ABSTRACT
The theme of this chapter is how clothes relate, on the one hand, to the economy of salvation, which is a metaphorical way of describing the pursuit of religious goals and rewards, and, on the other hand, how clothes relate to the economy of this world, which is about producing goods for consumption, barter, or sale. The two economies, the spiritual and the physical, were closely intertwined, and to a certain point convertible, which made the tension and the need to establish borders between them a recurring theme in the sources and part of a more general discourse on clothes. The last part of the chapter discusses the way in which various forms of authority, worldly and otherworldly, are expressed by means of clothes.
