This Jewish medieval woman just got a statue : Analyzing the Licoricia of Winchester statue’s clothes
Photo by @hay_livinghistory.
This Jewish medieval woman just got a statue : Analyzing the Licoricia of Winchester statue’s clothes
Who was Licoricia of Winchester, and why did this medieval woman get a bronze statue? Does it show historically accurate medieval dress? Licoricia of Winchester was a powerful 13th century Jewish businesswoman who left her mark on medieval history.
This Jewish woman was an important part of Jewish history in Medieval England in the 13th century. Licoricia, Winchester's Jewish community, and the presence and role of Jews in medieval history deserve this representation. Let's take a look at the medieval clothes on the Licoricia statue and find out if she's wearing historically accurate medieval dress dress for a Jew in 13th century England.
Why did Licoricia just get a statue?
The Licoricia of Winchester statue was unveiled on February 10th, 2022, to commemorate Licoricia herself and all medieval English Jews (more info at licoricia.org).She was both a single mother and a savvy businesswoman, playing a huge role in both Jewish and Gentile business ventures and interceding for the Jewish community with the English King. The tax bill she paid on the death of her second husband paid to build part of Westminster Abbey! In the middle ages Jews were often structurally marginalized, but through resilience and community their stories endure. Through dress history I've gotten to learn more about Licoricia herself and the community around her, and just how many gaps and inaccuracies there are in our picture of history when we leave marginalized people out.
Photo by @hay_livinghistory.
How accurate are her clothes?
Fashion history is still only just starting to understand how medieval Jewish women would have dressed differently (or not differently) to non-Jewish medieval women living near them. Medieval Jewish clothing is not well understood, and we're still figuring out how it would have combined Jewish traditional dress and non-Jewish medieval fashion. Licoricia's clothes are a great example of medieval womens' fashion, well documented in illuminated manuscripts and medieval statues. Her kirtle, cloak, and headdress are all well-documented in sources from the 13th century, including illuminated manuscripts, effigies, and statues, all listed on my Patreon. The Licoricia project was kind enough exchange a few e-mails with me about their research, and helped fill me in on her jewelry too! She wears rings inspired by the simpler wedding rings found in the Erfurt treasure, a collection of coins and valuables hidden by a Jew right before a pogrom in the 14th century.
Photo by @hay_livinghistory.
What about her headdress?
This is where it gets complicated. Licoricia’s headdress is as well-documented as the rest of her clothes— in sources depicting Christian women. We have no images of Jewish women in England from this period, with the exception of an antisemitic political cartoon from the margins of an Exchequer document (probably not an accurate picture). While well-off Jews would probably dress very much like their Gentile peers in many respects, Judaism has a very old tradition for married (and widowed) women to fully cover their hair when in public. Although this is not as widely practiced today, it was nearly universal among medieval Jews. Licoricia’s headdress does not cover all, or even most of her hair. Any evidence supporting such a dramatic break with Jewish tradition, would say a lot about how much medieval English Jews wanted to assimilate!
-
Earlier this month I got several DMs from my beloved Instagram followers about the same thing : This statue of Licoricia of Winchester, a 13th century medieval Jewish woman who was such a boss business lady that her tax bill paid to build a section of Westminster Abbey. The statue was unveiled on February 10th in Winchester, near the house she used to live in, which explains why I hadn’t heard about it earlier. Those of you who saw my video about Halloween witch costumes and Jewish stereotypes probably know where this is going, but, just in case you haven’t : Down a research rabbit hole. That’s where it’s going.
Hi, I’m V : Dress historian, Jew, and player of medieval dress-up. When I first got into historical costuming, I felt like I really had to struggle with my place and my visibility as a Jew in medieval clothes. So, seeing such a public portrayal of a medieval Jew is incredible! It’s extra incredible because this isn’t just some undefined medieval Jewish woman. Licoricia of Winchester had a fascinating life and must have been an amazingly strong person to make her way in the world. So before I talk about her clothes, let’s talk a little about who she actually was and why this statue is such a big deal.
The Licoricia of Winchester charity project was incorporated in August of 2017, with the aim of educating the public about Winchester’s medieval Jewish community and history. The statue of Licoricia, sculpted by Ian Rank-Broadley using his Jewish daughter and grandson as models, was unveiled on February 10th, but the project has much broader goals including educational materials for schools, a larger exhibit on the medieval Jewish community, and an academic symposium. Her clothes were carefully researched with input from the V&A museum and the Jewish Museum of London. All this info is from the project’s website, Licoricia.org, which also cites some extremely helpful books and historical context that I did use for this video. I also want to mention that although I sent an e-mail to their press contact, I have not heard back–
Editing V here. Just needed to say that I did actually hear back from the Licoricia project, literally the morning after I filmed this. They did have a few things to share with me, which I’ll be adding into the video when we get there, but since they were busy getting ready for His Royal Highness Prince Charles to visit on March 3rd, they didn’t have time to discuss in depth. However—
–I should probably make clear that this video has been made without any actual connection to the statue project. These are the outside views of one Jewish lady who just really likes researching old clothes.
Obviously it’s not every Jewish woman who gets a bronze statue made of them (cool as that would be). Licoricia of Winchester first appears in the historical record in 1234 as a widowed single mother of four children. The history of Winchester’s Jewish community goes back much further to around 1070, when William the Conqueror invited Jews from Normandy to move to England. Having Jews around was good for the economy, although it’s for more reasons than being moneylenders. Also, can I just say, why is it that when it’s a Jew doing financial work they’re called a “moneylender” but people like the Medici family of Florence, who made their fortune the same way, are called “bankers”?
Anyways. Jews across the Medieval world had a strong sense of community, an inherent trust and connection with their own people, scattered as they were. A Jewish merchant who was in touch with a relative or acquaintance in Spain, or Italy, or North Africa, maybe without a language barrier if both spoke Hebrew, could get better access to valuable trade goods that came from Islamic territories and the Silk Road beyond them. These trade connections, and the Jewish businesspeople who had them, would be an asset to any territory. There was even a German bishop named Rüdiger Huzmann who wrote a charter in 1084 establishing a Jewish community in his territory, saying “in my endeavor to turn the village of Speyer into a city, believed to multiply its image a thousand times by also inviting Jews”.
By the 1230s, though, things were starting to go worse for England’s Jews. The first recorded blood libel, a particularly vicious antisemitic rumour that usually led to mob violence, took place in Norwich in 1144, sparking a trend that has continued ever since. In the meantime, the dynamic William the Conqueror had established between the Crown and his Jewish subjects was backfiring bigtime. English Jews were considered “royal serfs”, meaning they were directly under the crown’s authority and not that of their local nobility. The crown could and did tax them at exorbitant rates to pay for wars and building projects, because this was private funding outside of other government systems. In the meantime, the balance of power was shifting from the Crown to the nobles and to Parliament, who were not happy about the Crown’s independent source of funding or any of their own debts to Jews they’d taken out loans from. During the Second Barons’ War, Jewish communities were attacked specifically to destroy records of any debts owed to them. With political forces turning against the Jews and their ability to pay exorbitant taxes running out, things went downhill verrry quickly, culminating with the mass expulsion of Jews and theft of all their property in 1290.
It’s during this upheval, in the 13th century, that we pick up Licoricia’s story. Our first record of Licoricia is in 1234, when she had already been married, had four children, and been widowed. Legal records from around that time show her engaging in joint ventures, including one with members of a Jewish consortium headed by another Serious Business Lady named Chera. By the end of the 1230s, she had become one of the wealthiest Jewish women in England, as a single mom. She got married again in 1242 to another extremely successful Jewish banker, David of Oxford, who wanted to marry her so much that he got into a massive legal battle to divorce his first wife involving the both the English and French Jewish religious authorities, King Henry the Third of England, and the Archbishop of York. Divorce is a lot more permissible under old Jewish religious law than it was in Christianity, but there’s a list of valid reasons, and “I’m in love with this other person” is not one of them. Licoricia and David had a son, Asher, before David died in 1244. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London for eight months while the death and inheritance taxes were taken from David’s fortune, traditionally 1/3 of the estate. The tax bill came to 5,000 marks, at a time when a laborer’s yearly wage was less than 3 marks. The King took 4,000 marks for his pet project : a section of Westminster Abbey dedicated to Edward the Confessor, part of which is still there. When Licoricia was released, she went right back to being a Serious Business Woman, surviving the fallout of yet another blood libel in 1255, a falsified theft accusation in 1258, and the aforementioned Second Barons’ War in 1264. Her son Asher, instead of calling himself “son of David”— who, we should remember, was among the 6 wealthiest Jews in England— called himself “son of Licoricia”. Which is basically him saying “Hey, as powerful as my dad was, and as traditional as it is for Hebrew names to be patronyms . . . it’s really my mom you need to be worried about”. And no wonder, considering she dealt extensively and directly with the King’s court, with the King at least reprimanding a noble who refused to pay a debt to her, and repeatedly intervening to protect her interests in a court case. Her son Benedict by her first husband Abraham became the only Jewish member of a merchant guild in England, and probably anywhere in Western Europe. Unfortunately, things continued to get worse for the Jews of England, and outbreaks of violence became more common. In 1277, by which point she would have been in at least her sixties, Licoricia was murdered in her house alongside a Christian servant named Alice. The crime was never treated as anything other than a burglary that escalated, and no one was ever tried for it; Licoricia’s sons had to pay for the investigation themselves, her house was robbed during the process, and the man who was accused of her killing was never actually caught. However, given the social conditions Jews were living under, and the deliberate nature of the injuries Licoricia and Alice died of, it’s hard to see this as anything other than an antisemitic hate crime.
Let’s talk about the clothes. Bonnie of @hay_livinghistory took these wonderful detail photos of the statue and gave me her permission to share them with all of you, and it’s thanks to these that I could see enough detail to get really curious.
Like I said earlier, the project’s press contact did write back to me the morning after I filmed, although they didn’t have time to discuss things in much detail. They did mention a couple specifics that I’ll pop in and explain as we get to them, and also mentioned that this book, “Historical Costumes of England - from the Eleventh to the Twentieth Century” by N. Bradfield was one of their sources. Once again, what follows is still my own independently done research, and it’s very possible they have access to other sources and evidence and context that I do not.
I have not studied menswear or childrens’ clothes in anywhere near the depth I look at womenswear (or, really, at all), so I’m going to be sticking to Licoricia’s outfit rather than analyzing her son Asher’s clothes as well. At a glance, his outfit looks good? But I wouldn’t know what to look for if it didn’t.
The first thing I want to point out, is that even though identifying dress was mandated for English Jews after 1215, in the form of a tabula-shaped badge, Licoricia isn’t wearing any and neither is Asher. The project’s website explains that like with other sumptuary laws, wealthier Jews could pay to avoid this. Not only could a Jew pay for an exemption, the exemptions could be on behalf of an entire community. The Church considered the payments a valuable source of revenue, and would repeatedly reimpose the requirements to extract new payments. In 1253 this loophole was closed by the Statute of Jewry, although there’s some specific use of the terms “Jew” and “Jewess” that imply it may have been applied to men more than to women.
Since this is a bronze statue, there aren’t many seam lines or construction details in the clothes themselves, although it is cool to see this little sleeve seam on Asher’s tunic! Licoricia wears a kirtle, or dress, with a full-length skirt, long fitted sleeves, and an unshaped bodice. That tracks with just about every source I’ve seen for this setting. The Morgan Picture Bible, a French illuminated manuscript from sometime around 1240, shows this exact shape of kirtle over and over, as does the North French Hebrew Miscellany from sometime in the late 13th century. You can see from how it falls above her belt that it’s a straight rectangular cut, and only flares from the waist down where the skirt would be widened with triangular gores. The shape is pretty much spot-on. Her belt or girdle looks like it could be tablet-woven or some other kind of narrow-woven material. There isn’t a pattern in the bronze, but you can see the fringes at the ends. Suzanne Bartlet mentions finding many records of girdles in the belongings of Jews, including some of great monetary value. It’s a little wider than what’s in the illuminations, but since they’re not detailed enough to show any ornamentation a girdle might have, I don’t think it’s implausible. The kirtle’s neckline is keyhole-shaped and closed with a brooch, although placed at the bottom of the opening rather than at the top. Most examples I’ve seen show a brooch at the top or middle of the opening, but I can understand why the designers would choose to place it lower so the cloak band and the brooch wouldn’t interfere with eachother. Her sleeves have pointed cuffs, which is not something I’ve seen before? It is really cool-looking, so I’d love to see where the research team found this detail.
The project also mentioned how they chose her rings. They decided not to copy an extant Jewish ring found in Erfurt from the 14th century, with the reasoning that such an ornate ring would only be used for ceremonial purposes in synagogue. They did choose to put rings on more than one of her fingers, and pointed out that wedding rings were not necessarily worn on any particular finger at the time. One of her rings looks like a simplified version of this one, also from the Erfurt treasure, which is believed to be a wedding ring for wearing rather than ceremonial use. I don’t know much about jewelry, so I’m really glad they could fill in that blank for me.
Licoricia isn’t wearing any kind of overgown on top of the kirtle. Depending on what she’s doing, that might or might not be accurate? Working people usually didn’t wear overgowns, and a kirtle on its own was appropriate for informal wear. So here’s where context and hypotheticals and artistic interpretation and public understanding all start to butt up against eachother. The fashionable overgown of this period was the cyclas or supertunic, a completely unfitted sleeveless garment that fell from shoulder to hem. It’s absolutely documentable, but it brings up a different set of associations in the public. We see a kirtle like the one Licoricia is wearing, and we recognize it as a medieval dress. It’s close enough to our popular image of medieval characters in dramatized or romanticized settings, that we relate to it. The unshaped cyclas doesn’t have the same familiarity, and the associations are different; out of context it looks more like a nun’s habit. I can understand why the designers and artists would want to choose a more familiar but equally documentable outfit. If Licoricia is just walking with her son to a friend’s house on an ordinary day, it would make perfect sense that she’s not wearing her cyclas. If she’s in Serious Business mode and striding out to give someone a piece of her mind about the tallage demand in her hand, maybe she’d be more formally dressed . . . but all this is hypothetical, and I’m not sure it really matters.
What Licoricia is wearing over her kirtle, is a full-length cloak or mantle draped over her shoulders and fastened across the front with a decorated band. This style shows up over and over in images of high-status figures, particularly in ceremonial images like these effigies of English queens, or these from the Chartres cathedral.
The source the Licoricia project used for this part of the outfit seems to be this statue of Uta von Ballenstedt; they said they used it for “brooches” but since the actual brooch designs are different I’m guessing they meant “a cloak fastened like this with brooches”. This statue was actually appropriated by the Nazis and used as the literal propaganda poster child for Aryan women, which is super ironic and I actually find kind of amusing? Of course, that has nothing to do with its context in the 13th century.
I kind of like the idea of using the same indicators of status used for other powerful women of the time. Nothing about this cloak goes against Jewish religious or cultural dress customs, as long as it wasn’t sewn with linen thread or something. So I think it’s absolutely right for Licoricia’s statue to have the same symbols of power as statues of her Christian contemporaries.
Finally, we come to Licoricia’s headwear. All of the individual pieces are familiar to me : There’s a frilled headband called a fillet, and a barbette (a band that wraps under the chin). These are pretty well documented in period illuminations; again we have the Morgan Picture Bible, and a little later on it shows up in the Codex Manesse. Her hair is coiled at the back of her head with an open-work hairnet over the bun.
Because they mentioned Uta von Ballenstedt as one of their sources and her headdress is also super similar to this, I tried to find an image of the back of her head and get a look at her hair. Unfortunately, the internet had nothing for me. It looks like the statue may be set into the surrounding stonework in a way that means the back of her head doesn’t exist? So yeah, I got nothing here. Sorry.
It’s extremely similar to the only image of a Jewish Englishwoman we have from this period, although this image is literally an antisemitic political cartoon drawn in the margins of an Exchequer document, so I don’t think it’s a particularly reliable illustration of Jewish womens’ . . . anything. I was really surprised that this was the style of headdress they chose for Licoricia, documentable as it is, and to explain why I’m gonna have to go off down another rabbit hole.
I did ask the statue project for more info on the headdress and why they chose it, but, again, busy getting ready for the Prince to visit, did not have time to discuss in detail. So, nothing they were able to share on this topic, this next bit is all me trying to figure things out on my own.
People have been asking me to do a video on Jewish “womens’” headcoverings for well over a year. The reason I haven’t is because, in the Jewish community I grew up in, absolutely no one I knew covered their hair. It was a completely unfamiliar concept. People of all genders would put on a yarmulke or kippah for services, but that was really it. I’m not gonna do a full deep-dive now, although I promise I will do my best to get over my nervousness and do one later if y’all think I’m the person to do it. Click the subscribe button so you don’t miss it, if or when it happens. But I do have to explain the history and religious custom in play here, so you understand why I have so many questions.
The origin of Jewish headcoverings is debated— although, since everything in Judaism is debated, that’s not saying much. It’s not written down quite as explicitly as the prohibition on wearing wool and linen in the same garment. This is more along the lines of “well, it was a social custom, and then something was said in passing in the Torah, which means it’s a law now”. The Talmud, which is best described as a record of rabbis arguing over every aspect of of Jewish religious law up to the year 500 or so, mentions headcoverings in several places. The most obvious is a section where they agree that a woman who goes out in public without fully covering her hair “violates the precepts of Jewish women”. They then proceed to snark at eachother about improvised headcoverings such as baskets, uncovered hair in one’s own yard, and whether ruling against uncovered hair in one’s own yard would require literally every Jewish woman to get divorced . . . is it any wonder Jews are known for disagreeing about our culture?
Authorities on Jewish religious law continued to discuss headcoverings throughout the middle ages, including Maimonides, a Sephardic rabbi from Spain who moved to Egypt, and Rabbi Yehonetan of Lunel, an Ashkenazi rabbi from France. Opinions differ on the details, such as whether unmarried women should cover their hair or not, and whether it was a law from the Torah vs from Jewish community, but pretty much everyone agreed that married Jewish women were required to fully cover their hair when in public. Rabbi Yehonetan of Lunel, and thank goodness he was so specific, says that a cap is not a good enough headcovering to wear in public, because some hair will stick out from under it. The Bird’s Head Hagaddah, our oldest illustrated Ashkenazi Passover hagaddah from around 1300, uses wrapped and tied headscarves that completely cover the hair to indicate which bird-headed figures are female. Widows were expected to act as married women rather than never-married women. There’s a divorce case in the Talmud where a woman’s headcovering, or lack thereof, is considered legal evidence of whether or not she is a widow. Licoricia was married and widowed twice, so according to these sources, she would be expected to fully cover her hair.
For Licoricia to be shown in her statue with a hairstyle that’s so out of step with everything I’ve read about Jewish custom at the time, leaves me really really curious. One of the biggest and most confusing questions I’ve had to consider when creating my Jewish medieval outfits, is that we have very little information of any kind about how far medieval Jews assimilated into the fashions and customs of their non-Jewish neighbors. We know about things like legally-enforced identifying dress, the badges and blue-bordered veils and such. We know that avoiding sha’atnez would affect how they made their clothes, but it’s such a struggle to find anything that actually describes their everyday dress. I have spent so much time trying to figure out whether or not Jewish clothing in medieval England would follow the prevailing fashions or not. Both the V&A Museum and the Jewish Museum of London contributed to the research on her clothes and headdress. So if there is research out there suggesting that medieval English Jews valued assimilation enough to put aside their strongly held customs; for a twice-married Jewish woman to wear a fashionable headdress that showed most of her hair in public . . . It’s a huge thing. It’s a huge thing for everyone who wants to understand what life was like for Jews in medieval society, whether that’s academic historians looking for a more comprehensive picture to Jews like me who are interested in our people’s story. So, uhh, if any of the folks involved in this project see this, please get in touch with me, because I have 50,000 subscribers who would love to watch us chat.
All in all, I can’t really describe how amazing it is to see not just representation, but commemoration of Jews in the medieval world. This is the sort of thing that would have made all the difference to me as a fledgling historical costumer a few years ago. Hopefully, it will make all the difference to other Jews who are becoming interested in costuming and in history. Representation like this counters the narrative that marginalized people either didn’t exist in Western history, or had no significant role. Licoricia’s statue proclaims loud and clear that these figures in history have always existed, and our picture of the past is incomplete and inaccurate without them. It’s about time we started rediscovering their stories, and I hope this one statue becomes part of a much bigger shift in how we think about marginalized people in history.
I am so happy you all encouraged me to take the plunge and actually make this video, because this was a really fun one. Tell me in the comments about another marginalized figure from history who deserves a bronze statue, and while you’re there, don’t forget to leave a like, and subscribe for more fashion history deep dives. [stage whisper] We’re talking about thrift stores next time.
In the meantime, you can find me on Instagram @missSnappyDragon, you can find behind-the-scenes content and lengthy research notes over on Patreon, and my blog plus some cool pictures at SnappyDragonStudios.com. See you soon!
More Like This
