Medieval Bras Found in Austria’s Lengberg Castle

This bra broke history: excavated out of a rubble heap from a medieval castle in Austria in 2008, it was one of four bras discovered there, all dating to the 15th century. This find brought up to four our total examples of extant medieval bras — before these fragments from Lengberg Castle, we had zero. In fact, some historians had thought that bras like this, with distinctly cut cups, weren’t in use until the 1900s. Ancient Greek and Roman women had used breast bands – a la “monoboob” style, but precious little record of evidence for medieval women’s underwear remains — they were literally “unmentionables.” We have the rare reference like an anonymous 15th-century German poet who wrote about “breastbags,” which aren’t quite the same thing. (Bags=Not shaped) I mentioned in an earlier post that men’s underwear was considered humorous, but women’s lewd. The aforementioned German writer satirized women’s handling of their breasts, scribing that “many [a woman] makes two breastbags . . . With them she roams the streets, so that all the young men look at her, can see her beautiful breasts; But whose breasts are too large, makes tight pouches, so there is no gossip in the city about her big breasts.” Such judgements — breasts too big, too little, too showy, too hidden . . . Not surprising that women omitted this chapter of their history from public knowledge.