The defensive codpiece was an integral part of the costume worn by German and Swiss mercenaries. Even young boys were obliged to wear them.īartels says: “Ideas about masculinity were closely linked to notions of martial strength. No expense was spared: codpieces were made in luxury silk velvet, bejewelled or embroidered.

The most elaborate versions were singularly showy and portraits show that in the mid-16 th century the codpiece reached epic (if not priapic) proportions. Codpieces were speedily hijacked for the purpose of proving masculinity in the most blatant of manners. Masculinity was big in 16 th century Europe – along with notions of chivalry, honour and romance. This soft triangular flap was superseded by a stuffed and padded shape designed to hold what Montaigne coyly called “our secret parts” and John Florio’s Italian-English dictionary lists as “pillcocke or pricke”. The bottom tip of the triangle was stitched to the hose and the remaining corners fastened to the doublet to form a kind of gusset. Pictorial and textual evidence suggests that the early codpiece was constructed from a triangular shaped piece of cloth called a ‘braye’. In 1463 in England, Edward IV’s parliament made it compulsory for a man to cover “his privy Members and Buttokes”. In a sermon of 1429 (translated by Michael J Rocke), San Bernardino of Siena admonished parents who kitted their sons out in “a doublet that reaches only to the navel stockings with a little piece in front and one in back, so that they show a lot of flesh for the sodomites”. “It’s hardly surprising that this revealing style was not to everyone’s taste – and that moralists were quick to condemn it,” says Bartels. As doublets became shorter, and the length of mantles also decreased, the tell-tale bulge (or more) of gentlemen’s privy parts became evident beneath their under-shirts.

Hose were two separate wool or linen leggings that fastened into the doublet, rather in the style of fisherman’s waders. In the 15th century men’s dress comprised doublet or tunic (worn on the top half of the body), hose (bottom half) with a mantle or cloak (worn over the outfit). From these practical beginnings, the codpiece (‘cod’ was slang for scrotum) became a fashion item in its own right. The historical consensus on the origin of the codpiece is that it was devised to fill a gap and, initially at least, preserved men’s modesty. Writing in the 1580s, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (translated by Donald Frame) summed up the curious case of the codpiece as “an empty and useless model of a member that we cannot even decently mention by name, which however we show off and parade in public”.Īt a conference later today (30 April 2015), Victoria Bartels, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History, will offer new insights into the popularity of a must-have item for the man about town, with a special focus on references to the codpiece in European literature as well as representations in early modern portraiture and prints.īartels' dissertation investigates the militaristic influences found in civilian male dress in 16 th century Italy and Germany, and the codpiece is a prevalent component of her research. At a conference on history and gender, she will propose a novel explanation for its seemingly rapid demise in the last quarter of the 16th century when it shrank to a shadow of its former self, before disappearing completely by 1600.įashions can be charted in terms of upward and downward movements as well as shifts in emphasis from one part of the body to another. Explaining the deliberate downsizing of Thomas Cromwell’s codpiece, actor Mark Rylance opined that modern audiences, especially in America, “may not know exactly what’s going on down there”.Īn item of male dress that was briefly de rigeur some five centuries ago, the codpiece both covered, and drew attention to, a part of the anatomy that couldn’t even be mentioned in polite society. Wonderful things have been said about the codpiece, not least in response to the television dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. In the Elizabethan play Wily Beguiled, a character named Will Cricket boasts that women find him attractive because he possesses “a sweet face, a fine beard, comely corpse, and a carousing codpiece”.

Codepiece italian renaissance