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Clothing and Appearance
Do clothes make the man—or the woman? Should it be possible to know a person’s identity or religion simply from his or her appearance, and can certain clothes, hairstyles, and other aspects of visual identity be mandated by custom and law? Throughout the medieval period, the desirable answer was generally “yes.” Different groups of people should look different, with different vestimentary traditions, whether through self- or communal regulation (according to their own laws, habits, and personal desires) or mandated by external legislation. Prescriptive legal sources, both religious and secular, from medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian spheres, all indicate medieval sentiments in favor of the immediate visual identification of religious, social, and economic distinctions through regulations on dress, hairstyles, veils, belts, shoes, beards, jewelry, and other aspects of personal and collective appearance. One of the most famous iterations of these opinions, codified at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and requiring distinctive “signs” for Muslims and Jews, did not stand alone in the legal tradition.
Meanwhile, the lawyers, clerics, and administrators who upheld sumptuary laws were themselves far from alone in supporting the importance of differential visual identity in medieval and early modern Spain. Artists (and, by extension, their audiences) in Christian and Muslim regions were likewise familiar with the conventions for representing Christian and Muslim appearance, whether in luxury manuscripts produced at the court of Alfonso X of Castile, or in frescoes of courtly scenes adorning the ceilings of the Alhambra Palace in Granada. While it may be argued that neither law nor art necessarily reflected actual lived experience in medieval and early modern Spain, nevertheless, both genres expressed clear and well-understood expectations that Muslims, Christians, and Jews should be visually distinguishable from each other.
And just as different groups should look different, so too members of the same community should appear as such. Thirteenth-century Castilian law had dictated not only that Muslims should dress differently from Christians but also that newly converted Christians (“christianos novos”) must no longer dress as Moors (“nin vistan commo los moros”).1 Three centuries later, on the eve of mass conversions in the early sixteenth century, the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, likewise advised that New Christians should conform outwardly to Christian ways of life, and lest they be suspected of harboring Muslim belief in their hearts, they should appear as good and honest Christians in their dress, shoes, and hairstyles.2 Sixteenth-century opinion in this matter was founded on medieval precedents, with one adviser to the emperor Charles V in 1526 recommending that Morisco dress be prohibited because “people and things identify themselves by the signs that they carry, and thus they are judged to be those whose signs they bear.”3 It follows, therefore, that the 1567 law in Granada requiring that the Moriscos “may not wear Moorish clothing” (no traygan vestido de moros), but they must “conform with Old Christians in their dress” (conformen en los trajes con los cristianos viejos) was directly related to a much older discourse about legislating the visual distinction of identity.4 Pedro de Deza, the president of the Granadan Royal Audiencia who was in charge of implementing the 1567 ordinances, thus argued that the retention of Moorish styles (ropas a la morisca) “was dishonest, and it did not look right that Christian women should go around dressed like moras.”5
When Francisco Núñez Muley was called upon to defend the rights of New Christians to wear traditional styles, he was forced to find a new focus for this familiar line of argument, by reorienting the discussion from religious to regional distinctiveness. In trying to disassociate the long-held presumption that people of different religions were, and should be, visually distinct because of religion, he argued that “the style of dress, clothing and footwear of the natives cannot be said to be that of Muslims, nor is it that of Muslims. It can more rightly be said to be clothing that corresponds to a particular kingdom and province … it follows from what I have just said that Christianity is not found in the clothing or footwear that is now in style, and the same is true of Islam.”6 These arguments ran counter to centuries of legislation and assumptions linking belief and appearance. And yet Núñez Muley’s arguments also had good grounding since there were many different regional styles of dress in early modern Spain. Styles in Granada were different from those worn by New Christians elsewhere, stemming from the fact that this region had been very recently conquered, while Mudejars in Valencia, Aragon, and northern Castile had been living under Christian rule for centuries. Evidence from these regions indicates that Muslims had long dressed in styles that were often similar to those of their Old Christian neighbors—even while religious and secular legislation required differential appearance. By the sixteenth century, many New Christians in northern and eastern Iberia had more or less given up Morisco styles (el traje a los moriscos).7
Some identity requirements were purely external and easily changed, such as styles of clothing; others were also temporary, but somewhat more long term, such as particular styles for hair and beards; still others were permanently inscribed on the body, as with circumcision in particular.8 Inherent differences in appearance, such as skin color, might also be seen as important visual markers, but these could not be legislated or altered. Meanwhile, certain invisible elements that were believed to create identity—such as the importance given to purity of blood (pureza de sangre) in early modern Spain—were a different matter again.9 The case of Granada was thus particular, and this region would become the focal point for early modern attention to Morisco dress. But it was not entirely unique, and it is important both to consider the particularities of Granadan experience on their own terms and to situate them in a wider context.
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The more changeable aspects of visual identity could be easily shared, and there is a common and understandable tendency for people living in the same place at the same time to dress in similar fashions. Much of medieval sumptuary legislation therefore addressed the problems entailed by the social and economic muddling of visual identity. As has frequently been pointed out, repeated laws requiring differential styles of clothing may suggest that, in fact, people routinely ignored these rules. We know, for example, that many Christians in late medieval Spain liked to wear elements of what was commonly identified as “Moorish” dress, despite strictures against such things, while Mudejars did not always wear the particular clothing and hairstyles that were dictated by Christian authorities to signal their Muslim identity. Sharing was less likely in the case of permanent bodily signs, which could not be assumed without inflicting pain, and which would have remained the same even when identity changed. In 1526, when Moriscos in Granada were first required to abandon “Moorish” forms of dress, many adult male converts would still have been circumcised. But, needless to say, this inscribed sign of residual Islamic identity would rarely have been visible in the public sphere (except perhaps in a bathhouse). Old Christian authorities could not demand its removal, although they certainly tried to ensure that Morisco boys did not undergo the procedure.
Many rulings regarding communal visual identity were directed internally, issued by political and religious authorities toward members of their own communities to create solidarity and conformity, whether these were requirements for circumcision or sumptuary laws dictating clothing and hairstyles. Other laws were imposed by a ruling community that wielded power over a subject community (whether or not these subjects were actually a numerical minority). Both sorts of rules had very ancient roots, and many elements of legal thought that became common in the medieval Mediterranean world can be found in Roman law and other earlier traditions.
As regards Christian-Muslim relations, legislation on the proper dress and deportment of Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule (dhimmīs) can be traced back to the first century of Islam, in the so-called Pact of ‘Umar (Shurūṭ ‘Umar).10 This famous document is thought to have been promulgated by either the caliph ‘Umar I (d. 644) or ‘Umar II (d. 720), and it would be widely disseminated throughout the later medieval Islamic world, including al-Andalus, as a long-term template for Muslim-dhimmī relations. The categories for distinction were
