The Development of Roman Military Costume on English Church Monuments

Abstract

This paper considers the development of the portrayal of Roman military costume on English church monuments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The uses of such costume were rooted in the wider European Renaissance, the effects of which were felt in England from the early sixteenth century. Later Elizabethan and early Jacobean literature employed a wide variety of classical references, the culmination of which were the masques performed for the Jacobean and Caroline Courts which were the ultimate expression of classical ideas and ideals. The early seventeenth century saw the tentative uses of Roman military costume for commemorative sculpture but it was not until the post Restoration period that such costume became commonplace on the memorials of the social elites. The political significance of this dress is further explored as are the corresponding moral and civic associations. The paper concludes with the idea that by the mid eighteenth century such a costume style had become an anachronism and no longer appropriate for the monuments of the gentry.