11 - Regulating and Refashioning Dress: Sumptuary Legislation and its Enforcement in Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-century Lucca

Summary

Many Italian communes enacted sumptuary laws in the later Middle Ages. In her study of Italian sumptuary law, Catherine Kovesi Killerby was able to list 326 enactments by 48 different communes, large and small, with every reason to believe that this was a minimum figure. The Tuscan commune of Lucca was among these. It was not among the earliest, with no extant enactments before 1300, nor was it among the most assiduous; its 18 different enactments between 1308 and 1498 could not compare with the 61 for Florence or 41 for Venice in a similar period, but put it more or less on a par with Perugia with 15, Genoa with 19 or Bologna and Siena with 21 each. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries Lucca can be seen enacting a series of measures of varying length and complexity as the city fathers attempted to respond to changing economic and social conditions. The sumptuary laws themselves produced change, as citizens refashioned their clothing and ornaments, to avoid items that were prohibited if there were alternatives that were permitted: for example concentrating on large numbers of silver buttons or studs (maspilli), when other decorations were forbidden, or employing taffeta borders that were permitted in place of prohibited borders of fur (vaio or gris). These enactments and the government's attempts to enforce them provide a window onto the society of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as those who drew up the laws were torn between a desire to suppress extravagance and excess in general terms, and a wish to conduct their own lives decently and honourably, and particularly to mark important family events, such as betrothals, marriages, and funerals with the customary celebrations and display to maintain the family's status.

The earliest recorded efforts to regulate dress seem to be the clauses included in the Statute of the Commune of Lucca of 1308. Women servants were forbidden to have silk purses or other accessories (guarnimenta) of gold, silver, or silk, and their clothing was not to have inserts (inghironatos) in front or at the back, or a train, or be made of cloth worth more than 40s. per canna. Nor were they to wear pattens (pianelle). Anyone infringing these regulations was to be fined £10 by the Podestà (chief magistrate), with efforts to encourage accusations.