These silk liturgical gloves were knitted in the round using crimson silk yarn so that, originally, there were no actual seams, only a false seam on the outer edge of each glove. The gloves were altered to make them smaller at a later date by taking them in along either side of the false seam. The tip of the left thumb appears to have been damaged at some point and was repaired with yarn thicker than the silk used for the main part of the gloves. The decoration was made using the technique of stranded knitting in which a pattern is made by using two or more colours in a single row. In this case the second yarn is made of a silver thread S-spun around a core of white silk. The patterns on the gloves are thus an integral part of them. Similar gloves are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O129530/pair-of-gloves-unknown/) and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/ ecclesiastical-glove-46525).

Charles Borromeo, in his Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae (1577), specified that the bishop’s gloves must have a decorative circle on the back of the hand. These could be made separately and attached or could be knitted as part of the gloves. The most common motif to from an integral part of the knitted gloves was the IHS monogram surrounded by rays (as can be seen in these gloves in the collection of the Worshipful Company of Glovers: http://www.glovecollectioncatalogue.org /23408+A.html). Pope Pius V (d. 1572) instituted five liturgical colours: white, red, green (such as this examples in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: https://www.mfa. org/collections/object/pair-of-ecclesiastical-gloves-123106), violet, and black. The red of the Whitworth gloves indicates that they were most likely used in the week of Pentecost, on the feasts of Christ’s Passion, and on the feasts of Apostles and martyrs.

William Durandus, in his late thirteenth-century Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, enumerates fifteen vestments put on during the ordination, the eighth of which are the gloves. Liturgical gloves, firmly embedded in the ritual of the church, drew attention to the hands of the bishop during the symbolic repetition of Christ’s sacrifice during mass. The placement of the hands and the use of the hands – with or without gloves – are minutely described in the Ceremoniale Episcoporum. Gloves are carefully placed when not being worn, they are put onto the bishop’s hands and taken off again, the gloved hands – and the bare hands – of the bishop are kissed. Various authors considered that the gloves represented clerical virtues such as modesty and purity but they could also be interpreted as denoting the sinful nature of man as taken on by Jesus. Bishops acted in persona Christi during mass and their gloves – along with other vestments – allowed them to take on a spiritual identity. The heavy and sometimes densely decorated clothing of the bishop acted as a boundary but one which also drew attention to the possibility of crossing it in order to gain the kingdom of heaven.

Cordelia Warr, University of Manchester