Etiquette Over Ethics
People of that time, like people today, cared more about manners than about morals, and in every society sins committed with a minimum of vulgarity and a maximum of elegance were easily forgiven. In this too Italy, as in every other field except artillery and theology, took the lead.
Compared with the Italians, the common people north of the Alps, apart from a thin upper layer in France and England, seemed rough and ill-mannered. The Italians called them barbarians, and many Frenchmen, still savoring their conquests in war and pleasure in Italy, followed that opinion. But these barbarians were eager for civilization. Courtiers and courtesans, poets and poisoners alike copied Italian models, and the English limped along behind. Castiglione's The Courtier (1528) was translated into French in 1537 and into English in 1561, and respectable circles debated the definition of a gentleman. Books of etiquette became the best-sellers of the year, and Erasmus wrote one of them.
The Art of Conversation
Ordinary conversation in France, and a little later in London's Mermaid Tavern, became a refined art, and the contest of wit, almost together with the art of fencing, rose in Italy and crossed the Alps. Conversation in France was more polished than in Germany. The German floored his opponent with banter, whereas the Frenchman pierced him full of holes with quips. Freedom of speech was the life-giving element of the age.
Fashion
Since it is easier to adorn the exterior than the interior, the prosperous classes, as this refinement spread across northern Europe, paid close attention to their clothes. Ordinary people wore plain dress, as we see in Bruegel's crowded paintings: a cup-shaped cap, a loose shirt with puffed sleeves, tight breeches and wide shoes. Wealthy Germans wrapped their heavy frames in many folds of thick cloth and wore broad hats like layered cakes, while German women apparently had no right to wear anything but kitchen dress. In England men also cared more for their appearance than women did, until Queen Elizabeth, with her courtly splendor, outdid the men and made a thousand kinds of rich women's gowns the fashion. Henry VIII, for his part, went to excess in finery, adorning every part of his heavy body with color, ornament and costly cloth.
According to Holinshed, at the wedding of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon the Duke of Buckingham wore an embroidered and furred gown worth 1,500 pounds. Under the sumptuary laws, men without rank could not imitate the lavish dress of their superiors. Englishwomen dressed in close-fitting gowns running from the neck to the floor, with sleeves reaching the wrist and edged with a band of fur, and a broad waist ornamented with a metal clasp from which hung a large stone or beads. On the whole women wore fewer jewels than men.
Under the admiring eye of Francis I, Frenchwomen adopted much more daring cuts, with low necklines and open backs, and when nature did not provide the fashionable shape they used padding. Women's bodices were tight under the bust and drawn very narrow at the waist; sleeves fell in wide folds; thin hidden springs held the skirts open like an umbrella at the sides and back; and high-heeled shoes made walking light and graceful. Only ladies of rank were allowed a long train, and the higher the rank the longer the train. If rank was the measure, the train could reach some six and a half meters, and a little girl or boy servant followed behind, holding it up. In another style, ladies wore pleated, starched collars stiffened by wire frames, and men wore the same on formal occasions, putting their necks in a kind of pillory of fashion.
About 1535 Servetus wrote that Spanish women had a custom that the French probably thought savage: they pierced their ears and hung rings in them, often set with jewels. But by 1550 Frenchwomen, and even Frenchmen, wore earrings. French men wore silk shirts with velvet cuffs, padded their shoulders, and fitted their legs into snug colored hose. Short hair and long beards were now preferred, unlike the fifteenth century. Women's hair received so many elaborate arrangements that they cannot be described: briefly, it was braided, curled, netted, filled out with false pieces, decked with flowers and jewels, perfumed with special oils, dyed in the colors of the season and piled in the shape of towers and pyramids. A hairdresser was now an absolute necessity for fashionable ladies, who thought looking old a worse fate than death.
Cleanliness and Bathing
How clean were the bodies behind the delicate laces? A sixteenth-century guide for young ladies speaks of women who "pay no attention to the cleanliness of their bodies except those parts that show outside their dress ... and the rest of the body, hidden under the clothes, is kept dirty." According to a bawdy proverb of the time, prostitutes were the only women who, besides hands and face, washed other parts of the body. Perhaps cleanliness grew along with corruption, since the more women displayed themselves, and to more people, the wider the territory of washing became. Frequent bathing, preferably in scented water, now became part of the good manners of the upper class, especially in France. As private baths in homes increased, public baths declined. These private baths still had no running water and consisted of a measured quantity of water in a large basin or tub. Steam baths, which had been introduced to western Europe in the thirteenth century with the returning crusaders, remained popular throughout the sixteenth century.
The Protestant Home
In Protestant countries the home almost replaced the church as the center of worship. The father, instead of a priest, led daily prayers and the reading of Scripture and hymns, and the mother taught the children religion. Among the middle classes, comfort of life went together with piety. In place of tables made of boards laid on trestles, solid one-piece tables with sturdy stools came into use; wooden benches with separate cushions turned into upholstered single seats; and canopied beds with curtains hung around them and finely carved wood became a sign of a family's moral standing and financial success. Furniture, dishes, hearth sets and kitchen utensils were now made to last for generations and even to catch the eye. Metal dishes replaced wooden trays, and spoons of pewter and silver replaced wooden ones.
Family, Children and Pets
Houses grew larger to hold big families. Wives were pregnant almost every year, and their nine months of labor were often in vain, since infant mortality was very high. John Colet was the eldest of twenty-two children, and by the time he reached thirty-two all the others had died. Anton Koberger, the Nuremberg printer, had twenty-five children, of whom twelve died in his lifetime. Durer was one of eighteen children, of whom apparently only three reached adulthood. To complete this family picture we must add the tame animals that were nearly as plentiful in every house as children. Parrots were imported from the West Indies and monkeys from India to be kept as pets, and many publications taught women and children how to care for dogs and birds.
Food and Drink
Daily food was consumed in plenty. Vegetables did not enjoy much favor and made their way slowly; gradually cabbage, carrots, lettuce, rhubarb, potatoes, strawberries and a kind of broad bean became common. The main meal of the day was dinner at eleven in the morning, while supper was put off until seven in the evening, and the higher the rank, the later it was eaten.
Beer and wine were the common drinks at meals and even at breakfast. Thomas More boasted that he drank only water. Around 1550 the Spanish brought cocoa from Mexico to Europe; coffee had not yet come from Arabia. In 1512 in the household of the Duke of Northumberland every servant, even eight-year-old boys, was given a quart of beer at each meal. In Coventry in the sixteenth century the average daily consumption of beer per man, woman and child was nearly a quart. Munich's breweries had been famous since the fourteenth century. Drunkenness had always been well spoken of in England until "Bloody Mary" came to condemn it, but in Germany it kept its popularity. In France, where the weather was less cold, people drank with more moderation.
Gardens, Festivals and Spectacles
In spite of poverty and injustice, many pleasures remained in life. Even the poor enjoyed a small flower garden. The tulip, brought to western Europe about 1550 by Busbecq, the Habsburg ambassador in Constantinople, became the darling of the Dutch. Building country houses grew fashionable in England and France. Villagers still held their seasonal festivals, such as the spring festival, harvest home, All Saints' Day, Christmas and many others, and even kings went out into the fields at the May festival and put crowns of fresh flowers on their heads. The pleasures of the rich sometimes took the form of traveling shows and grand parades before the public eye, as when Henry II made his formal entry into Lyons (1548). The people could also watch from a respectful distance mock battles and mounted jousting during tournaments. Religious processions, over time, and as the age of Henry VIII gave way to the age of Elizabeth, took on an increasingly secular character, and moral looseness in parts of Europe even allowed festivals and public pageants in which figures of history and mythology were represented by unclothed performers. Durer admitted that in 1521 he had taken great pleasure in seeing such a show in Antwerp.
Games and Sports
There were many other games as well. Rabelais fills a chapter with the names of real and imaginary games, and Bruegel depicted nearly a hundred kinds of games in a single painting. Bullfighting, cockfighting and the baiting of bears by hounds were great entertainments. Football, ball games, boxing and wrestling gave common people bodily exercise. In the sixteenth century Paris alone had 250 tennis courts for its gentry. All classes loved hunting and gambling; some ladies threw dice, and some bishops played cards for money. Jesters, tightrope walkers and players traveled about performing for nobles and the royal family. At home people amused themselves with cards, chess, backgammon and many other games.
The Dance
Among these amusements dance was the people's favorite. Rabelais tells how, after supper, "all the company ran to the willow grove and on its green grass danced so charmingly to the sound of merry flutes and sweet bagpipes that their movements seemed a gentle and heavenly exercise." In England, on May Day, villagers gathered around the "maypole," decorated with ribbons and bright colors, and danced to joyful country tunes. In the reign of Henry VIII one of the May Day games was usually the morris dance (of Moorish origin), which had reached England together with the Spanish fandango, performed with castanets. Oxford and Cambridge students danced with such excitement and noise that William of Wykeham, according to the book, had to prevent such ecstasy near the chapel.
Luther approved of dancing and was especially fond of the square dance "with its polite bows, embraces and merry turns." Sober Melanchthon also danced. In sixteenth-century Leipzig the city fathers held an annual ball so that student boys might meet "the respectable and beautiful daughters of senators, nobles and other citizens." The French court often opened its feasts with a dance led by the king himself; Catherine de' Medici brought Italian dancers to France, and it was in the late years of that unhappy queen mother that dance at the French court took a new aristocratic form. Jehan Tabourot, in a book that is one of the oldest writings on one of the oldest arts, says that dancing exists so that a couple may find whether lover and beloved are healthy and suited to one another; at the end of the dance the gentleman may kiss his partner to make sure her breath is sweet. Thus, he concludes, dance is necessary for the order and preservation of society. Through its association with dance, music freed itself from the limits of solo and choral singing, advanced as instrumental music, and rose to the exalted art we know today.