Scarlet (fabric)

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In the Middle Ages, scarlet fever was the name given to a noble and expensive woolen fabric. Carmine was the most common color, which gave the word a double meaning as color.

The history of words - origin, form and meaning

In Middle High German (1050-1350), scharlach (more rarely also scharlât ) (with many subsidiary forms) was the 'most famous woolen luxury fabric'. In Europe, names of this kind appear first in German and Latin contexts: as a German gloss to Latin rasilis (= 'sheared / smoothed cloth'?) In the Heinrici Summarium (original around 1020 or 1050–1100?) I 321: 'Ralla vel rullo qu [ae] vulgo rasilis dicitur scarlachen '; and in Middle Latin: 'tres pannos scarlitinos anglicanos' [three English scarlet cloths] (around 1050), 'de scarlata rubea tunicam' [shirt, undergarment of red scarlet] (around 1100), etc. We then find related forms in many European languages (Old French escarlat (t) e, escarlet etc., Italian scarlatto , Spanish-Portuguese escarlat (a) , Middle Dutch schlaken, schlakijn , Middle Low German schlaken (e), scarlaken (e), schaerlaken , Middle English scarlet etc.).

The origin of these word forms remains uncertain. Three hypotheses are of interest here.

(A) Due to the German and Central Dutch forms, a Northern European origin was previously assumed - as early as 1905 by Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin with his hypothesis that the word family 'scarlet fever' was used as a commercial term in the form of a compound ( scar / schaer + laken = 'wool fabric refined by shearing'). The shorn already by 1000 demonstrable manufacturing cloth perhaps is the most important innovation of the medieval textile industry (Munro 1983, 28), and so early could Summarium -Beleg as a transparent form (althochdeutsch scar- 'shear' + lahhan 'cloth') for Designation of the new substance can be interpreted. The well-attested forms with -t- in Middle Latin and in the Romance languages ​​would still need to be explained. In addition, John H. Munro's detailed investigations provide clear evidence that the medieval sheared woolen scarlet fabrics owed their high value and reputation not to this demanding refinement process, but above all to the use of the very expensive red colorant kermes ( carmine ) ( grana in Middle Latin , Middle High German grân ).

(B) The European terms are more often viewed as borrowings from oriental languages, for example from Persian saqalāt , siqalāt , or suqlāt . Assuming Persian origin, the older German and Dutch forms ( scar- / schaer- -lach, -laken , etc.) would only have emerged secondarily through pseudoetymological transformation ( folk etymology ). Against the assumption that these Persian forms were, conversely, to be regarded as indirect borrowings from Middle Dutch, Munro argued that the Flemish cloth trade in the 11th century would not have been able to form the starting point for such a far-reaching borrowing process (1983, 26ff .).

(C) Munro's own hypothesis suggests that the European scarlet fever terms would be derived from the Arabic siklāt (later siklātūn ). Munro understands this as a particularly expensive silk fabric dyed red with Kermes, whose name has been attested since the 9th century and was later borrowed into Persian. The problem here is the considerable formal difference between the Arabic siklāt (ūn) and the widespread European forms with scar- .

What all three hypotheses have in common is that 'scarlet fever' was originally not a color, but a substance. Otherwise, the purely linguistic question of origin remains largely open. On the other hand, we are well informed about the production, marketing and distribution of scarlet fever, especially through Munro's own studies.

Based on Munro's statement that the main characteristic of scarlet fox was that it was dyed with Kermes, Elke Brüggen (1989, 284f.) Noted that the evidence given by Munro about the dyeing of scarlet scarf began relatively late (14th century) . In addition, the medieval sources mentioned not only a red scarlet (in the courtly epic 16 references), but also other colors under this designation: often brûn ('brown / violet') (13 references), only very rarely (probably as exotic special cases) green (1) and blue (1). Munro assumed a multiple dyeing process using woad or indigo as the primer, while the 'white scarlet' ( blanche escarlatte , etc.), which appeared several times in Old French , could be explained as 'undyed woolen fabric': it was not until the late Middle Ages that attempts were made in some French cities and more generally in England, later in the Netherlands, to limit the name 'scarlet fever' to crimson cloth dyed exclusively with Kermes (Munro 1983, 53ff. and 59ff.).

In Middle High German there is no clear evidence of scarlet (en) as an abstract color designation, but the noun scarlet varwe in the meaning 'color of the scarlet cloth' in comparison with blood (1284-9). Only since the 16th century has scarlet fever been used more regularly as a color name in the sense of 'crimson' and recorded lexicographically. Since the 16th century, scarlet fever played an increasing role as a differentiating word- forming element in scientific nomenclatures ( scarlet flower, herb, nettle, etc.). Is attested scarlet fever as a disease name only in 1800. To further history of scarlet fever as a color name, see Jones (2013).

literature

  • Elke Brüggen, Clothing and Fashion in the Courtly Epic of the 12th and 13th Centuries , Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1989
  • William Jervis Jones, Historical Lexicon of German Color Designations , Akademie Verlag / De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, 1st volume, Ahd. under scarlet laughs , Mhd. under scarlet fever, scarlet fever , etc., 5th vol. under scarlet fever
  • John H. Munro, 'The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendor', in: Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe. Essays in Memory of Professor EM Carus-Wilson , ed. by NB Harte and KG Ponting. Heinemann, London 1983, pp. 13-70. Reprinted in: Munro, Textiles, Towns and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries , Variorum, Aldershot, etc. 1994
  • John H. Munro, 'Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology and Industrial Organization c. 800-1500 ', in: The Cambridge History of Western Textiles , ed. by David Jenkins, Cambridge University Press 2003, Volume 1, pp. 181-227
  • John H. Munro, 'The Anti-Red Shift - to the' Dark Side: Color Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300-1550 ', in: Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2006), 55-95. Online https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/
  • John H. Munro, “Scarlet,” in: Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450-1450 , ed. by Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward, Brill, Leiden 2012, doi : 10.1163 / 2213-2139_emdt_COM_550
  • Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin, Le Drap 'escarlate' au moyen age: essai sur l'étymologie et la signification du mot écarlate et notes techniques sur la fabrication de ce drap de laine au moyen age , A. Rey, Lyon 1905
  • Anna Zanchi, 'Melius abundare quam deficere': Scarlet clothing in Laxdaela Saga and Njáls Saga , in: Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008), 21ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elke Brüggen (1989), 48f. u. 282-7, with a research report that took particularly critical account of John H. Munro's presentation (1983).
  2. ↑ Summarium Heinrici [3 volumes] […] Edited and ed. by Reiner Hildebrandt [and Klaus Ridder], Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1974, 1982, 1995.
  3. ↑ Overview of previous research with references in Jones, Lexikon (2013).
  4. ↑ Middle Dutch origin still accepted by Miguel Gual Camarena, Vocabulario del comercio medieval , Tarragon 1968, under escarlata .
  5. ↑ See e.g. B .: Grimm, German Dictionary (1893), Volume 14, Sp. 2200; Walther von Wartburg, French Etymological Dictionary (1922–2002), Volume 19, pp. 149–150 (detailed discussion of the Romance forms as borrowings from Persian saqirlāṭ ); Trésor de la langue française, under écarlate ; “Scarlet” in OED Online , [www.oed.com/view/Entry/172079]; ' Scarlet ', in The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project database; K. Lokotsch, Etymological Dictionary of European (Germanic, Romance and Slavic) words of oriental origin , Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1927. 2nd edition Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1975, p. 142. See also Raja Tazi, Arabismen im Deutschen. Lexical transfers from Arabic into German , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1998, p. 288, note 17 (Persian saqirlāt or Arabic siqillāṭ as possible starting forms, with Hispano-Arabic 'iskirlāṭa (13th century, earlier perhaps sikirlāṭ ) and Spanish escarlata as intermediate stages) u. 293 (via Middle High German scarlet as a tertiary Arabism mediated by Middle Dutch). In Friedrich Kluge, Etymological Dictionary of the German Language , 24th edition, edited by Elmar Seebold (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2002), the Persian word is further traced back to Hebrew siqrā 'red color'.
  6. ↑ See also Tazi, Arabismen , p. 288. The French Etymological Dictionary (19, 150) regarded the Hispano-Arabic 'iskirlāta document not as a borrowing from Arabic, but, conversely, as a borrowing from the Romance languages.
  7. ↑ Munro 1983, 20ff .; Munro 2003, 212f .; Munro 2006, 57-67; Munro 2012. He writes (2006, 63f.): 'In my view, set forth here as a hypothesis, the name' scarlet 'in later medieval Latin ( scarlata, scarlatum ), in all other Romance languages, and in English is derived from the Arabic name for an even earlier Islamic textile, from the ninth or tenth century, whose principal feature was that it was dyed in kermes: the siklat or later more commonly known as siklatun . It was, to be sure, a silk and not a woolen textile, but its name was probably derived from the late Roman or Byzantine woolen textile, the sigillatus (in Greek: σιγιλλατου), one decorated with seals or rings. The later Persian term for this kermes-dyed silk, the sakirlat , though certainly derived from siklatun , was probably also influenced in its formation by the Italian term scarlatto , through Italian commerce. '
  8. ^ Albrecht N. Rauch: disease names in German. A dialectological and etymological investigation of the terms for diphtheria, Febris scarlatina, Morbilli, Parotitis epidemica and Varicellae , Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1995 (= Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik , supplement 84), p. 103.