Why did the people of the tudor era and elizabethan era never wear rings on their middle finger?
I have tried researching this but I cannot find any reason/s for this.
[Ed. note - this was pretty much already covered in the thread linked below, but I don't have an email for the submitter, so I went ahead and posted it. Plus, if anyone has been able to dig up any additional information, I'd love to hear about it]
https://queryblog.tudorhistory.org/2008/07/question-from-elizabeth-m-ring-wearing.html
I hadn't seen the original thread. I just read it and can only add that wedding rings do seem to have been a tradition of sorts before Elizabeth, as Mary I was quoted as saying something to the effect that she just wanted a plain gold hoop ring for her marriage to Philip of Spain as that is how maidens were married in previous eras.
ReplyDeleteI don't have the direct quote in my immediate grasp, but I believe the gist of it is accurate.
No word on what finger she wore it. I'd noticed that there seemed to be a lack of rings on middle fingers too, but never put much thought into why there weren't any.
It was me who was the original submitter. I had noticed on a number of paintings of Tudor sitters that they rarely wore a ring on their middle finger and wondered why.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever tried to horseback ride or draw a crossbow with a ring on your middle finger? Ouch. That’s a good way to get blisters. It's just not practical.
ReplyDeleteAnd I know this was already mentioned, but long fingers were a sign of beauty in the 16th century. Putting a ring on the middle finger is sort of like putting horizontal stripes on a fat girl. When I paint, I never put rings on the hands. It makes them look chunky. And I don’t mean to be crass when I say this but...hands were like butts in our society. For example, the Venetian ambassador said Catherine de Medici needed to wear a veil to be beautiful, but then he softened his insult with – at least she had nice hands. Can’t you just picture Howard Stern making a similar comment? (except substitute the hand reference for another body part) Oh and Elizabeth was very proud of her long white fingers too.
I found a comment in the book Elizabethan Silent Language, by Mary E. Hazard:
ReplyDelete"Sixteenth-century custom assigned ring position according to the status of the wearer: the thumb for doctors, index finger for merchants, middle finger for fools, annular finger for students, and auricular finger for lovers; the fourth finger also had a special association for betrothal and marriage ..."
Clearly some of the royal people in the portaits were not following this specialization of fingers-and-rings with strict attention. But the striking absence of the middle finger might indicate that they (or the artist) were anxious that they not be coded as a fool.