Wool & Wheat gathering - July with the Duc de Berry

We are in the midst of THE BEST time for re-enactors - an event filled summer! As medievalists we like to picture ourselves doing what they did and wearing what they wore. For our research, the Duc De Berry's Book of Hours is an outstanding resource. It shows us a detailed image of medieval life and medieval clothing.

Today we are highlighting the month of July in our collection of articles describing the work of Jean Duc De Berry - one of the most magnificent illuminated manuscripts of the period and so very useful in its detailed illustrations of clothing of the period.

This month we are greeted with a pastoral scene of harvesting and shearing in front of a magnificent castle. The resident workers have removed many of their typical outer layers - which give us an instructive peak at their medieval under layers.

Jean Duc De Berry's Book Of Hours - July

harvest and sheep shearing. The Limbourg brothers have depicted July of 1412 outside the Chateau du Clain in Poitiers, one of the Duc de Berry’s many homes, long since lost. A wooden footbridge crosses the Clain River, passing through a free-standing gate house and stops short of the castle. A draw bridge from keep is lowered, joining the bridge and allowing entrance to the castle wall near the right-hand tower. Although the chateau is lost, the three stonework piers that brace the bridge still stand in the riverbed today. at one end a moveable bridge leads to a rectangular entrance tower, and at the other a drawbridge is attached to the chateau.
We glimpse a chapel to the right of the chateau amid buildings separated from it by an arm of the river. The towers are constructed in the style favored by the Duke and evident in his various chateaus: corbelled with machicolations and crenatures, and decorated in the interior courtyard with high windows.
In the foreground, a man and woman each hold a sheep across their knee as they cut their wool with a pair of hand shears; the wool gathers at their feet. The woman wears a simple, blue gown which could be a kirtle or a more structured laced gown with lighter colored half-sleeves and an interesting, black hood. The man wears a long, wide-sleeved tunic over a simpler, blue under tunic and a shapeless, black hat.
Beyond the shearers, two peasants reap golden wheat with hand-sickles. One, closely resembling a harvester in the month of June, wears a straw hat and a simple shirt [link] under which appear his short, closely fitted braies or petits draps, of a style more usually associated with the mid-15th century. His fellow reaper wears a tunic much like the sheep-shearer, but has rolled his sleeves up and his chausses down to combat the heat.

This month's image illustrates many typical medieval garments and perhaps, the best of all, what is shown are those of the 'everyman'- well to-do peasants - which is so useful for those of us researching living history and re-enacting. In the foreground, the women shearing sheep in the foreground is wearing blue Wool, or perhaps, Linen Frontlaced Gown and black Liripipe Hood layered over a long-sleeved linen lighter blue Underdress or Kirtle. We can resonably presume they have discarded their Stockings and Turnshoes to save on wear and in order to stay cool. (See more detail in our photos below).

The men working in the background are shown wearing various version of Linen or Wool Tunics or Wool Or Linen Cottes, worn over Shirts and Belted. Their Linen Chauses are shown either rolled down, as on the figure on the right or discarded altogether, as on the figure on the left, along with his Low Boots. As a result we get glimpse of their smaller, 15thc. Braies.ng back newly flowering branches to their ladies..."