Textile Gifts in the Middle Ages. Objects, Actors, and Representations

Gifts of textiles and clothing appeared in diverse contexts and fulfilled various functions in pre-modern Europe.
They could be offered in the course of an initiation rite and or an act of social transition, including upon investiture, marriage, or entry into a monastery. Gifts of clothing to the poor, meanwhile, were among the works of charity thematized in the vitae of numerous medieval saints. Sumptuous textiles were sent as resplendent gifts to religious institutions or circulated through diplomatic gift exchanges. Gifts of clothing were distributed within the court as remuneration (in kind) and served to structure and hierarchize court society. Textile gifts could also represent the donor. Especially in the case of clothing previously worn by its donor, the materiality and form of the gifted garment might have been imbued with the physical presence of the giver. This volume aims to situate the diversity and polysemy of such acts of symbolic communication within the broader context of medieval gift giving. Integrating anthropological and sociological models into an art historical approach allows gifted artifacts to be taken seriously as independent entities within the giving process as a socially generative form of communication. With its focus on images and objects, art history is poised to show how the dynamics of reciprocity and its attendant obligations might have been charged both visually and materially. In turn, the relationships between the actors and the "agency" of gifts themselves take on sharper contours