as Gothic Art offers us images caught in time of a movement and energy that encapsulated the end of the middle ages.
Gothic art evokes the great cathedrals of France and Germany to the modern viewer, but Gothic sculpture, and particularly the forms explicit in the Gothic aesthetic, tell a lot about the time period’s aspirations and visions of itself. If Gothic architecture was reflective of people’s Christian ideals, with spires reaching for the heavens and stained glass windows channeling God’s light through the chambers of the church, then Gothic sculpture was charged with the restlessness and flamboyance of the period. Whereas the Romanesque aesthetic in sculpture that preceded it was marked by rigidity and stoic beauty, Gothic sculpture broke free literally and figuratively.
