ANCIENT HISTORY OF GLOVES
“A man plucked off his glove and gave it to his neighbor: and this
was for a testimony in Israel.”—_Old Testament, Chaldaic Version:
Ruth: ch. iv., vs. 7._
Gloves are so ancient that the first mention of them in literature is to
be found in a great classic of three thousand years ago—the Bible.
Zealous disputants in all kinds of causes have had a trick of twisting
Holy Writ to serve the purpose of their arguments. But in appropriating
the above lines from the Book of Ruth, the writer has not been guilty of
taking liberties with the Scriptures—even though the passage does not
read as he has quoted it in the King James Version.
Turning to the authorized text, we find: “Now this was the manner in
former times in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for
to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his
neighbor, and this was for a testimony in Israel. Therefore the kinsman
said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew off his shoe.”
A certain learned Hebrew of high literary attainments, M. Josephs, a
noted authority in the early part of the nineteenth century, in dealing
with this passage bids us follow the Targum, or Chaldaic version of the
Old Testament, which renders, instead of shoe, the word _glove_. He
reminds us that the men who wrote the Targum lived fifteen hundred years
before the translators of our English Bible; that their rendition grew
directly out of the oral interpretations and paraphrases of the
Scriptures read in the synagogues—a custom which began, probably, soon
after the return of the Jews from captivity. The Targumists, of course,
were much closer to the original Hebrew usages than the mediæval
scribes. The disputed phrase in their version, _narthek yad_, means “the
covering of the right hand.” It is derived from the Hebrew text,
_nangal_, which, employed verbally, means to close or enclose. The
expression, _nangal regel_, is, literally, “to enclose the foot” and
signifies a shoe. The use of _nangal_ alone, however, as a noun, always
implied an article enclosing the hand—in other words, a glove. There can
be no doubt that the writer of the Chaldaic version accepted the term as
a hand-covering, not a foot-covering—even specifying that the glove
given as a testimony in Israel was drawn off the _right_ hand.
Both ancient and modern rabbinical scholars, we are told, agree in
rendering the word from the original as “glove,” not shoe. And Joel
Levy, a distinguished German translator, gave, instead of shoe, his
picturesque, native idiom of _hand-schuh_ (hand-shoe), by which gloves
are known in Germany to this day.
Added to etymological testimony, moreover, is the evidence of ancient
custom. Gloves, in the symbolical sense, have been employed as a token
of good faith as far back as history can be traced. The shoe, on the
other hand, never is used figuratively in Holy Writ except to express
humility or supine obedience. The man who wished to make a compact with
his neighbor, as Boaz when he bought the lands of Ruth, must offer his
glove as pledge in the transaction. The very same practice is common in
the Orient to-day.
Challenge by the glove also appears to have been customary from
antiquity. In the one hundredth and eighth Psalm, the prophet in an
ecstacy of triumph cries: “Over Edom will I cast out my glove!” Had this
warrior of the spirit merely thrown a shoe over the city he had vowed to
reclaim to Jehovah, what boastful promise would there have been in that?
Among the Jews, however, three thousand years ago, gloves were by no
means in common use. Probably they were worn only by men of high rank,
and then solely on ceremonial occasions. We have reason to suppose that
kings wore them, for in the mural paintings of Thebes ambassadors are
depicted bearing from some far country gifts of gloves. The women
certainly did not wear them, for they are not mentioned in the
exhaustive list of “bravery,” enumerated by Isaiah (Chapter III.), the
vainglorious fallals of which the daughters of Zion in their pride were
to be despoiled on the Day of Doom. “Feet-rings, neck chains, thin
veils, tires or bonnets, zones or girdles, jewels for the nostrils,
embroidered robes, tunics, transparent garments, fine linen vests,
armlets”—all such fineries as these must the fair Israelites relinquish
at the sound of the last trump. Surely, had gloves been among their
vanities, these also must have been confiscated by the Inexorable Judge!
Nearly a century after the Book of Ruth was written, Homer relates how
he came upon Laertes, the father of Ulysses, working in his garden (for
he was a farmer) “while gloves secured his hands to shield them from the
thorns.” So, we know that the early Greeks wore gloves. It is striking
to note that they employed them, too, for humble and useful purposes.
They were not monopolized by priests and kings. However, we are given no
hint how Laertes’ gloves were shaped nor of what materials they were
made. Probably they resembled the modern mitten, for it is not until
under the Roman emperors that we actually learn that gloves were made
with fingers. These were called, specially, _digitalia_, to distinguish
them from the _chirothocae_, or fingerless variety.
Virgil makes reference to gauntlets worn at the Trojan contests, as “the
gloves of death”; and he describes gloves worn by Eryx, “composed of
seven folds of the thickest bull’s hide, sewn and stiffened with knots
of lead and iron.”
The gloves of the Persians, we may suspect, were not of the warlike
type, but were sported simply for luxury and display. Zenophon who,
somebody has remarked, “had the courage of his dislikes,” despised the
ancient Persians and stigmatized them as effeminate because they gloried
in their gloves. In his _Cyropaedia_ he lays stress on the fact that on
one occasion Cyrus was actually known to go forth “without his gloves”!
Varro, contemporary of Cicero, observes in his _De Re Rustica_ that
“olives gathered by the naked hand are preferable to those pulled with
gloves on.” The Epicureans evidently had adopted the theory that fruit,
to be fully enjoyed, should not even be handled in the plucking. Again,
among the Romans, we find gloves an article of utility, worn by
agriculturists—though it is likely that these hand-coverings were in the
shape of mittens and not of the _digitalia_ style. To the latter appear
to have been attached far greater prestige.
At the same time, the fingered gloves also had come to be used for a
practical protection. Pliny, the younger, speaking of the private
secretary of his illustrious uncle, writes: “His amanuensis” (who
accompanied him on his notable journey to Mount Vesuvius) “wore gloves
upon his hands that winter, lest the severity of the weather should make
him lose any time” (from his duties as scribe). It is to gloves, then,
that we are indebted in part for some of the most remarkable passages in
the works of the celebrated Roman naturalist, whose scientific
enthusiasm eventually cost him his life in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79
A.D.
Not until the age of Musonious, the philosopher, who lived near the
close of the first century of the Christian era, do we find gloves among
the Romans falling into disrepute. Musonious ejaculates: “It is shameful
that persons in perfect health should clothe their hands with soft and
hairy coverings!” The denunciation of the dress-reformers of those days,
however, seems to have had as little effect in stemming the tide of
fashion as in our times.
A truly revolting use to which gloves are said to have put—if we may
believe certain tales of the famous story-teller, Athenæus (200 A.D.)—is
described in a bit of ancient fiction in which he relates that “a
well-known glutton,” one of his own contemporaries, “always came to the
table with gloves upon his hands, that he might be able to handle and
eat the meat while it was hot, and devour more than the rest of the
company.” No wonder the early Fathers of the Church looked upon gloves
as vicious and corrupting! But their biting invective was directed
principally against the effeminancy of those who fell victim to the
pleasurable practice, and about the beginning of the ninth century
ecclesiastical authority forbade the monks from wearing any gloves save
those made of the tough, unyielding sheepskin. Such, it was thought,
could not possibly afford the brethren any sensuous enjoyment, nor tempt
them into love of luxuries.
There is an ancient story of Saint Gudula, patroness of Brussels, which
well illustrates the early Christian distrust of gloves. In Butler’s
Legends of the Saints, it is related of this holy woman—who died in 712
A.D.—that one day, kneeling at prayers barefooted, one of the monks,
moved to compassion, “put his gloves upon her feet” to protect them from
the cold stones of the floor. St. Gudula, however, snatched off the
offending articles and contemptuously tossed them ceiling high. And
there they remained, says the legend, miraculously suspended in midair
for one hour.
The first legal enactment concerning gloves occurs in the records of
France. About 790, Emperor Charlemagne granted unlimited rights of
hunting to the abbots and monks of Sithin for the purpose of procuring
deer skins for making covers for their books, and also for gloves and
girdles. The bishops, however, grew to feel that theirs should be the
exclusive privilege of wearing gloves of such fine quality; and by the
Council of Aix, in the reign of Louis, Le Debonnaire, the inferior
clergy were ordered to abstain from deer skin and to wear only sheep
skin, as was formerly deemed fitting for monks.
In England gloves virtually “came over with the Conqueror.” The French
importation—which several centuries later was to be the cause of such
intense commercial rivalry between the two countries—was the mailed
glove of stout deer or sheep skin, with joined plates of metal affixed
to the back and fingers. The early Saxons, however, wore gloves of a
rude sort, for the derivation of the word from _gluf_ is distinctly
Saxon, and they are mentioned in the epic of _Beowulf_, composed in the
seventh century, A.D. William S. Beck thinks that the early Britons may
have been quick to appreciate the comfort afforded by the gloves worn by
their Roman conquerors. It is known for a fact that the Britons of that
age wore boots of untanned leather, and it should be no tax upon the
imagination to suppose that if they protected one extremity they
probably did the other.
But Professor Boyd Dawkins, without a doubt, has pushed the history of
the glove farthest back of any antiquarian. Professor Dawkins assures us
that the cavemen wore gloves. He actually defines their style; they were
“not of ordinary size,” he tells us, “but reaching even to the elbows,
anticipating by untold ages the multi-button gloves of the Victorian
era.” Now just when did these pre-historic, glove-wearing men live?
Another eminent geologist holds that they inhabited the south of France
before they were driven forth by the excruciating cold of the glacial
period. It is impossible accurately to fix the date of the great ice
age; Dr. Croll, however, and other celebrated scientists, appear to
agree that it began about 240,000 years ago, that it lasted about
160,000 years and ended somewhat over 80,000 years since.
Here, then, is an antiquity for gloves which should satisfy our fondest
ambitions! This theory also restores to France with a vengeance the
original prestige for glove-making of which that country is so jealous.
_Theory_, should we say? The cavemen’s gloves, as we are distinctly
told, were made of roughly dressed skins, sewn with elaborate bone
needles; and an unmistakable drawing of such a glove was discovered by
Professor Dawkins, rudely etched upon a bone, found among pre-glacial
relics.
The glove, accordingly, dates from the twilight of mankind. The ancient
peoples wore gloves; and by the tenth century in Europe we find them in
fairly general use—to some degree as a practical protection and
hand-covering, but, more strikingly, as the badge of royal or
ecclesiastical authority and dignity.
The gentler sex, however, at that time had by no means come into their
own, so far as gloves were concerned. Among the early nations men seem
to have enjoyed the monopoly of this article of dress, and the reason is
plain to see, when we remember that gloves, in those days, were worn
almost exclusively as part of the regalia of public office. The
daughters of Israel, and the ladies of Persia, Greece, Rome and mediæval
Europe, adopted the voluminous sleeve which came down over the hand and
rendered gloves, for practical purposes, unnecessary. A manuscript of
the tenth century, however, describes a hand-covering worn by an
Anglo-Saxon lady which resembled a muffler provided with a separate
division for the thumb. This was reproduced by Planché in his History of
British Costume, and is colored blue. But the long, flowing sleeves were
customary, and were even worn by both sexes—men in the ordinary walks of
life, apparently, being compelled to content themselves with sharing the
feminine expediency for keeping the hands warmly covered. For a man to
be gloveless at that period certainly spelled humiliation!
It was not until the thirteenth century that the ladies of Europe
blossomed forth in gloves—not of the mitten variety, but boasting four
fingers as well as a thumb. The first to be introduced for the fair sex
were made of linen, of simple design, and reached to the elbows to
accommodate the short-sleeved gowns of the period. Not before Queen
Elizabeth’s time, however, did the elaborately embroidered, bejeweled
and perfumed glove captivate woman’s fancy and satisfy her feminine
dreams of beauty and extravagance.