“They squeezed with all their might. When they figured she was dead, they submerged her in water, so in case any breath of life was left, the water would smother it. By the miraculous power of God, it was brought about that if anything of our earthly form was blackened, it could be made clean and white with that water.”
Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen. “The Life of St. Godelieve,” Translated by Bruce L. Venarde, 1084.
In a sense, The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve (figure 1), produced by The Master of the St. Godelieve Legend ca. 1470-90, depicts an 11th century Cinderella story gone wrong in seven 15th century narrative panels: A pious young woman living in and around the coastal city of Boulogne named Godelieve is born in 1052 to wealthy parents who are happy for their daughter to become a nun. Despite her wishes, the 15 year old Godelieve’s marriage is arranged by the Count of Boulogne to a young knight named Bertolf from Gistel in Flanders, much to the chagrin of the bridegroom’s mother who hates losing her only son to this “black crow.” Clearly touched by the light of God, Godelieve performs several miracles at feasts in response to her charitable theft of food for the poor. The food she stole is concealed in the folds of her gown which turn into wood chips by Jesus’s hand when she is caught by her father’s servant and are replenished at her engagement by angels. After several days of feasting, the young couple are wed and Godelieve dutifully adopts the habit of her new position, wishing to serve God and her husband by being a good wife. She performs more miracles, much to her husband and mother-in-law’s disdain, the former feigning love and tricking Godelieve into seeing a witch doctor to improve their sex life through a divine (or demonic) prophylactic before ordering his two servants, Lambert and Hacca, to murder Godelieve in the night:[1]
“When it became clear that she wanted to dress, the servants forbade it. ‘Come with bare feet, loose hair, dressed only in a shift,’ they say. ‘It’s quite certain that everything will work to your benefit. But it must be done now, in the dark of night, before first light.’ She subjected herself to their demands, saying, ‘I entrust myself to the Almighty. I am his creature, so let whatever becomes of me seem most merciful. Now I surrender myself to faith in you.’ Rising up, she went with the two men. What they said and did for the next little while was empty of meaning, more tricks and scheming which do not even seem worthy of recording. But when they deceived her one last time, they put a noose around her neck and hands around her throat, so nobody could hear her scream. They squeezed with all their might. When they figured she was dead, they submerged her in water, so in case any breath of life was left, the water would smother it. By the miraculous power of God, it was brought about that if anything of our earthly form was blackened, it could be made clean and white with that water.”[2]
This passage is translated onto the final two panels of The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve linking her narrative importance of her last moments being clothed in an unwanted undress. While this undressing holds the key to understanding this work’s purpose of edification, half of the story is how she got to this point.
Godelieve herself appears twenty-two times across the altarpiece’s seven panels and is the only figure in the work whose dress changes as the narrative progresses. As she moves across the panels, performing early miracles of charity in panels 1-3, accepting her arranged marriage to the knight Bertolf in the central panel, to adopting her role as wife in panel 5, Godelieve passes and performs rites of liminality which mark this progress through shifting attire. By viewing these across separate panels, Godelieve’s story is shown to be edifying within the context of these sacraments.[3] The visual language in The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve is stylistically derived from the late 15th century despite telling the story of an 11th century Life and supports this edifying purpose.[4] As a work, the altarpiece was likely commissioned by the Guild of the Load Bearers of Bruges for their chapel in Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady), for whom Godelieve was the patron saint.
Textile import records from the time period of 1470-1490 in Bruges show that the colors used in The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve for the rendering of woolen broadcloths like the outfits of Lambert and Hacca as they strangle Godelieve in panel 6 (figure 2) were imported at a higher percentage than other dyed colors.[5] The checked and particolored hose worn by Godelieve’s murderers follow the fashion worn by the various forefathers of Jesus in Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s (Circle of) Tree of Jesse, ca. 1500 (figure 3).[6] This contemporaneity no doubt allowed this story to be more accessible to its viewers at mass when the panel doors swung open revealing the greens, yellows, and greys popular amongst the parishioners of a certain class in the latter quarter of the 15th century.
Before arriving at the fateful moment in panel 6 (fig 3) when the two servants steal Godelieve from her bed to murder her dressed only in her shift and kirtle, the narrative building of Godelieve’s character by The Master of the St. Godelieve Legend through dress reveals the artist’s interpretation of the story, Godelieve’s own piety and the deservedness of her fate. Bishop Leander of Seville said in the second half of the 6th century in his text, Training of Nuns, a profession to which the young Godelieve aspired before her marriage, “Do not wear stunning clothes…for the eye is curious before and behind, and do not wear dresses that billow.”[7] As a young maiden in the first three panels of The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve, the saint is seen in a tight-fitting gray wool broadcloth gown with gold trim and red shift eliciting the blood of Christ which was certainly neither timeless nor en vogue, resembling garments of the last century as seen in Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government (figures 4 and 5).[8],[9] Her retinue, seen in panel 1 kneeling with Godelieve all wear gowns reminiscent of those found in 1470-90 works featuring donors of Hans Memling (figures 6,7). Godelieve’s ambivalence towards contemporary fashions places her pious taste in opposition to the ostentation of her wedding gown in panel 4, which is nearly identical in form to a gown worn by the leftmost woman in Gerard David’s 1495 work The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor (figure 8), rendered in a white and cloth of gold silk damask featuring a popular Burgundian pomegranate motif (figure 9).[10] While the 1084 Life of Godelieve written by Drogo makes no mention of the saint’s lifelong virginity, insinuating she and her husband shared a bed at least once, later tellings of the Life feature both virginity and additional posthumous miracles which were added in the 12th century when her Life was rerecorded for the opening of a convent in the slightly more “less reliable” Legend of St. Godelieve.[11] The Master of the Saint Godelieve Legend takes a middle path between these two interpretations: In this work, the choice of the artist to place Godelieve in the pomegranate motif suggests that issues in the marital bed leading to Bertolf’s dissatisfaction with his wife were not the saint’s fault, as the motif is an allusion to fertility—many seeds within one womb.[12] While including Godelieve’s posthumous shirt-sewing miracle, the artist also doesn’t reference Godelieve’s virginity explicitly; Within the context of the Drogo claiming to record the Life in response to the “exhortation of many faithful people,” and hagiographical scholar Renee Nip’s understanding Godelieve’s worship both organic and political, additions to the original Life are not at all fractious, but indicate that this choice of dress made by the artist was a tool to link Godelieve with familiar imagery associating her with other Christian figures and morals for the benefit of the viewers.[13]
Within the context of female sainthood at the time, there were really few options for canonization: a horrible suffering death defending God as a martyr, being a great queen who built churches, a devoted abbess, or dying a virgin—but Godelieve was a devout married woman who had a hard life.[14] This ordinary nature may have gone a long way to endear Godelieve to the population as a saint shortly after her death, but also draws comparison to another female saint: Mary Magdalene.[15] Both Mary Magdalene and Godelieve grew up on the coasts of their respective homelands, in Judea and French Boulogne respectively, and devoted their lives to Christ directly and indirectly as students.[16] If Godelieve could not be compared to the Virgin Mary, the other Mary was certainly an apt alternative. In depictions of Mary Magdalene in the 15th century, she is often seen at the deposition of Christ kneeling before the cross, wearing a fully-laced kirtle with pinned sleeves and hair covered in a white chaperon as in Rogier van der Weyden’s 1430-35 The Descent from the Cross (figure 10). Like Godelieve, Magdalene’s virginity has also been debated in Christian culture, and their sharing of the kirtle links the two women stylistically in the work. Afterall, if Godelieve had remained a virgin after her wedding night Bertolf could have easily had his marriage annulled as if it never existed, and Godelieve would have been able to return home or join a convent.[17] In not suggesting Godelieve remained a maiden, the artist sets up the tragedy of her death with greater stakes.
Essential to understanding why the depiction of Godelieve in her opened kirtle and shift would have confronted contemporary viewers of the altarpiece is first this image’s connection to her status as an upper class married woman and how it transgresses that station. In Giovanni Boccaccio’s 1418-19 Decameron (figure 11), Griselda, wife of the Marquess of Saluzzo, is pictured in a two panel scene standing in front of her husband with her hair exposed, undressing to her white shift and stockings in the face of her husband’s repudiation on the left. In the right hand panel, Griselda is not only restored to her role as wife, marquise, and mother, but also reclaims her “modish houppelande with a double collar” previously cast off as she stands with her family once more.[18] Here, Saluzzo’s ordering Griselda to strip off her clothes as she is wrongly stripped of her station reflects that clothing was deeply tied to marital status at court, reflecting an outward display of both allegiance and role and in illustrated works of courtly narrative serve as tools to show this.
Godelieve, now a married woman, faces a similar trial and at the end of her life is prevented from wearing her own modish Burgundian gown reminiscent of the colors of her husband’s robe, and covering her hair with her black henin (figure 12). In Hans Memling’s 1478 workThe Donne Triptych (figure 13), numerous styles of contemporary Burgundian dress are seen in the center panel from an ostentatious gown with a red and white bodice and blue cloak fastened with a gold chain worn by St. Catherine with her sword at left, to the donor Elizabeth Donne kneeling at right, wearing a white fur-trimmed, deep purple Burgundian gown and black hennin with a gossamer train, and most notably a child also kneeling at prayer behind her Elizabeth, who wears a black head covering and a brown kirtle with a red underlayer and lacing at the front.[19] The only person in this scene wearing the kirtle and shift on their own is this child. Godelieve’s servant girl, who appears in the fifth panel of the work, is the only figure in The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve who is pictured as a young woman or child—both in stature and in dress.[20] She wears a red kirtle or cotehardie appropriate for her station rather than a tight fitting gown like Godelieve’s first grey outfit, with the lacing fully closed at the front, which is rendered in two lighter lines, and little to no ornament (figure 14). From the 14th century before the invention of the set-in sleeve, young women and girls of upper class status would have worn a kirtle and shift alone with no additional layers of clothing.[21] In this sense, the servant girl acts as a counterpoint to Godelieve after her marriage (figure 14), visually reinforcing the saint’s elevated station. When she is denied the ability to redress in panel 6, she is not only denied the respect of her marital status and reduced to a child’s state of dress but also lowered below her class in the eyes of the viewer, resembling her servant and the peasant women working the fields in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Barry “June” miniatures (figure 15).
Seen in panel 4 (figure 9), Godelieve’s accepting the dress of her married status and casting aside the dowdy, monastic gray gown of her youth, elicits Saint Paul who says of dress in Colossians 3.9-10 “you have put off the old nature with its practices and you have put on a new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”[22] In this sense, the artist confirms Godelieve’s crossing the marital threshold in clothed form. This adoption of the Burgundian gown after marriage, her eventual appearance in the shift and black kirtle in panels six and seven fractures Godelieve’s progression in her womanhood and throws her status into murky water, foreshadowing where she would meet her end. In Netherlandish artwork of the period, it is both these milestones and the ambiguity of the space in between that is remarkable when it comes to the meaning of dress in this work—associated with “both danger and possibility”.[23]
Well before the late 15th century when The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve was painted, the erotic possibilities of the kirtle were nonetheless established in the popular imagination; In a 1310 poem, “A Weyle Whyt,” a writer imagines the interlayers of a dress:
“I wish I were a thistle cock
a bunting or a lark,
sweet bird!
between her kirtle and her smock
I would gladly hide.”[24]
As Leander of Seville suggested seven-hundred years prior to his nuns, the flashing of layers that invites the eye to imagine what might lie between garments are ones that, “produce the incentive and capacity to fleshly lust.”[25] These erotic suggestions are present across imagery of the 15th century and in no more frequency—and variety of states of dress—than in illuminated French and Flemish translations of Boccaccio’s 1353 Decameron. One Flemish miniature panel circa 1430 shows a scene of the daughter of Tancredi, Prince of Salerno, who wears a tight-fitting, long sleeved faded purple gown and blue burlet, with her lover in a green houppelande-like garment and no hose or shoes engaging in sex as a man watches out from a turret on their roof (figure 16). In a 1418 French illuminated translation, a couple lies in bed wearing only bonnets as the world passes them by (figure 17).[26] While religious authorities deemed the Decameron to be worthy of burning at the infamous 1497 Bonfire of the Vanities and censured by Papal ban in 1559, the acts depicted in the text and its illuminations were, in fact, commonplace.[27] So too was the reality of undressing in bed. So, what gives?
This altarpiece presents a slight departure from the original language of Drogo’s Life of St. Godelieve when depicting Godelieve’s undress in her final hours. In the Life:
“When it became clear that she wanted to dress, the servants forbade it. ‘Come with bare feet, loose hair, dressed only in a shift,’ they say.‘It’s quite certain that everything will work to your benefit. But it must be done now, in the dark of night, before first light.’” [28]
Yet in The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve, Godelieve leaves bed dressed in her kirtle, which did not necessarily adopt the same supporting form as the one seen in this work until the early 14th century, and accounts for this adaptation given the four-hundred-year gap between the saint’s life and the creation of this altarpiece (figure 18).[29] However, the translation of these sartorial connotations chosen by the artist function in tandem with how this change of station and unwanted undressing would have been contextualized in the 15th century Christian mind. While it is very tempting to understand Godelieve’s appearance in her open kirtle and shift as a transgressive, total nakedness in a 21st century context, this simply would not have been the understanding of 15th century viewers of Godelieve’s murder. Today, religion provides the lens through which some people experience their bodies, nudity, and dress. In 14th century Bruges where the altarpiece was painted, and certainly in the 11th century during Godelieve’s lifetime, it was entirely impossible to separate these ideas from religious doctrine and social conscience.[30]
Unlike Mary Magdalene’s fully laced kirtle with pinned sleeves, Godelieve’s is implied to be torn open. It bears resemblance to Hugo van der Goes’s c. 1470, Massacre of the Innocents, where the lower right panel features a woman laying on her back as she is about to be stabbed through the chest, her kirtle laces laying open to reveal her shift beneath (figure 19). Like this example, the strings of Godelieve’s lacing are haphazardly arranged, revealing the pure whiteness of her shift beneath. This is where the appearance of Godelieve’s shift takes on a dual meaning within the Christian mind.
On one hand, following Leander of Seville’s assertion that curiosity about interlayers incentivizes fleshly lust, it is in the intermittent space of imagination that the possibility of erotic sin arises. How can it be that gazing on Godelieve’s saintly body in crisis can elicit anything other than sympathy? Eroticism, in the Christian anxiety about sexual desire, takes hold in the relationship between clothing and nudity and the idea of transit between the two states.[31] Godelieve herself at the moment of her death also exists in a state of betweenness, forced out of her social position as a wife which is shown through dress in this work. It is understood that parishioners viewing The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve itself would also have come to that experience with knowledge of how she was murdered—forced to die uncovered, against her will. The nature of Godelieve’s plight was well summarized by Christine Pizan when she questioned, on the courting of women in 1399:
“Why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don't women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering them?”[32]
In order to murder, and as Drogo alludes, assault Godelieve, Lambert and Hacca transgress Godelieve’s stable identity she expressed in dress. As Georges Bataille, scholar on the erotics of undressing says, “obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession,” and when are shown the layers between a person, like the artist shows the viewer the layers of Godelieve’s dress, we are invited to imagine this obscenity ourselves.[33] One lesson of this work is then that the demonic lives not only in the physical or carnal, but in the spiritual feeling towards others and the space between them.[34]
Yet it is Godelieve’s acceptance of her identity that lends a second power to her white linen shift:
“Nobody should say I am unlucky, nor think it, although I am tempest-tossed on this sea of life and afflicted with what you call misfortune. For I am exalted over every woman who draws breath in all Flanders and I will appear richer to all than I can imagine. Let Him who is most powerful do what He will with me, He who endows when He wishes with His virtues the poor man from the dirt of his misfortune.”[35]
In Psalms 104.1-2, God manifests himself “clothed with honor and majesty, who coverest thyself with light as with a garment.”[36] Just as saints themselves are intercessors between the faithful and God, so too is Godelieve’s shift as it covers her holy body in bright white. The connections between white linen and purity connects to ideas of cleanliness and how to stay clean. Throughout the 15th century, the shift, smock or chemise was the layer between the body and the outer clothes, responsible for picking up sweat and soil.[37] After being dipped in the well, the area “of ground where she was killed was turned into white stone, in order that the Lord might show her merit and make known to all faithful the place of her death.”[38]
In death, St. Godelieve embodies the light of Christ, wearing a long white gown that does not cling to the body, with gold trim across the neckline and crown, as she is seen performing posthumous miracles in and around Gistel (figure 20). Its second edification becomes clear: that heaven is the ultimate reward for the Christian body entombing the immortal soul of the viewer.[39] Godelieve is elevated in her robes like the High Priest Simon, who “when he put on his glorious robe and clothes himself with superb perfection and went up to the holy altar, he made the court of the sanctuary glorious.”[40] The white linen of her shift becomes transformed into the billowing robes of heaven. After her death, many people reviled Bertolf for his deeds, but he still remarried, producing a daughter, Edith who was born blind. According to the Legend, prayers to Godelieve were made and water from the well she was murdered in sprinkled across the girl’s eyes, bringing back her sight.[41] In the seventh panel of The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve, the crowned saint is seen under a tree speaking with a woman from Bertolf’s castle. He has sent the woman out with fine cloth to Gistel, and she runs into a majestic woman who turns out to be Godelieve. At first, she is afraid, but Godelieve assures her that she can sew the finest shirts possible and to leave the fabric with her.[42] When the servant returned with the shirts for Bertolf, he asked who had sewn them and the servant was able to give no name. But Bertolf recognized Godelieve’s needlework and full of grief for the evil death he caused her wife, retreated to the Abbey of Sint-Winoksbergen, not before helping build the abbey of Gistel, Tenn Putte Abbey, on the site of Godelieve’s death which to this day holds a supposed relic shirt of Godelieve and is painted in brilliant clean white.[43]
Notes
[1] Head, Thomas. “Chapter 17, Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen, The Life of Saint Godelieve, translated by Bruce L. Venarde.” Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology. New York: Routledge, (2001): 359-61. Thomas Head provides an informative introduction into the life of Godelieve and summarizes in part the work of Renee Nip, who is a notable scholar on Godelieve and female saints of the period and referenced further.
[2] Head, Thomas. “Chapter 17, Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen, The Life of Saint Godelieve, translated by Bruce L. Venarde,” 369-70. This Life was written by Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen in 1084. The words “tricks” and “scheming” are seen across writing of the time in reference to the pursuit of women by men, including in Christine de Pizan’s 1399 The Letter of the God of Love. Here, Head offers that these tricks imply a rape or sexual assault, noting that Drogo’s dismissal of the acts as meaningless reinforce that—though I will contend that the suggestion that is more damning that the truth of the act.
[3] Jacobs, Lynn F. “Introduction.” Thresholds and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385-1530). (London; Routledge, 2018): 3. Jacobs proposes that in Netherlandish art of the period, these waypoints of Christian life are linked to the space between narrative panels in works. This is such that
[4] Burroughs, Bryson. “A Polyptych Representing the Life of Saint Godeliève.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 7, no. 7 (1912): 126–28. Painted in the style of the Bruges School, the work is noted as being somewhat quaint by Burroughs and “lacking eloquence” of other Flemish masters. While it is true that the work’s level of detail and fine rendering of the skin and backgrounds does not match a Memling, Burroughs does not appreciate the quality of the renderings of the textiles. These are done to an extent such that velvet is distinguishable from silk, and light catches rendered velvet pile differently as subjects change position.
[5] Munro, John H. "The Anti-Red Shift—To the Dark Side: Colour Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1550." In Medieval Clothing and Textiles, edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, 55–96. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, (2007): 68-71. Accessed November 1, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781800108349.ch-004.
[6] Kok, J.P. Filedt. “‘Circle of Geertgen Tot Sint Jans, The Tree of Jesse, Haarlem, c. 1500’, in J.P. Filedt Kok (Ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings.” Rijksmuseum, (2010). https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-3901/catalogue-entry?pdfView=False. The initial comparison is made elsewhere, see: Julius S. Held. "The Bearing of the Cross, Hitherto Attributed to Juan de Flandes." Art Quarterly 28 (1965): p. 33–34.
[7] Koslin, Désirée. "Visual Representations." In A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age, edited by Sarah-Grace Heller, 141–158. The Cultural Histories Series. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017): 144. Accessed November 1, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474206396.ch-008.
[8] Greenberg, Hope. 15th Century Female Flemish Dress: A Portfolio of Images, November 2003. https://www.uvm.edu/~hag/sca/15th/.
[9] Davenport, Millia. The Book of Costume. [New one-Volume ed.]. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1979): 343.
[10] Fanelli, Rosalia Bonito. "The Pomegranate Pattern in Italian Renaissance Textiles: Origins and Influence". Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, (1994): 193–204.
[11] Nip, Renee and Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B., ed. “Life and afterlife Arnulf of Oudenburg, bishop of Soissons, and Godelieve of Gistel: their function as intercessors in medieval Flanders.” In The Invention of Saintliness. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, (2002): 67, 69. Renee Nip is a foremost scholar of the lives of saints from the period and has particular specialty in both female saints and Godelieve in particular. Nip links Godelieve’s canonization to a popular cult surrounding the saint and political struggle between Boulogne and Flanders at the time of her death which may have been mediated by this elevation.
[12] Fanelli, Rosalia Bonito. “The Pomegranate Pattern in Italian Renaissance Textiles: Origins and Influence,” 193–204. It would also defy Godelieve’s status as special in the eyes of God if the dutiful housewife was barren, though the irony would certainly not be lost on her, or I hope, the reader.
[13] Nip, Renee. “Life and afterlife Arnulf of Oudenburg, bishop of Soissons, and Godelieve of Gistel: their function as intercessors in medieval Flanders,” 69. As the Life and Legend of St. Godelieve develop on her story, changes to it become less of a question of the artist’s familiarity with the story and a tool to understand which story existed more popularly in the contemporary imagination in the late 15th century.
[14] Nip, Renee. “Godelieve of Gistel and Ida of Boulogne,” in Mulder-Bakker, Anneke, ed. Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages. (Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group, 1995): 197. Accessed December 16, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
[15] Nip, Renee. “Godelieve of Gistel and Ida of Boulogne,” 196. Nip links Godelieve to the cult of Nehalennia, a Germanic goddess associated with farming as the saint’s miracles align with pre-Christian beliefs that might have helped Godelieve’s cult form faster around the miracle of Godelieve saving crops among others.
[16] Voragine, Jacobus de. “Here Followeth the Life of S. Mary Magdalene, and First of Her Name,” In The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints. Edited by F.S. Ellis. Translated by William Caxton. Sourcebooks.fordham.edu. 3rd ed. Vol. 4. 1470. Reprint, Temple Classics, 1931. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/GoldenLegend-Volume4.asp#Mary%20Magdalene.
[17] Nip, Renee. “Godelieve of Gistel and Ida of Boulogne,” 201-4. Nip shares several amusing schemes by counts contemporary to Godelieve’s marriage which indicate that both husbands, like the count of Anjou in 1000, dissatisfied with their wives often schemed to indict the wives on adultery or witchcraft to circumnavigate strict marriage laws, and skirt their own responsibility for failures in the marriage bed. She also notes, quite rightly, that many couples were so young that it was not out of the ordinary for there to be difficulty consummating the marriages.
[18] Van Buren, Anne. “Album: A Pictorial History of Fashion, 1325-1515,” 138.
[19] For additional information on The Donne Triptych, see National Gallery, London’s in-depth write up on the work: National Gallery, London, “Hans Memling | the Donne Triptych | National Gallery, London,” www.nationalgallery.org.uk (National Gallery, London, 2016), https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-memling-the-donne-triptych. It discusses the dress of the two donor Donnes, Sir John Donne and his wife, Elizabeth, and their wearing of the York-aligned livery collar with a rose and sunburst.
[20] Even though Godeleive was 15 at the time of her marriage, she is never rendered in childlike-miniature or as younger than 15. She is an adult in this time and looks the part.
[21] Van Buren, Anne. “Album: A Pictorial History of Fashion, 1325-1515,” 40.
[22] Perniola, Mario. “Between Clothing and Nudity,” in Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources: Late Medieval to Renaissance, ed. McNeil, Peter. (Oxford: BERG, 2009): 99.
[23] Jacobs, Lynn F. “Introduction.” Thresholds and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385-1530). London; Routledge, (2018): p. 9-10.
[24] “A Weyle Whyt”; Böddeker 1878, 1 p.163, lines 51-55, in Van Buren, Anne, Roger S. Wieck, and Pierpont Morgan Library. Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515. (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum; London, 2011.): 317. The original Old English version rhymes much better.
[25] Koslin, Désirée. “Visual Representations,” 144.
[26] Ironically, this copy, produced in Paris from 1414-1418, is known as the “Decameron Vaticano,” as it was saved in the Vatican library despite its own decrees of obscenity.
[27] Christina McGrath, “Manipulated, Misrepresented and Maligned: The Censorship and Rassettatura of the Decameron,” Heliotropia, no. 15 (2018): 189–203, https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/heliotropia/15/mcgrath.pdf.
[28] Head, “Chapter 17, Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen, The Life of Saint Godelieve, translated by Bruce L. Venarde,” 369-70. This excerpt comes from a larger passage which directly addresses St. Godelieve’s dress and death together.
[29] Van Buren, Anne, Roger S. Wieck, and Pierpont Morgan Library. “Album: A Pictorial History of Fashion, 1325-1515” in Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515. (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum; London, 2011): 40.
[30] Nip, Renee. “Godelieve of Gistel and Ida of Boulogne,” 195.
[31] Perniola, Mario. “Between Clothing and Nudity,” 95.
[32] de Pizan, Christine. The Letter of the God of Love. 1399.
[33] Bataille, Georges. Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1986): 7 in Perniola, Mario. “Between Clothing and Nudity,” 99.
[34] Perniola, Mario. “Between Clothing and Nudity,” 102.
[35] Head, Thomas. “Chapter 17, Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen, The Life of Saint Godelieve, translated by Bruce L. Venarde,” 367.
[36] PS. 104.1-2.
[37] Vigarello, Georges. Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since the Middle Ages. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press; Paris, 1988): 48.
[38] Head, Thomas. “Chapter 17, Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen, The Life of Saint Godelieve, translated by Bruce L. Venarde,” 369.
[39] Perniola, Mario. “Between Clothing and Nudity,” 96.
[40] Sirach 50. 11-12.
[41] Nip, Renee. “Life and afterlife Arnulf of Oudenburg, bishop of Soissons, and Godelieve of Gistel: their function as intercessors in medieval Flanders,” 69. Nip is rightly skeptical of this miracle’s veracity—as one is with all miracles—particularly because it was introduced in the 12th century Legend, not the 11th century Life of Godelieve.
[42] In Nip’s retelling, the servant is a man.
[43] Nip, Renee. “Life and afterlife Arnulf of Oudenburg, bishop of Soissons, and Godelieve of Gistel: their function as intercessors in medieval Flanders,” 70.
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Fig. 1: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art.
Left: Fig. 2: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 1, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art. Right: Fig. 3: Geertgen tot Sint Jans, (Circle of), Tree of Jesse, ca. 1500. Rijksmuseum.
Fig 4: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 2, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve, ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art. Godelieve’s grey gown with gilt trim, yellow lining and red underlayer in panels 1-2.
Fig. 5: Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Detail, Allegory of Good and Bad Government, 1339, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy. Features 14th century neckline and ornamentation similar to Godelieve in The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve,ca. 1470-90.
Fig. 6: Hans Memling, Triptych of the Family Moreel, 1484. Groeninge Museum, Bruges. Note Barbara kneeling in prayer at right, wearing a high-waisted Burgundian gown with belt and fur trim.
Fig. 7: Hans Memling, Tommaso Portinari and his Wife, ca. 1470. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Fig. 8: Gerard David, The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, ca. 1501-9. The National Gallery, London. In red, the woman at left wears a dress almost identical to that Godelieve wears at her wedding in the central panel of The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve, with different fabric and trimmings.
Fig 9: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 3, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. Godelieve’s pomegranate motif white and cloth of gold silk damask gown.
Fig. 10: Rogier van der Weyden, The Descent from the Cross ca. 1430-35. Detail of Mary Magdalene in shift and pinked chaperon. Hermitage Museum.
Fig. 11: “The Marquess of Saluzzo Dismisses His Wife, Griselda; She Is Later Reinstated.”Boccaccio, Decameron; Rome, BAV, MS. Pal. La. 1989, fol. 320 (detail). In: Van Buren, Anne, Roger S. Wieck, and Pierpont Morgan Library. Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, 1325-1515. New York: The Morgan Library & Museum; London, 2011.
Fig. 12: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 4, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art. Godelieve wears her wifely Burgundian gown while she performs the miracle of the crows and prays.
Fig. 13: Hans Memling, The Donne Triptych, 1478. The National Gallery, London. Note several different types of Netherlandish dress present, from a child in a kirtle (lower right) to a woman in an ostentatious gown at left.
Left: Fig. 14: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 5, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art. Servant’s closed kirtle or cotehardie. Right: Fig. 15: Limbourg Brothers, “June” from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1412-16. Two peasant women work in their shifts and kirtles, the left woman has pulled the bottom of her kirtle up to her waist, exposing the shift.
Left: Fig. 16: “Lovers, The daughter of Tancredi, Prince of Salerno, with her lover.” Flemish miniature, c. 1430, to a French translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. Right: Fig. 17: Page from the Decameron Vaticano, a 1414-1418 illuminated French translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
Fig. 18: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 6, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art. The murder of Godelieve in her kirtle and shift.
Fig. 19: Hugo van der Goes, Massacre of the Innocents c. 1470 Detail, lower right panel. The Hermitage Museum.
Fig. 20: The Master of the Godelieve Legend, Detail 7, The Life and Miracles of St. Godelieve ca. 1470-90. The Museum of Metropolitan Art. Note Godelieve bearing the shirts she miraculously sewed for Bertolf’s servant, which are returned to him in the upper left of this detail. She now wears a white, caped gown and gold crown.