[Illustration]
TEXTILE FABRICS.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: 84.
HOOD OF A COPE
Embroidered by hand in silks & gold, with the Adoration of the Magi, &
bordered with green & yellow silk fringe.__Flemish 16th. century.]
_SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM._
[Illustration]
_TEXTILE FABRICS_;
A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE
_Of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs,
Needlework and Tapestries, forming that
Section of the Museum_.
BY THE VERY REV. DANIEL ROCK, D.D.
[Illustration]
_Published for the Science and Art Department of the
Committee of Council on Education._
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1870.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS OF THE INTRODUCTION.
SECTION I.--TEXTILES.
_The Geography of the Raw Materials._
Wool, x.
Cotton, xiii.
Hemp, xiii.
Flax, xiii.
Silk, xvi.
Gold, xxv.
Cloth of Gold, xxv.
Tissue, xxxi.
Silver, xxxiii.
Wire-drawing, xxxiii.
Gold thread, xxxiv.
_Silks had various Names_:
Holosericum, xxxvii.
Subsericum, xxxvii.
Examitum, xxxvii.
Xamitum, xxxvii.
Samit, xxxvii.
Ciclatoun, xxxix.
Cendal, xl.
Taffeta, xli.
Sarcenet, xlii.
Satin, xlii.
Cadas, xliii.
Camoca, xliv.
Cloth of Tars, xliv.
Velvet, xlv.
Diaper, xlvi.
Chrysoclavus, xlix.
Stauracin, l.
Polystauron, l.
Gammadion, l.
De quadrapolo, li.
De octapolo, li.
De fundato, liii.
Stragulatae, liv.
Imperial, lv.
Baudekin, lvi.
Cloth of Pall, lviii.
Lettered silks, lix.
The Eagle, lxi.
_Styles of Silks._
Chinese, lxiii.
Persian, lxiii.
Byzantine, lxiv.
Oriental, lxv.
Syrian, lxv.
Saracenic, lxvi.
Moresco-Spanish, lxvi.
_Places weaving Textiles._
Sicily, lxvii.
Lucca, lxxi.
Genoa, lxxii.
Venice, lxxiii.
Florence, lxxv.
Milan, lxxvi.
Great Britain, lxxvi.
Ireland, lxxix.
Flanders, lxxix.
France, lxxx.
Cologne, lxxxi.
Acca or Acre, lxxxiii.
Buckram, lxxxv.
Burdalisaunder, lxxxv.
Fustian, lxxxvi.
Muslin, lxxxvii.
Cloth of Areste, lxxxvii.
_Silks distinguished through their Colours and shades of Colour._
Cloth of Tars, lxxxix.
Indicus, or sky-blue, xc.
Murrey, xc.
Changeable, or shot, xci.
Marble, xci.
SECTION II.--EMBROIDERY.
Of the Egyptians, xcii.
Of the Israelites, xcii.
Of the Greeks and Latins, or Phrygionic, xciii.
Opus plumarium, or feather-stitch, xcv.
Opus pulvinarium, or cushion-style, xcvi.
Opus pectineum, or comb-drawn, xcvi.
Opus Anglicum, or English work, xcviii.
Opus consutum, or cut work, cii.
Accessories of gold and silver, civ;
glass, cv;
enamel, cv.
Diapering, cviii.
Thread embroidery, cix.
Quilting, cx.
SECTION III.--TAPESTRY.
Egyptian, cx.
Asiatic, cxi.
English, cxi.
Flemish, cxii.
Arras, cxii.
Saracenic, cxii.
Imitated Tapestry--“stayned cloth,” cxiv.
Carpets, cxv.
SECTION IV.
_Usefulness of the Collection_
To the Historian, cxvi.
The miscalled Bayeux Tapestry, cxvi.
SECTION V.--LITURGY.
Liturgical rarities, cxxiii.
SECTION VI.
_Usefulness of the Collection to_
Artists, cxxx.
Manufacturers, cxxx.
SECTION VII.
Symbolism, cxxxv.
The Gammadion, cxxxvii.
Vow of the Swan, the Peacock, &c., cxli.
SECTION VIII.
_Usefulness of the Collection_
To Literature and Languages, clii.
The Cyrillian alphabet, clii.
SECTION IX.--HERALDRY.
Armorial bearings worked upon vestments, cliii.
The Scrope and Grosvenor claims for the bend _or_ on a field _azure_, cliii.
Case of the Countess of Salisbury, clv.
Case of the Earl of Surrey, clv.
SECTION X.--BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.
The giraffe, clvi.
The pheasant, clvi.
The cheetah, clvi.
The hom, clvii.
The pine-apple, clix.
The artichoke, clix.
The passion-flower, clx.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION.
Like every other specific collection of art labour among the several
such brought together within these splendid halls of the South
Kensington Museum, this extensive one made from woven stuffs, tapestry,
and needlework, is meant to have, like them, its own peculiar useful
purposes. Here, at a glance, may be read the history of the loom of
various times and in many lands. Here may be seen a proof of the
onward march of trade and its consequent civilizing influences. Here
we take a peep at the private female life in ages gone by, and learn
how women, high-born and lowly, spent or rather ennobled many a day
of life in needlework, not merely graceful but artistic. Here, in
fine, in strict accordance with the intended industrial purposes of
this public institution, artizans, designers, and workers in all kinds
of embroidery, may gather many an useful lesson for their respective
crafts, in the rare as well as beautiful samples set out before them.
The materials out of which the articles in this collection were woven,
are severally wool, hemp, flax, cotton, silk, gold, and silver. The
silken textures are in general wholly so; in many instances they
are wrought up along with either cotton, or with flax; hence, in
ancient documents, the distinction of “holosericum,” all silk, and
“subsericum,” not all silk, or the warp--that is, the longitudinal
threads--of cotton or flax, and the woof--that is the cross-threads
of silk. Very seldom is the gold or the gilt silver woven into these
textiles found upon them in a solid wire-drawn form, but almost always,
after being flattened very thin, the precious metal was wound about
a very small twist of cotton, or of flax, and thus became what we
call gold thread. As a substitute for this, the Moors of Granada, and
after them the Spaniards of that kingdom, employed strips of gilded
parchment, as we shall have to notice.
SECTION I.--TEXTILES.
Under its widest acceptation, the word “textile” means every kind of
stuff, no matter its material, wrought in the loom. Hence, whether
the threads be spun from the produce of the animal, vegetable, or the
mineral kingdom--whether of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, camels’ wool,
or camels’ hair--whether of flax, hemp, mallow, Spanish broom, the
filaments drawn out of the leaves of the yucca--Adam’s needle--and
other plants of the lily and asphodel tribes of flowers, the fibrous
coating about pods, or cotton; whether of the mineral amianthus, of
gold, silver, or of any other metal, it signifies nothing, the webs
from such materials are textiles. Unlike to these are other appliances
for garment-making in many countries; and of such materials, not the
least curious, if not odd to our ideas, is paper, which is so much
employed for the purpose by the Japanese.
At the outset of our subject a word or two may be of good use, upon
_The Geography of the Raw Materials_.
one or other of which we shall always find wrought up in the textiles
in this collection. We will then begin with
WOOL.
After gleaning out of the writings of the ancients all they have said
about the physical geography of the earth, as far as their knowledge
of it went, and casting our eyes upon a map of the world as known of
old, we shall see at once the materials which man had at hand, in every
clime, for making his articles of dress.
In all the colder regions the well-furred skins of several families
of beasts could, by the ready help of a thorn for a needle, and the
animal’s own sinews for thread, be fashioned, after a manner, into the
requisites of dress.
Throughout by far the longest length and the widest breadth of the
earth, sheep, at an early period, were bred, not so much for food as
for raiment. At first, the locks of wool torn away from the animal’s
back by brambles, were gathered: afterwards shearing was thought of
and followed in some countries, while in others the wool was not cut
off, but plucked by the hand away from the living creature, as we
learn from Pliny:[1] “Oves non ubique tondentur: durat quibusdam in
locis vellendi mos.” Got in either method the fleeces were, from the
earliest times, spun by women from the distaff. At last so wishful
were the growers to improve the coats of their lambs that they clothed
them in skins; a process which not only fined the staple of the wool,
but kept it clean, and better fitted it for being washed and dyed,
as we are told by many ancient writers, such as Horace and the great
agricultural authority Varro. In uttering his wish for a sweet peaceful
home in his old age, either at Tibur, or on the banks of the pleasant
Gelæsus, thus sings the poet:
Dulce pellitis ovibus Gelæsi
Flumen.[2]
And what were these “oves pellitæ,” or “tectæ” and “molles,” as they
were called, in contradistinction to “hirtæ,” we understand from Varro,
who says, “oves pellitæ; quæ propter lanæ bonitatem, ut sunt Taren-tinæ
et Atticæ, pellibus integuntur, ne lana inquinetur quo minus vel infici
rectè possit, vel lavari ac parari.”[3]
This latter very ancient daily work followed by women of all degrees,
spinning from off the distaff, was taught to our Anglo-Saxon sisters
among all ranks of life, from the king’s daughter downwards. In his
life of Eadward the elder, A.D. 901, Malmesbury writes: “Filias suas
ita instituerat ut literis omnes in infantia maxime vacarent, mox etiam
colum et acum exercere consuescerent, ut his artibus pudice impubem
virginitatem transigerent.”[4] The same occupation is even now a female
favourite in many countries on the Continent, particularly so all
through Italy. Long ago it bestowed the name of spindle-tree on the
Euonymus plant, on account of the good spindles which its wood affords,
and originated the term “spinster,” yet to be found in our law-books
as meaning an unmarried woman even of the gentlest blood, while every
now and then from the graves that held the ashes of our sisters of
the British and the Anglo-Saxon epochs, are picked up the elaborately
ornamented leaden whorls which they fastened at the lower end of their
spindles to give them a due weight and steadiness as they twirled them
round.
Beginning with the British islands on the west, and going eastward on
a line running through the Mediterranean sea, and stretching itself
out far into Asia, we find that the peoples who dwelt to the north
of such a boundary wrought several of their garments out of sheep’s
wool, goats’ hair, and beavers’ fur, while those living to the south,
including the inhabitants of North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, besides
the above-named animal produce, employed for these purposes, as well
as tent-making, the wool and hair which their camels gave them: the
Baptist’s garment was of the very coarsest kind.
Of the use of woollen stuff, not woven but plaited, among the older
stock of the Britons, a curious instance was very lately brought to
light while cutting through an early Celtic grave-hill or barrow in
Yorkshire: the dead body had been wrapped, as was shown by the few
unrotted shreds still cleaving to its bones, in a woollen shroud of
coarse and loose fabric wrought by the plaiting process without a
loom.[5]
As time crept on, it brought along with it the loom, fashioned though
it was after its simplest form, to the far west, and taught its use
throughout the British islands. The art of dyeing very soon followed;
and so beautiful were the tints which our Britons knew how to give
to their wools, that strangers, while they wondered at, were not a
little jealous of the splendour of those tones. From the heavy stress
laid upon the rule which taught that the official colour in their
dress assigned to each of the three ranks into which the bardic order
was distinguished, must be of one simple unbroken shade, whether
spotless white, symbolic of sun-light and holiness, for the druid or
priest--whether sky-blue, emblem of peace, for the bard or poet--or
green, the livery of the wood and field, for the Ovydd or teacher
of natural history and leech-craft, yet at the same moment we know
that party-coloured stuffs were woven here, and after two forms: the
postulants asking leave to be admitted into bardism might be recognized
by the robe barred with stripes of white, blue, and green, which they
had to wear during all the term of their initiation. With regard to
the bulk of our people, according to the Greek historian of Rome--Dion
Cassius, born A.D. 155--the garments worn by them were made of a
texture wrought in a square pattern of several colours; and speaking
of our brave-hearted British queen, Boadicea, that same writer tells
us that she usually had on, under her cloak, a motley tunic, χιτὼν
παμποίκιλος, that is, checkered all over with many colours. This
garment we are fairly warranted in deeming to have been a native stuff,
woven of worsted after a pattern in tints and design exactly like
one or other of the present Scotch plaids. Pliny, who seems to have
gathered a great deal of his natural history from scraps of hearsay,
most likely included these ancient sorts of British textiles along
with those from Gaul, when he wrote:--“Plurimis vero liciis texere quæ
polymita appellant, Alexandria instituit: scutullis dividere, Gallia.”
But to weave with a good number of threads, so as to work the cloths
called polymita, was first taught in Alexandria; to divide by checks,
in Gaul.[6]
[1] Lib. viii. c. 47.
[2] Lyric. c. vi. vi.
[3] De Re Rustica, ii. 2.
[4] Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. 1. lib. ii. p. 198, ed. Hardy.
[5] Journal of the Archæological Institute, t. XXII. p. 254.
[6] Plin. lib. viii.
The native botanical home of
COTTON
is in the East. India almost everywhere throughout her wide-spread
countries, and many kingdoms of old, arrayed, as she still arrays
herself, in cotton, which she gathered from a plant of the mallow
family, that had its wild growth there; and in this same vegetable
produce the lower orders of the people dwelling still further to the
east were fain to clothe themselves.
HEMP,
a plant of the nettle tribe, and called by botanists “cannabis
sativa,” was of old well known in the far north of Germany, and all
over the ancient Scandinavia. Full two thousand five hundred years
ago, Herodotus[7] thus wrote of it: “Hemp grows in the country of the
Scythians, which except in the thickness and height of the stalk, very
much resembles flax; in the qualities mentioned, however, the hemp is
much superior. It grows in a wild state, and is also cultivated. The
Thracians make clothing of it very like linen cloth; nor could any
person, without being very well acquainted with the substance, say
whether this clothing is made of hemp or flax.” From “cannabis,” its
name in Latin, have we taken our own word “canvas,” to mean any texture
woven of hempen thread.
[7] Herod. book iv. 74.
FLAX
now follows. Who that has ever seen growing a patch of beautiless,
sad-looking hemp, and as he wandered a few steps further, came upon a
field of flax all in flower, with its gracefully-drooped head, strewing
the breeze, as it strayed over it, with its frail, light-blue petals,
could at first have thought that both these plants were about to yield
such kindred helps for man in his wide variety of wants? Yet so it is.
Besides many other countries, all over this our native land flax is
to be found growing wild. Though every summer its handsome bloom must
have caught the eye of our Celtic British forefathers, they were not
aware for ages of the use of this plant for clothing purposes, else
had they left behind them some shred of linen in one or other of their
many graves; since, following, as they did, the usage of being buried
in the best of the garments they were accustomed to, or most loved when
alive, their bodies would have been found arrayed in some small article
of linen texture, had they ever worn such. That at length they became
acquainted with its usefulness, and learned to prepare and spin it,
is certain; and in all likelihood the very name “lin-white thread,”
which those Celts gave it in its wrought shape, furnished the Greeks
with their word λίνον, and the Latins their _linum_, for linen. The
term “flax,” which we still keep, from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, for the
plant itself and its raw material, and the Celtic “linen,” for the same
vegetable produce when spun and woven into cloth, are words for things
akin in our present language, which, as in many such like instances,
show the footprints of those races that, one after another, have trod
this land.
* * * * *
To the valley of the Nile must we go if we wish to learn the earliest
history of the finest flaxen textiles. Time out of mind were the
Egyptians famous as well for the growth of flax, as for the beautiful
very fine linen they wove out of it, and which became to them a most
profitable, because so widely sought for, article of commerce. Their
own word, “byssus,” for the plant itself, became among the Greeks, and
afterwards among the Latin nations, the term for linens wrought in
Egyptian looms. Long before the oldest book in the world was written,
the tillers of the ground all over Egypt had been heedful in sowing
their flax, and anxious about its harvest. It was one of their staple
crops, and hence was it that, in punishment of their hard-hearted
Pharaoh, the hail plague which, at the bidding of Moses, showered down
from heaven, hurt throughout the land the flax just as it was getting
ripe.[8] Though the Jordan grew flax upon its banks, and all over the
land that would soon belong to Abraham’s children, the women there,
like Rahab, carefully dried it when pulled, and stacked it for future
hackling upon the roofs of their houses;[9] still, it was from Egypt,
as Solomon hints,[10] that the Jews had to draw their fine linen. At
a later period, among the woes foretold to Egypt, the prophet Isaiah
warns her that they shall be confounded who wrought (there) in combing
and weaving fine linen.[11]
[8] Exodus ix. 31.
[9] Joshua ii. 6.
[10] Proverbs vii. 16.
[11] Isaiah xix. 9.
How far the reputation of Egyptian workmanship in the craft of the
loom had spread abroad is shown us by the way in which, beside sacred,
heathenish antiquity has spoken of it. Herodotus says:--“Amasis King
of Egypt gave to the Minerva of Lindus, a linen corslet well worthy
of inspection,”[12] and further on,[13] telling of another corslet
which Amasis had sent the Lacedæmonians, observes that it was of
linen, and had a vast number of figures of animals inwoven into its
fabric, and was likewise embroidered with gold and tree-wool. What is
more worthy of admiration in it is that each of the twists, although
of fine texture, contains within it 360 threads, all of them clearly
visible.[14] By these trustworthy evidences we clearly see that in
those early times, Egypt was not only widely known for its delicately
woven byssus, but it supplied all the neighbouring nations with the
finest sort of linens.
[12] Herodotus, b. ii. c. 182, Rawlinson’s Translation, t. ii. p. 275.
[13] Ib. b. iii. c. 47.
[14] Herodotus, t. ii. pp. 442-43.
From written let us now go to material proofs at hand. During late
years many mummies have been brought to this country from Egypt,
and the narrow bandages with which they were found to have been so
admirably, even according to our modern requirements of chirurgical
fitness, so artistically swathed, have been unwrapped; and always have
they been so fine in their texture as to fully verify the praises of
old bestowed upon the beauty of the Egyptian loom-work. Moreover, from
those who have taken a nearer and, so to say, a trade-like insight
into such an article of manufacture, we learn that, “The finest piece
of mummy-cloth, sent to England by Mr. Salt, and now in the British
Museum, of linen, appears to be made of yarns of near 100 hanks in
the pound, with 140 threads in an inch in the warp and about 64 in
the woof.”[15] Another piece of linen which the same distinguished
traveller obtained at Thebes, has 152 threads in the warp, and 71 in
the woof.[16]
[15] “Ancient Egypt,” by Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, t. iii. p. 122.
[16] Ib. p. 125.
Here starts up a curious question. Though, from all antiquity upwards
till within some few years back, the unbroken belief had been that
such mummy-clothing was undoubtedly made of linen woven out of pure
unmixed flax, some writers led, or rather misled, by a few stray words
in Herodotus about tree-wool, while speaking of the corslet of Amasis,
quoted just now, took at once the expression of that historian to mean
wool, and then skipped to the conclusion that all Egyptian textiles
wrought a thousand years before were mixed with cotton. When, however,
it be borne in mind that even several hundred years after the Greek
historian wrote, the common belief existed that, like cotton, silk also
was the growth of a tree, as we are told by Virgil:
Quid nemora Æthiopum, molli canentia lana
Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres?[17]
Soft wool from downy groves the Æthiop weaves,
And Seres comb their silken fleece from leaves--
the εἰρίοισι ἀπὸ ξυλοῦ of Herodotus may be understood to mean silk,
just as well as cotton; nay, the rather so, as it seems very likely
that, at the time when Amasis lived, silk, in the shape of thread, had
found, through traders’ hands, its way to the markets of Egypt, and
must have been thought a more fitting thing, from being a new as well
as costly material, to grace a royal gift to a religious sanctuary of
high repute, than the less precious and more common cotton. While this
question was agitated, specimens of mummy-cloth were submitted to the
judgment of several persons in the weaving trade deemed most competent
to speak upon the matter. Helped only by the fingers’ feel and the
naked eye, some among them agreed that such textures were really woven
of cotton. This opinion was but shortlived. Other individuals, more
philosophical, went to work on a better path. In the first place, they
clearly learned, through the microscope, the exact and never-varying
physical structure of both these vegetable substances. That of cotton
they found in its ultimate fibre to be a transparent tube without
joints, flattened so that its inward surfaces are in contact along
its axis, and also twisted spirally round its axis; that of flax, a
transparent tube, jointed like a cane, and not flattened or twisted
spirally.[18] Examined in the same way, several old samples of byssus
or mummy-bandages from Egypt in every one instance were ascertained
to be of fine unmixed flaxen linen. Ages before French Flanders had
dreamed of weaving fine lawns, ages before one of her industrial
cities--Cambray--had so far taken the lead as to be allowed to bestow
her own name, in the shape of “cambric,” on the finest kind that modern
European ingenuity could produce, Egypt had known how to give to the
world even a yet finer sort, and centuries after she had fallen away
from her place among the kingdoms of the earth, her enthralled people
still kept up their ancient superiority in spinning and weaving their
fine, sometimes transparent, byssus, of which a specimen or two may be
seen in this collection.[19]
[17] Georg. lib. ii. 120-121.
[18] Thomson in the Philosophical Magazine, 3rd series, t. v. num. 29,
Nov. 1834.
[19] No. 152.
For many reasons the history of
SILK
is not only curious, but highly interesting. In the early ages, its
very existence was quite unknown, and when found out, the knowledge
of it stole forth from the far east, and straggled westward very very
slowly. For all that lengthened period during which their remarkable
civilization lasted, the older Egyptians never once beheld silk:
neither they, nor the Israelites, nor any other of the most ancient
kingdoms of the earth, knew of it in any shape, either as a simple
twist, or as a woven stuff. Not the smallest shred of silk has
hitherto been found in the tombs, or amid the ruins of the Pharaonic
period.
No where does Holy Writ, old or new, tell anything of silk but in
one single place, the Apocalypse, xviii. 12. True it is that, in the
English authorized version, we read of “silk” as if spoken of by
Ezekiel, xvi. 10, 13; and again, in Proverbs, xxxi. 22; yet there can
be no doubt, but that in both these passages, the word silk is wrong
through the translators misunderstanding the original Hebrew משי
(meschi). Of this word, Parkhurst says: “As a noun, משי, according to
our translation (is) silk, but not so rendered in any of the ancient
versions. _Silk_ would indeed well enough answer the ideal meaning of
the Hebrew word, from its being _drawn forth_ from the bowels of the
silk-worm, and that to a degree of fineness, so as to form very slender
threads. But I meet with no evidence that the Israelites in very early
times (and to these Ezekiel refers) had any knowledge of _silk_, much
less of the manner in which it was formed; משי, therefore, I think,
means some kind of _fine linen_ or _cotton cloth_, so denominated
from the _fineness_ with which the threads whereof it consisted were
_drawn out_. The Vulgate, by rendering it in the former passage,
‘subtilibus’ _fine_, as opposed to _coarse_, has nearly preserved
the true idea of the Hebrew.”[20] Braunius, too, no mean authority,
after bestowing a great deal of study on the matter, gives it as his
well-weighed judgment that, throughout the whole Hebrew Bible, no
mention whatever can be found of silk, which was a material utterly
unknown to the children of Israel.[21] Once only is silk spoken of
in the New Testament, and then while St. John[22] is reckoning it up
along with the gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and
fine linen--byssus--and purple which, with many other costly freights
merchants were wont to bring in ships to that mighty city which, in the
Apostle’s days, ruled over the kings of the earth.
[20] Hebrew and English Lexicon. London, 1813, p. 415.
[21] De Vestitu Heb. Sac., lib. I. cap. viii. § 8.
[22] Apoc. xviii. 12.
Long after the days of Ezekiel was it that silk, in its raw form only,
made up into hanks, first found its way to Egypt, western Asia, and
eastern Europe.
To Aristotle do we owe the earliest notice, among the ancients, of the
silk-worm, and although his account be incorrect, it has much value,
since, along with his description, the celebrated Greek philosopher
gives us information about the original importation of raw silk into
the western world. Brought from China, through India, till it reached
the Indus, the silk came by water across the Arabian Ocean, up the Red
Sea, and thence over the Isthmus of Suez, or, perhaps, rather by the
overland route, through Persia, to the small but commercial island of
Cos (now Koss), lying off the coast of Asia Minor. Pamphile, daughter
of Plates, is reported to have first woven it (silk) in Cos.[23] Here,
by female hands, were wrought those light thin gauzes which became so
fashionable among some high dames, but while so often spoken of by the
poets of the Augustan period, were stigmatized by some among them, as
well as by the heathen moralists of after ages, as anything but seemly
for women’s wear. Thus Tibullus says of this sort of clothing:
Illa gerat vestes tenues, quas fœmina Coa
Texuit, auratas disposuitque vias.[24]
She may thin garments wear, which female Coan hands
Have woven, and in stripes disposed the golden bands.
Years afterwards, thus laments Seneca, the philosopher: “Video sericas
vestes, si vestes vocandæ sunt, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut
corpus aut denique pudor possit.” I behold silken garments, if garments
they can be called, which are a protection neither for the body nor for
shame.[25] And later still, and in the Christian era, an echo to the
remarks of Seneca do we hear in the words of Solinus: “Hoc illud est
sericum in quo ostentare potius corpora quàm vestire, primò feminis,
nunc etiam viris persuasit luxuriæ libido.”[26] This is silk, in which
at first women but now even men have been led, by their cravings after
luxury, to show rather than to clothe their bodies.
[23] Hist. Anim. V. c. 19, p. 850, ed. Duval.
[24] Tibullus, l. ii. 6.
[25] De Beneficiis, l. vii. c.
[26] Solinus, c. 1.
While looking over some precious early mediæval MS., often do we yet
find that its beautifully limned and richly gilt illuminations, to
keep them from harm, or being hurt through the rubbings of the next
leaf, have fastened beside them a covering of the thinnest gauze, just
as we put in sheets of silver paper for that purpose over engravings.
The likelihood is that some at least of these may be shreds from
some of those thin translucent textiles which found such favour in
the fashionable world for so long a time during the classic period.
To some at least of our readers, the curious example of such gauzy
interleafings in the manuscript of Theodulph, now at Puy en Velay, will
occur.
Not only these transparent silken gauzes wrought in Cos, but far more
tasty stuffs, and flowered too, from Chinese looms, found their way to
Asia Minor and Italy. In telling of the barbarous nations then called
the Seres, Dionysius Periegetes writes that they comb the variously
coloured flowers of the desert land to make precious figured garments,
resembling in colour the flowers of the meadow, and rivalling (in
fineness) the work of spiders.[27]
As may be easily imagined, silken garments were brought, at an early
period, to imperial Rome. Such, however, were the high prices asked
for them, that few either would or could afford to buy these robes for
their wives and daughters; since, at first, they were looked upon as
quite unbecoming for men’s wear; hence, by a law of the Roman senate
under Tiberius, it was enacted: “Ne vestis serica vicos fœdaret.”
While noticing how womanish Caligula became in his dress, Suetonius
remarks his silken attire: “Aliquando sericatus et cycladatus.”[28] An
exception was made by some emperors for very great occasions, and both
Titus and Vespasian wore dresses of silk when they celebrated at Rome
their triumph over Judæa. Of the emperors who adopted whole silk for
their clothing, Heliogabalus was the first, and so fond was he of the
material, that, in the event of wishing to hang himself, he had got for
the occasion a rope, one strand of which was silk, and the other two
dyed with purple and scarlet: “Paraverat sunes, blatta et serico, et
cocco intortos, quibus si necesse esset, laqueo vitam finiret.”[29]
The abnegation of another Roman Emperor, Aurelian, both in respect
of himself and his empress, is, however, very remarkable: “Vestem
holosericam neque ipse in vestiario suo habuit neque alteri utendam
dedit. Et cum ab eo uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo serico
uteretur, ille respondit absit, ut auro fila pensentur. Libra enim
auri tunc libra serici suit.”[30] Aurelian neither had himself in his
wardrobe a garment wholly silk, nor gave one to be worn by another.
When his own wife begged him to allow her to have a single mantle of
purple silk, he replied, “Far be it from us to allow thread to be
reckoned worth its weight in gold.” For then a pound of gold was the
price of a pound of silk.
Here it ought to be mentioned that, for some time before this period
a very broad distinction had been drawn, even in the sumptuary laws
of the empire, between garments made wholly, and partially of silk;
in the former, all the web, both woof and warp, is woven of nothing
but silk; in the latter, the woof is of cotton or of thread, the warp
only of silk. This difference in the texture is thus well set forth
by Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus, of whom he says: he
had few garments of silk--he never wore a tunic woven wholly of silk,
and he never gave away cloth made of silk mixed with less valuable
stuff. “Vestes sericas ipse raras habuit; holosericas nunquam induit
subsericam nunquam donavit.”[31]
[27] Quoted by Yates, Textrinum Antiquorum, p. 181.
[28] Suetonius, c. 52.
[29] Lampridius, c. 26.
[30] Vopiscus, c. 45.
[31] Severus, c. 40.
Clothing made wholly or in part out of silk, became every year more
and more sought for. So remunerative was the trade of weaving the raw
material into its various forms, that, by the Justinian pandects, the
revised code of laws for the Roman Empire, drawn up and published A.D.
533--a monopoly in it was given to the court, and looms worked by women
were set up in the imperial palace. Thus Byzantium became, and long
continued famous for the beauty of its silken stuffs. Still, the raw
silk itself had to be brought thither from abroad; but a remedy was
very near at hand. Two Greek monks, while spending many years among the
Chinese, had well learned the whole process of rearing the worm. They
came home, and brought back with them a goodly number of eggs hidden
in their walking-staves, likely made of that hollow tough sort of reed
or tall grass, the Arundo Donax; and, carrying them to Constantinople,
they presented these eggs to the Emperor, who gladly received them.
When hatched, the worms were distributed all over Greece and Asia
Minor, and very soon the western world reared its own silk. Not long
afterwards, Persia and India also became silk-growing countries. In
some places, at least in Greece, the weaving not only of the finer
kinds of cloth, but of silk, got at last into the hands of the Jews.
Writing of his travels, A.D. 1161, Benjamin of Tudela tells us that the
great city of Thebes contained about two thousand Jewish inhabitants.
These are the most eminent manufacturers of silk and purple cloth in
all Greece.[32]
Telling us how the fleet of our first Richard coasted the shores of
Spain on its voyage to the Holy Land, Hoveden says of Almeria and its
silk factory: “Deinde per nobilem civitatem quæ dicitur Almaria ubi fit
nobile sericum et delicatum quod dicitur sericum de Almaria.”[33] So
prized were these fine delicate textiles that they were paid as tribute
to princes: “Insula de Maiore reddit ei (regi Arragoniæ) trecentos
pannos sericos de Almaria per annum de tributo,” &c.[34]
[32] Early Travels in Palestine, ed. T. Wright, p. 71.
[33] Rog. Hoveden, Ann. ed. Savile, Rer. Ang. Script., p. 382.
[34] Ib. p. 382, b.
South Italy wrought rich silken stuffs by the end of the eleventh
century; for we are told by our countryman, Ordericus Vitalis, who died
in the first half of the twelfth century, that Mainerius, the abbot
of his monastery of St. Evroul, at Uzey, in Normandy, on coming home,
brought with him from Apulia several large pieces of silk, and gave to
the Church four of the finest ones, with which four copes were made
for the chanters: “De pallis quas ipse de Apulia detulerat quatuor de
preciosioris S. Ebrulfo obtulit ex quibus quatuor cappæ cantorum in
eadem factæ sunt ecclesia.”[35]
[35] Ordericus Vitalis, Ecc. Hist., l. v. p. 584.
From a feeling alive in every heart throughout the length and breadth
of Christendom that the best of all things ought to be given for
the service of its religious rites, the garments of its celebrating
priesthood, from the far east to the uttermost west, were, if not
always, at least very often wholly of silk--holosericus. To this fact
we have pointed for the sake of remembering that were it not so, we had
been, at this day, without the power of being able to see through the
few but tattered shreds before us, what elegantly designed and gorgeous
stuffs the foreign mediæval loom could weave, and what beautiful
embroidery our own countrywomen knew so well how to work. These
specimens help us also to rightly understand the description of those
splendid vestments and ritual appliances enumerated with such exactness
in the old inventories of our venerable cathedrals and parish churches
as well as the early wardrobe accompts of our kings, the wills and
bequests of our dignified ecclesiastics and nobility, to some of which
documents we shall have to refer a little later.
In coming westward among us, all these so much coveted stuffs brought
along with them their own several names by which they were commonly
known throughout the east, whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence
when we read of Samit, ciclatoun, cendal, baudekin, and other such
terms quite unknown to trade now-a-day, we should bear in mind that
notwithstanding the wide variety of spelling, or rather misspelling,
each of these appellations has run through, we reach at last their true
derivations, and so happily get to know in what country and by whose
hands they were wrought.
As trade grew up, she brought these fine silken textiles to our
markets, and articles of dress were made of silk for men’s as well as
women’s wear among the wealthy. At what period the raw material came to
be imported here, not so much for embroidery as to be wrought in the
loom, we do not exactly know; but from several sides we learn that our
countrywomen of all degrees busied themselves in weaving. Among the
home occupations of maidens dedicated to God, St. Aldhelm, at the end
of the seventh century, seems to number: “Cortinarum sive stragularum
textura.”[36] In the council at Cloveshoo, under Archbishop Cuthbert,
A.D. 747, nuns are exhorted to spend their time in reading or singing
psalms rather than weaving and knitting vainglorious garments of
many colours: “Magisque legendis libris vel canendis psalmis, quam
texendis et plectendis vario colore inanis gloriæ vestibus studeant
operam dare.”[37] By that curious old English book, the “Ancren Riwle,”
written towards the end of the twelfth century, ankresses are forbidden
to make purses to gain friends therewith, or blodbendes.[38] Were it
not that the weaving especially of silk, was so generally followed in
the cloister by English women, it had been useless to have so strongly
discountenanced the practice.
[36] De Laudibus Virginitatis, Opp. ed. Giles, 15.
[37] Concil. Ecc. Brit. ed. Spelman, i. 256.
[38] P. 421.
Those “blodbendes,” or narrow strips for winding round the arm after
bleeding, are curiously illustrative of an old national custom for
health-sake kept up in the remembrance of some old folks still living,
of periodical blood-letting. To his practices upon the heads and chins
of people the barber at no remote period, added that of bleeding them;
and the old English barber surgeons held a high position among the
gilds of London. To show where he lived each member of that brotherhood
had hanging out from the walls of his house a long thin pole painted
spirally black and white, the white in token of the blodbende or
bandage to be winded and kept about the patient’s arm.
But on silk weaving by our women in small hand-looms, a very important
witness, especially about several curious specimens in this collection,
is John Garland, born at the beginning of the thirteenth century in
London, where his namesakes and likely of his stock, were and are
known. First, a John Garland, A.D. 1170, held a prebend’s stall in
St. Paul’s Cathedral.[39] Another, A.D. 1211, was sheriff, at a later
period.[40] A third, a wealthy draper of London, gave freely towards
the building of a church in Somersetshire.[41] A fourth, who died A.D.
1461, lies buried in St. Sythe’s;[42] and, at the present day, no fewer
than twenty-two trades-men of that name, of whom six are merchants of
high standing in the city, are mentioned in the London Post Office
Directory for this year 1868. We give these instances as some have
tried to rob us of John Garland by saying he was not an Englishman,
though of himself he had said: “Anglia cui mater fuerat, cui gallia
nutrix,” &c.
[39] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 264.
[40] Liber de Antiq. Legibus, pp. 3, 223.
[41] Leland’s Itinerary, t. 7, p. 99.
[42] Stowe’s Survey, B. iii. p. 31.
In a sort of very short dictionary, drawn up by that writer, and
printed at the end of “Paris sous Philippe Le Bel,” edited by M.
H. Geraud, our countryman says: “Textrices quæ texunt serica texta
projiciunt fila aurata officio cavillarum et percuciunt subtemina cum
linea (lignea?) spata: de textis vero fiunt cingula et crinalia divitum
mulierum et stole sacerdotum.”[43] Though short, this passage is
curious and valuable. From it we learn that, besides the usual homely
textiles, those more costly cloth-of-gold webs were wrought by our
women, and very likely, among their other productions--cingula--were
those “blodbendes,” the weaving of which had been forbidden to
ankresses and nuns; perhaps, too, of those narrow gold-wrought ribbons
in this collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, 217, 218, 219, 221, &c., some may
have been so employed by our high-born dames on occasion of their
being bled, since as late as the sixteenth century some seasons were
deemed fit, others quite unfitting for the operation. Hence, in his
Richard II. act 1, scene i. Shakespeare makes the king to warn those
wrath-kindled gentlemen, Bolingbroke and Norfolk:
Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.
[43] Ib. 607.
And our most popular books in olden time, one the Shepherd’s Kalendar,
speaking about the signs of the zodiack, tell us which of the twelve
months are either good, evil, or indifferent for blood-letting.
John Garland’s “cingula” may also mean those rich girdles or sashes
worn by our women round the waist, and of which we have one in this
collection, No. 8571, p. 218. Of this sort, is that border--amber
coloured silk and diapered--round a vestment found in a grave at
Durham, and like “a thick lace, one inch and a quarter broad--evidently
owing its origin, not to the needle, but to the loom,” &c.[44] For
the artist wishful to be correct concerning the head-gear of ladies
from Anglo-Saxon times till the end of the later Plantagenets, this
collection can furnish examples of those bands in those narrow textiles
spoken of by our John Garland. For an after-period those bands are
shown on the statuary, and amid the limning in illuminated MSS. of the
thirteenth century; as instances of the narrow girdle, may be viewed
a lady’s effigy, in Romney church, Hants; and that of Ann of Bohemia,
in Westminster Abbey; both to be found in Hollis’s Monumental Effigies
of Great Britain; for the band about the head, the examples in the
wood-cuts in Planchè’s British Costumes, p. 116.
[44] Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.
Of such head-bands we have one at number 8569, p. 217, and other
three mentioned upon p. 221. They are, no doubt, the old snôd of
the Anglo-Saxon period. For high-born dames they were wrought of
silk and gold; those of lower degree wore them of simpler stuff. The
silken snood, affected to the present hour by young unmarried women
in Scotland, is a truthful witness to the fashion in vogue during
Anglo-Saxon and later times in this country.
With regard to what John Garland says of stoles so made, there is one
here, No. 1233, p. 24, quite entire.
From what has been here brought forward, it will be seen that of silk,
whence it came or what was its kind, nothing was truly understood,
even by the learned, for many ages. While, then, we smile at Virgil
and the other ancients for thinking that silk was a sort of herbaceous
fleece growing upon trees, let us not forget that not so many years
ago our own Royal Society printed a paper in which it is set forth
that the yet-called Barnacle Goose comes from a mussel-like bivalve
shell, known as the “Anatifa,” or Barnacle, an origin for the bird
still believed in by some of our seafaring folks, and fostered after
a manner by well-read people by the scientific nomenclature of the
shell and the vernacular epithet for the goose. In the twelfth century,
our countryman, Alexander Neckham, foster-brother to our Richard I.,
wrote of this marvel thus: “Ex lignis abiegnis salo diuturno tempore
madefactis originem sumit avis quæ vulgo dicitur bernekke,” &c.[45]
Such, however, was the Cirencester Augustinian friar’s knowledge of
natural history, that, at least four hundred years ere the Royal
Society had a being amongst us, he thus spurns the popular belief upon
the subject:--
Ligna novas abiegna salo madefacta, jubente
Natura, volucres edere fama refert.
Id viscosus agit humor, quod publica fama
Afserit indignans philosophia negat.[46]
Of a truth the Record Commission is doing England good service by
drawing out of darkness the works of our mediæval writers.
[45] De Natura Rerum, p. 99, published under the direction of the
Master of the Rolls.
[46] Ib. p. 304.
The breeding of the worm and the manufacture of its silk both spread
themselves with steady though slow steps over most of those countries
which skirt the shores of the Mediterranean; so that, by the tenth
century, those processes had reached from the far east to the uttermost
western limits of that same sea. Even then, and a long time after, the
natural history of the silkworm became known but to a very few. Our
aforesaid countryman, Alexander Neckham, made Abbot of Cirencester,
A.D. 1213, was, it is likely, the first who, while he had learned,
tried in his popular work, “De Natura Rerum,” to help others to
understand the habits of the insect: “Materiam vestium sericarum
contexit vermis qui bombex dicitur. Foliis celsi, quæ vulgo morus
dicitur, vescitur, et materiam serici digerit; postquam vero operari
cœperit, escam renuit, labori delicioso diligentem operam impendens.
Calathi parietes industrius textor circuit, lanam educens crocei
coloris quæ nivei candoris efficitur per ablutionem, antequam tinctura
artificialis superinduitur. Consummato autem opere nobilis textoris,
thecam in opere proprio involutam centonis in modum subintrat jamque
similis papilioni, &c.”[47]
[47] Ed. T. Wright, p. 272.
Of those several raw materials that have, from the earliest periods,
been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is
GOLD,
which, when judiciously brought in, brings with it, not a barbaric, but
artistical richness.
The earliest written notice we have about the employment of this
precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for
such a purpose, we find set forth in the Pentateuch, where Moses tells
us that he (Beseleel) made of violet and purple, scarlet and fine
linen, the vestments for Aaron to wear when he ministered in the holy
places. So he made an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet
twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and he cut
thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might
be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours.[48] Instead of
“strip,” the authorized version says, “wire,” another translation reads
“thread;” but neither can be right, for both of these English words
mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before
being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as
we learn from the text.
[48] Exodus xxxix. 1, 2, 3.
This brings us to a short notice of
CLOTH OF GOLD, OR TISSUE.
The use of gold for weaving, both along with linen or quite by itself,
existed, it is likely, among the Egyptians, long before the days of
Moses. In either way of its being employed, the precious metal was
at first wrought in a flattened, never in a round or wire shape. To
this hour the Chinese and the people of India work the gold into their
stuffs after the first and ancient form. In this fashion, to even now,
the Italians love to weave their lama d’oro, or the more glistening
toca--those cloths of gold which, to all Asiatic and many European
eyes, do not glare with too much garishness, but shine with a glow that
befits the raiment of personages in high station.
Among the nations of ancient Asia, garments made of webs dyed with
the costly purple tint, and interwoven with gold, were on all grand
occasions worn by kings and princes. So celebrated did the Medes
and Persians become in such works of the loom, that cloths of
extraordinary beauty got their several names from those peoples, and
Medean, Lydian, and Persian textiles came to be everywhere sought for
with eagerness.
Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the
Great, almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus
Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the
Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those
who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, many
were so clad: “Vestes ... auro et purpura insignes induunt.”[49] All
over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian
king, with his two grown-up sons, came to Alexander, all three were so
arrayed: “Vestis erat auro purpuraque distincta, &c.”[50] Princes and
the high nobility, all over the East, are by Quintus Curtius called,
“purpurati.”[51] Not only garments but hangings were made of the same
costly fabric. When Alexander wished to afford some ambassadors a
splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their
meat were screened all about with cloths of gold and purple: “Centum
aurei lecti modicis intervallis positi erant: lectis circumdederat
(rex Alexander) ælæa purpura auroque fulgentia, &c.”[52] But these
Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously arrayed in their own
national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments
resplendent with gold and purple: “Lineæ vestes intexto auro purpuraque
distinctæ, &c.”[53]
The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus
described by the same historian: The waist part of the royal purple
tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of cloth of gold were
figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks:
“Purpureæ tunicæ medium album intextum erat: pallam auro distinctam
aurei accipitres, velut rostris inter se concurrerent, adornabant.”[54]
[49] Q. Curtii Rufi, lib. iii. cap. xiii. 34, p. 26, ed Foss.
[50] Ib. lib. ix. cap. i. p. 217.
[51] Ib. lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 4, cap. viii. p. 16.
[52] Ib. lib. ix. cap. vii. p. 233.
[53] Ib. cap. vii. p. 233.
[54] Ib. lib. iii. cap. iii. p. 7.
From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of
Italy, called Magna Græcia, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even
under its early kings and much later under its emperors, garments made
of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says:--Gold may
be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it. We
are informed by Verrius, that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in
a tunic of gold; and we have seen Agrippina, the wife of the Emperor
Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sitting by
him, covered with a robe made entirely of woven gold without any other
material.[55] In fact, about the year 1840, the Marquis Campagna dug
up, near Rome, two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman
lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her
remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming
the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral: “Di
due sepolcri Romani, del secolo di Augusto scoverti tra la via Latina e
l’Appia, presso la tomba degli Scipioni.”
[55] Book XXXIII. c. 19. Dr. Bostock’s Translation.
Now we get to the Christian epoch. When Pope Paschal, A.D. 821, sought
for the body of St. Cecily, who underwent martyrdom A.D. 230, the
pontiff found, in the catacombs, the maiden bride whole, and dressed
in a garment wrought all of gold, with some of her raiment drenched in
blood lying at her feet: “Aureis illud (corpus) vestitum indumentis
et linteamina martyris ipsius sanguine plena.”[56] In making the
foundations for the new St. Peter’s at Rome, they came upon and looked
into the marble sarcophagus in which had been buried Probus Anicius,
prefect of the Pretorian, and his wife, Proba Faltonia, each of whose
bodies was wrapped in a winding-sheet woven of pure gold strips.[57]
Maria Stilicho’s daughter, was wedded to the Emperor Honorius, and
died sometime about A.D. 400. When her grave was opened, A.D. 1544,
the golden tissues in which her body had been shrouded were taken out
and melted, when the yield of precious metal amounted to thirty-six
pounds.[58] The late Father Marchi found, among the remains of St.
Hyacinthus, martyr, several fragments of the same kind of golden web,
winding sheets of which were often given by the opulent for wrapping
up the dead body of some poor martyred Christian brother, as is shown
by the example specified in Boldetti’s “Cimiteri de’ santi martiri di
Roma.”[59]
[56] Liber Pontificalis, t. ii. p. 332, ed. Vignolio, Romæ, 1752;
Hierurgia, 2nd ed. p. 275.
[57] Batelli, de Sarco. Marm. Probi Anicii et Probæ Faltoniæ in Temp.
Vatic. Romæ. 1705.
[58] Cancellieri, De Secretariis Basil. Vatic. ii. 1000.
[59] T. II. p. 22.
Childeric, the second and perhaps the most renowned king of the
Merovingean dynasty, died and was buried A.D. 485, at Tournai. In the
year 1653 his grave was found out, and amid the earth about it so many
remains of pure gold strips were turned up, that there is every reason
for thinking that the Frankish king was wrapped in a mantle of such
golden stuff for his burial.[60] That the strips of pure gold out of
which the burial cloak of Childeric was woven were not anywise round,
but quite flat, we are warranted in thinking, from the fact that,
while digging in a Merovingean burial ground at Envermeu, A.D. 1855,
the distinguished archæologist l’Abbe Cochet came upon the grave once
filled, as it seemed, by a young lady whose head had been wreathed with
a fillet of pure golden web, the tissue of which is thus described:
“Ces fils aussi brillants et aussi frais que s’ils sortaient de la main
de l’ouvrier, n’étaient ni étirés ni cordés. Ils étaient plats et se
composaient tout semplement de petites lanières d’or d’un millimètre de
largeur, coupée à même une feuille d’or épaisse de moins d’un dixième
de millimètre. La longueur totale de quelques-uns atteignait parfois
jusqu’à quinze ou dix-huit centimètres.”[61]
[60] Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric I^{er}, p. 174.
[61] Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric I^{er} p. 175.
Our own country can furnish an example of this kind of golden textile.
At Chessel Down, in the Isle of Wight, when Mr. Hillier was making some
researches in an old Anglo-Saxon place of burial, the diggers found
pieces of golden strips, thin, and quite flat, which are figured in M.
l’Abbé Cochet’s learned book just quoted.[62] Of such a rich texture
must have been the vestment covered with precious stones, given to St.
Peter’s Church, at Rome, by Charles of France, in the middle of the
ninth century: “Carolus rex sancto Apostolo obtulit ex purissimo auro,
et gemmis constructam vestem, &c.”[63]
In the working of such webs and embroidery for use in the Church, a
high-born Anglo-Saxon lady, Ælthelswitha, with her waiting maids, spent
her life near Ely, where, “aurifrixoriæ et texturis secretius cum
puellulis vacabat, quæ de proprio sumptu, albam casulam suis manibus
ipsa talis ingenii peritissima fecit,” &c.[64]
[62] Ib. p. 176.
[63] Liber Pontificalis, l. iii., p. 201, ed. Vignolia.
[64] Liber Eliensis, ed. Stewart, p. 208.
Such a weaving of pure gold was, here in England, followed certainly
as late as the beginning of the tenth century; very likely much later.
In the chapter library belonging to Durham Cathedral may be seen,
along with several other very precious liturgical appliances, a stole
and maniple, which happily, for more reasons than one, bear these
inscriptions: “Ælfflaed Fieri Precepit. Pio Episcopo Fridestano.” Queen
to Alfred’s son and successor, Edward the elder was our Ælfflaed who
got this stole and maniple made for a gift to Fridestan, consecrated
bishop of Winchester A.D. 905. With these webs under his eye, Mr.
Raine, in his “Saint Cuthbert,”[65] writes thus: In the first, the
ground work of the whole is woven exclusively with thread of gold. I
do not mean by thread of gold, the silver-gilt wire frequently used in
such matters, but real gold thread, if I may so term it, not round,
but flat. This is the character of the whole web, with the exception
of the figures, the undulating cloud-shaped pedestal upon which they
stand, the inscriptions, and the foliage; for all of which, however
surprising it may appear, vacant spaces have been left by the loom, and
they themselves afterwards inserted with the needle. Further on, in
his description of a girdle, the same writer tells us: Its breadth is
exactly seven-eighths of an inch. It has evidently proceeded from the
loom; and its two component parts are a flattish thread of pure gold,
and a thread of scarlet silk, &c.[66] Let it be borne in mind that
Winchester was then a royal city, and abounded, as it did afterwards,
with able needle-women.
[65] P. 202.
The employment, till a late period, of flattened gold in silk textiles
is well shown by those fraudulent imitations, and substitution in its
stead of gilt parchment, which we have pointed out among the specimens
in this collection, as may be seen at Nos. 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224;
8601, p. 229; 8639, p. 244, &c.
That these Durham cloth-of-gold stuffs for vestments were home made--we
mean wrought in Anglo-Saxondom--is likely, and by our women’s hands,
after the way we shall have to speak about further on.
This love for such glittering attire, not only for liturgical use but
secular wear, lasted long in England. Such golden webs went here under
different names; at first they were called “ciclatoun,” “siglaton,” or
“siklatoun,” as the writer’s fancy led him to spell the common Persian
word for them at the time throughout the east.
By the old English ritual, plain cloth of gold was allowed, as now, to
be taken for white, and worn in the Church’s ceremonials as such, when
that colour happened to be named for use by the rubric. Thus in the
reign of Richard II., among the vestments at the Chapel of St. George,
Windsor Castle, there was “unum vestimentum album bonum de panno
adaurato pro principalibus festis B. Mariæ,” &c.[67]
St. Paul’s, London, had, at the end of the thirteenth century, two
amices; one an old one, embroidered with solid gold wire: “Amictus
breudatus de auro puro; amictus vetus breudatus cum auro puro.”[68]
[66] Mr. Raine, St. Cuthbert, p. 209.
[67] Dugdale’s Mon. Angl. t. viii., p. 1363.
[68] Dugdale, p. 318.
The use of golden stuffs not unlikely woven in England, but assuredly
worn by royalty here, is curiously shown by the contrast between the
living man clothed in woven gold, and the dead body, and its frightful
state at burial, of Henry I., set forth by Roger Hoveden; who thus
writes of that king: “vide ... quomodo regis potentissimi corpus
cujus cervix diademite, auro et gemmis electissimis quasi divino
splendore vernaverat ... cujus reliqua superficies auro textile tota
rutilaverat,” &c.[69]
Often was this splendid web wrought so thick and strong, that each
string, whether it happened to be of hemp or of silk, in the warp, had
in it six threads, while the weft was of flat gold shreds. Hence such
a texture was called “samit,” a word shortened from its first and old
Byzantine name “exsamit,” as we shall have to notice further on. Among
several other purchases for the wardrobe of Edward I., in the year
1300, we find this entry: “Pro samitis pannis ad aurum tam in canabo
quam in serico,” &c.[70] And such was the quantity kept there of this
costly cloth, that the nobles of that king were allowed to buy it out
of the royal stores; for instance, four pieces at thirty shillings each
were sold to the Lord Robert de Clifford, and another piece at the same
price to Thomas de Cammill.[71] Not only Asia Minor, but the Island
of Cyprus, the City of Lucca, and Moorish Spain, sent us these rich
tissues. The cloth of gold from Spain is incidentally spoken of later
in the Sherborn bequest, p. lvi. Along with other things left behind
him at Haverford castle, by Richard II., were twenty-five cloths of
gold of divers suits, of which four came from Cyprus, the others from
Lucca: “xxv. draps d or de diverses suytes dount iiii. de _Cipres_ les
autres de _Lukes_.”[72] How Edward IV. liked cloth-of-gold for his
personal wear, may be gathered from his “Wardrobe Accounts,” edited by
Nicolas; and the lavish use of this stuff ordered by Richard III. for
his own coronation, is recorded in the “Antiquarian Repertory.”[73] The
robes to be worn by the unfortunate Edward V. at this same function
were cloth of gold tissue. “Diverse peces of cloth of gold” were bought
by Henry VII., “of Lombardes.”[74]
[69] Annalium, &c., p. 276, ed. Savile.
[70] Liber Quotidianus Garderobæ, p. 354.
[71] Ib., p. 6.
[72] Ancient Kalendars, &c., ed. Palgrave, t. iii., 358.
[73] I. p. 43, &c.
[74] Excerpta Historica, p. 90.
A “gowne of cloth-of-gold, furred with pawmpilyon, ayenst Corpus Xpi
day,” was brought from London to Richmond, to Elizabeth of York,
afterwards Henry VII.’s queen, for her to wear as she walked in the
procession on that great festival.[75] The affection shown by Henry
VIII., and all our nobility, men and women, of the time, for cloth
of gold in their garments, was unmistakingly set forth in so many of
their likenesses brought together in that very instructive Exhibition
of National Portraits in the year, A.D. 1866, in the South Kensington
Museum. This stuff seems to have been costly then, for Princess,
afterwards Queen Mary, thirteen years before she came to the throne:
“payed to Peycocke, of London, for xix yerds iii. qr̃t of clothe of
golde at xxxviij.[~s] the yerde, xxxvij_li._ x_s._ vj_d._”[76] And for
“a yerde and d^r qr̃t of clothe of siluer xl_s._”[77]
[75] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 33, ed. Nicolas.
[76] Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, ed. Madden, p. 87.
[77] Ib. p. 86.
Cloth of gold called
TISSUE.
As between common silk and satin, there runs a broad difference, at
least in look, one being dull, the other smooth and glossy, so there
is a great distinction to be made among cloths of gold; some are,
so to say, dead; others, brilliant and sparkling. When the gold is
twisted into its silken filament, it takes the deadened look; when the
flattened, filmy strip of metal is rolled about it so evenly as to
bring its edges close to one another, it seems to be one unbroken wire
of gold, sparkling and lustrous, like what is now known as “passing,”
and, during the middle ages, went by the term of Cyprus gold; and rich
samits woven with it, were called damasks of Cyprus.
The very self-same things get for themselves other denominations as
time goes on: such happened to cloths of gold. What the thirteenth
century called, first, “ciclatoun,” then “baudekin,” afterward “nak,”
people, two hundred years later, chose to name “tissue,” or the bright
shimmering golden textile affected so much by our kings and queens in
their dress, for the more solemn occasions of stately grandeur, as was
just now mentioned. Up to this time, the very thin smooth paper made
at first on purpose to be, when this rich stuff lay by, put between
its folds to hinder it from fraying or tarnish, yet goes, though its
original use is forgotten, by the name of tissue-paper.
The gorgeous and entire set of vestments presented to the altar at
St. Alban’s Abbey, by Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, A.D. 1429, and
made of the cloth of gold commonly called “tyssewys,” must have
been as remarkable for the abundance and purity of the gold in its
texture, as for the splendour of the precious stones set on it, as
well as the exquisite beauty of its embroideries: “Obtulit etiam unum
vestimentum integrum cum tribus capis choralibus de panno Tyssewys
vulgariter nuncupato in quibus auri pretiosa nobilitas, gemmarum
pulchritudo et curiosa manus artificis stuporem quendam inspectantium
oculis repræsentant.”[78] The large number of vestments made out of
gold tissue, and of crimson, light blue, purple, green, and black,
once belonging to York Cathedral, are all duly registered in the
valuable “Fabric Rolls” of that Church lately published by the Surtees
Society.[79]
[78] Mon. Anglic. II. 222.
[79] Pp. 229, &c.
Among those many rich and costly vestments in Lincoln Cathedral, some
were made of this sparkling golden tissue contra-distinguished in its
inventory, from the duller cloth of gold, thus: “Four good copes of
blew tishew with orphreys of red cloth of gold, wrought with branches
and leaves of velvet;”[80] “a chesable with two tunacles of blew tishew
having a precious orphrey of cloth of gold.”[81]
To this day, in some countries the official robes of certain
dignitaries are wrought of this rich textile. Even now, these Roman
princes, and the senator whose place on great festivals when the Pope
is present, is about the pontifical throne, are all arrayed in state
garments made of cloth of gold.
[80] Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. Dugdale, t. viii. p. 1282.
[81] Ib.
Silken textures ornamented with designs in copper gilt thread, were
brought into market and honestly sold for what they really were: of
such inferior wares we find mention in the inventory of vestments at
Winchester Cathedral, drawn up by order of Henry VIII. where we read of
“twenty-eight copys of white bawdkyne, woven with copper gold.”[82] The
substitution of gilt parchment for metal will be noticed further on,
Section vi.
To imitate cloth of gold, the gilding of silk and fine canvas, like our
gilding of wood and other substances, though not often, was sometimes
resorted to for splendour’s sake on momentary occasions; such, for
instance, as some stately procession, or a solemn burial service. Mr.
Raine tells us he got from a grave at Durham, among other textiles,
“a robe of thinnish silk; the ground colour of the whole is amber;
and the ornamental parts were literally covered with _leaf gold_, of
which there remained distinct and very numerous portions.”[83] In the
churchyard of Cheam, Surrey, A.D. 1865, was found the skeleton of a
priest buried there some time during the fourteenth century; around the
waist was a flat girdle made of brown silk that had been gilt, and a
shred of it now lies before the writer.
In the “Romaunt of the Rose,” translated by Chaucer, Dame Gladnesse is
thus described:--
--in an over gilt samite
Clad she was.[84]
On a piece of German orphrey-web, in this collection, No. 1373, p. 80,
and likely done at Cologne, in the sixteenth century, the gold is put
by the gilding process.
[82] Ib. t. i. p. 202, new ed.
[83] Saint Cuthbert, by J. Raine, p. 194.
[84] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 27.
In the year 1295, St. Paul’s, London, had: “Casula de panno inaurato
super serico,” a chasuble of gilded silk;[85] and it was lined with red
cloth made at Ailesham,[86] or Elesham Priory in Lincolnshire. It had,
too, another chasuble, and altar frontals of gilded canvas: “casula
de panno inaurato in canabo, lineata carda Indici coloris cum panno
consimili de Venetiis ad pendendum ante altare.”[87] Venice seems to
have been the place where these gilded silks and canvases, like the
leather and pretty paper of a later epoch, were wrought.
[85] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 335.
[86] Ib.
[87] Ib.
As gold, so too
SILVER,
was hammered out into very thin sheets, which were cut into narrow long
shreds to be woven, unmixed with anything else, into a web for garments
fitting for the wear of kings. Of this we have a striking illustration
in the “Acts,” where St. Luke, speaking of Herod Agrippa, tells us that
he presented himself arrayed in kingly apparel, to the people, who to
flatter him, shouted that his was the voice, not of a man, but of a
god; and forthwith he was smitten by that loathsome disease--eaten up
by worms--which shortly killed him.[88] This royal robe, as Josephus
informs us, was a tunic all made of silver and wonderful in its
texture. Appearing in this dress at break of day in the theatre, the
silver, lit up by the rays of the early morning’s sun, gleamed so
brightly as to startle the beholders in such a manner that some among
them, by way of glozing, shouted out that the king before them was a
god.[89]
[88] Acts. c. xii. vv. 21-23.
[89] Ant. l. xix. 8.
Intimately connected with the raw materials, and how they were wrought
in the loom, is the question about the time when
WIRE-DRAWING
was found out. At what period, and among what people the art of
working up pure gold, or gilded silver, into a long, round, hair-like
thread--into what may be correctly called “wire”--began, is quite
unknown. That with their mechanical ingenuity the ancient Egyptians
bethought themselves of some method for the purpose, is not unlikely.
From Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, we learn that at Thebes there was found
the appearance of gold wire.[90] Of those remarkable pieces of Egyptian
handicraft the corslets sent by King Amasis--one to Lindus, the second
to Lacædemon--of which we have already spoken (p. xiv.), we may fairly
presume that the work upon them done by the needle in gold, required
by its minuteness that the precious metal should be not flat, but in
the shape of a real wire. By the delicate management of female fingers,
the usual narrow flat strips might have been pinched or doubled up, so
that the two edges should meet, and then rubbed between men’s harder
hands, or better still, between two pieces of smooth highly-polished
granite, would produce a golden wire of any required fineness.
Belonging to the writer is an Egyptian gold ring, which was taken from
off the finger of a mummy by a friend. The hoop is a plain, somewhat
thick wire. On each side of its small green-dyed ivory scarabee, to
keep it in its place, are wound several rounds of rather fine wire. In
Etruscan and Greek jewellery, wire is often to be found; but in all
instances it is so well shaped and so even, that no hammer could have
hardly wrought it, and it must have been fashioned by some rolling
process. All through the mediæval times the filigree work is often
very fine and delicate. Likely is it that the embroidery which we thus
read of in the descriptions of the vestments belonging whilom to our
old churches, for instance: “amictus breudatus cum auro puro”[91]--was
worked with gold wire. To go back to Anglo-Saxon times in this country,
such gold wire would seem to have been well known and employed, since
in Peterborough minster there were two golden altar-cloths: “ii.
gegylde ƿeofad sceatas;”[92] and at Ely Cathedral, among its old ritual
ornaments, were, in the reign of William Rufus: “Duo cinguli, unus
totus de auri filo, alter de pallio cujus pendentia” (the tassels)
“sunt bene ornata de auri filo.”[93]
The first idea of a wire-drawing machine dawned upon a workman’s mind
in the year 1360, at Nuremberg; and yet it was not until two hundred
years after, A.D. 1560, that the method was brought to England. One
sample of a stuff with pure wire in it may be seen, p. 220, No. 8581,
in this collection, as well as at No. 8228, p. 150.
[90] Ancient Egyptians, iii. 130.
[91] Church of our Fathers, i. 469.
[92] Mon. Anglic. t. i. p. 382.
[93] Hist. Elien. lib. ii., c. 139, p. 283, ed. Steuart.
Equally interesting to our present subject is the process of twining
long narrow strips of gold, or in its stead gilt silver, round a line
of silk or flax, and thus producing
GOLD THREAD.
Probably its origin, as far as flax and not silk is concerned, as being
the underlying substance, is much earlier than has been supposed; and
when Attalus’s name was bestowed upon a new method of interweaving gold
with wool or linen, it happened so not because that Pargamanean king
had been the first to think of twisting gold about a far less costly
material, and thus, in fact, making gold thread such as we now have,
but through his having suggested to the weaver the long-known golden
thread as a woof into the textiles from his loom. From this point of
view, we may easily believe what Pliny says: “Aurum intexere in eadem
Asia invenit Attalus rex; unde nomen Attalicis.”[94] In that same Asia
King Attalus invented the method of using a woof of gold; from this
circumstance the Attalic cloths got their name.
That, at least for working embroidery, ladies at an early Christian
period used to spin their own gold thread, would seem from a passage in
Claudian. Writing on the elevation to the consulate of the two brothers
Probinus and Olybrius, at the end of the fourth century, the poet thus
gracefully compliments their aged mother, Proba, who with her own hands
had worked the purple and gold-embroidered robes, the “togæ pictæ,” or
“trabeæ,” to be worn by her sons in their office:
Lætatur veneranda parens, et pollice docto
Jam parat auratas trabeas ...
* * * * *
Et longum tenues tractus producit in aurum
Filaque concreto cogit squalere metallo.[95]
The joyful mother plies her learned hands,
And works all o’er the trabea golden bands,
Draws the thin strips to all their length of gold,
To make the metal meaner threads enfold.
A consular figure, arrayed in the purple trabea, profusely embroidered
in gold, is shown in “The Church of our Fathers.”[96]
[94] Lib. viii. c. 47.
[95] In Probini et Olybrii Consulatum, 177-182.
[96] T. ii. p. 131.
That, in the thirteenth century our own ladies, like the Roman Proba,
themselves used to make the gold thread needed for their own embroidery
is certain; and the process which they followed is set forth as one of
the items among the other costs for that magnificent frontal wrought
A.D. 1271, for the high altar at Westminster Abbey. As that bill
itself, to be seen on the Chancellor’s Roll for the year 56 of Henry
III., affords so many curious and available particulars about the whole
subject in hand, we will give it here at full length for the sake of
coming back hereafter to its several parts: “In xij. ulnis de canabo
ad frontale magni altaris ecclesiæ (Westmonasterii) et cera ad eundem
pannum ceranda, v_s._ vi_d._ Et in vj marcis auri ad idem frontale,
liij marcas. Et in operacione dicti auri, et sessura (scissura?) et
filatura ejusdem, iiij_l._ xiij_s._ Et in ij libris serici albi et in
duobus serici crocei ad idem opus, xxxv_s._ Et in perlis albis ponderis
v marcarum, et dimidiæ ad idem opus lxx_li._ Et pro grossis perlis
ad borduram ejusdem panni, ponderis ij marcarum, xiij_li._ dimidiam
marcam. Et in una libra serici grossi, x_s._ Et in stipendio quatuor
mulierum operancium in predicto panno per iij annos et iij partes unius
anni, xxxvi_li_. Et in Dccciij^{xx} vi estmalles ponderis liii_s._ ad
borduram predictam. Et pro lxxvj asmallis grossis ponderis lxv_s._ ad
idem frontale iiij^{xx}_li._ xvj_s._ Et pro Dl gernectis positis in
predictis borduris, lxvi_s._ Et in castoniis auri ad dictas gernectas
imponendas ponderis xij_s._ vj_d._, cxij_s._ vj_d._ Et in pictura
argenti posita subtus predicta asmalla, ij marcas. Et in vj ulnis
cardonis de viridi, iij_s._”[97] As the pound-weight now is widely
different from the pound sterling, so then the mark-weight of gold
cost nine marks of money. The “operacio auri” of the above document
consisted in flattening out, by a broad-faced hammer like one such as
our gold-beaters still use, the precious metal into a sheet thin as
our thinnest paper. The “scissura” was the cutting of it afterwards
into long narrow strips, the winding of which about the filaments of
the yellow silk mentioned, is indicated by the word “filatura,” and
thus was made the gold thread of that costly frontal fraught with
seed-pearls and other some, of a much larger size, and garnets, or
rather carbuncles, and enamels, and which took four women three years
and three-quarters to work. At the back it was lined with green frieze
or baize--“cardo de viridi.”
Such was the superior quality of some gold thread that it was
known to the mediæval world under the name of the place wherein it
had been made. Thus we find a mention at one time of Cyprus gold
thread--“vestimentum embrowdatum cum aquilis de auro de Cipre;”[98]
later, of Venice gold thread--“for frenge of gold of Venys at vj_s._
the ounce;”[99] “one cope of unwaterd camlet laid with strokes of
Venis gold.”[100] What may have been their difference cannot now be
pointed out: perhaps the Cyprian thread was so much esteemed because
its somewhat broad shred of flat gold was wound about the hempen twist
beneath it so nicely as to have the smooth unbroken look of gold wire;
while the article from Venice showed everywhere the twisting of common
thread.
[97] Rot. Cancel. 56 Henrici III. Compot. Will. de Glouc.
[98] Mon. Anglic. ii. 7.
[99] Wardrobe Accounts of King Edward IV. p. 117, ed. N. H. Nicolas.
[100] Mon. Anglic. ii. 167.
As now, so of old,
SILKS HAD VARIOUS NAMES
given them, meaning either their kind of texture and dressing, their
colour and its several tints, the sort of design or pattern woven on
them, the country from which they were brought, or the use for which,
on particular occasions, they happened to be especially set apart.
All of these designations are of foreign growth; some sprang up in the
seventh and following centuries at Byzantium, and, not to be found in
classic writers, remain unknown to modern Greek scholars; some are
half Greek, half Latin, jumbled together; other some, borrowed from
the east, are so shortened, so badly and variously spelt, that their
Arabic or Persian derivation can be hardly recognized at present. Yet,
without some slight knowledge of them, we may not understand a great
deal belonging to trade, and the manners of the times glanced at by our
old writers; much less see the true meaning of many passages in our
mediæval English poetry.
Among the terms significative of the kind of web, or mode of getting up
some sorts of silk, we have
_Holosericum_, the whole texture of which, as its Greek-Latin compound
means to say, is warp and woof wholly pure silk: in a passage from
Lampridius, quoted before, p. xix., we learn that so early as the reign
of Alexander Severus, the difference between “vestes holosericæ,” and
“subsericæ,” was strongly marked, and from which we learn that
_Subsericum_ implied that such a texture was not entirely, but in
part--likely its woof--of silk.
Although the warp only happened to be of silk, while the woof was of
gold, still the tissue was often called “holosericum;” of the vestments
which Beda says[101] S. Gregory sent over here to S. Austin, one is
mentioned by a mediæval writer as “una casula oloserica purpurei
coloris aurea textura”--a chasuble all silk, of a purple colour, woven
with gold.[102] Examples of “holosericum” and “subsericum” abound in
this collection.
[101] Hist. Ecc. lib. i. c. 29.
[102] Bedæ Hist., ed. Smith, p. 691.
_Examitum_, _xamitum_, or, as it is called in our old English documents
so often, _samit_, is a word made up of two Greek ones, εξ, “six,”
and μίτοι, “threads,” the number of the strings in the warp of the
texture. That stuffs woven so thick must have been of the best, is
evident. Hence, to say of any silken tissue that it was “examitum,”
or “samit,” meant that it was six-threaded, in consequence costly and
splendid. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth
centuries, “examitum,” as the writer still names the silk, was much
used for vestments in Evesham abbey, as we gather from the “Chronicon”
of that house, published lately for the Master of the Rolls.[103]
About the same period, among the best copes, chasubles, and vestments
in St. Paul’s, London, many were made of “sametum;” so Master Radulph
de Baldock chose to call it in his visitation of that church as its
dean, A.D. 1295.[104] As we observed just now, these rich silks, which
were in all colours, with a warp so stiff, became richer still from
having a woof of golden thread, or, as we should now say, being shot
with gold. But years before, “examitum” was shortened into “samet;” for
among the nine gorgeous chasubles bequeathed to Durham cathedral by its
bishop, Hugh Pudsey, A.D. 1195, there was the “prima de rubea samete
nobiliter braudata cum laminis aureis et bizanciis et multis magnis
perlis et lapidibus pretiosis.”[105] About a hundred years afterwards
the employment of it, after its richest form, in our royal wardrobes,
has been pointed out just now, p. xxviii., &c.
In that valuable inventory, lately published, of the rich vestments
belonging to Exeter cathedral, A.D. 1277, of its numerous chasubles,
dalmatics, tunicles, besides its seventy and more copes, the better
part were made of this costly tissue here called “samitta;” for
example: “casula, tunica, dalmatica de samitta--par (vestimentorum) de
rubea samitta cum avibus duo capita habentibus;” “una capa samitta cum
leonibus deauratis.”[106] In a later document, A.D. 1327, this precious
silk is termed “samicta.”[107]
Our minstrels did not forget to array their knights and ladies in this
gay attire. When Sir Lancelot of the Lake brought back Gawain to King
Arthur:--
Launcelot and the queen were cledde
In robes of a rich wede,
Of samyte white, with silver shredde:
* * * * *
The other knights everichone,
In samyte green of heathen land,
And their kirtles, ride alone.[108]
[103] Pp. 282-88.
[104] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, new ed. pp. 316, &c.
[105] Wills and Inventories, part i. p. 3, published by the Surtees
Society.
[106] Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, and a History of the Cathedral,
by Oliver, pp. 297, 298.
[107] Ibid. 313.
[108] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, i. 360.
In his “Romaunt of the Rose,” Chaucer describes the dress of _Mirthe_
thus:--
Full yong he was, and merry of thought
And in samette, with birdes wrought,
And with gold beaten full fetously,
His bodie was clad full richely.[109]
Many of the beautifully figured damasks in this collection are
what anciently were known as “samits;” and if they really be not
“six-thread,” according to the Greek etymology of their name, it is
because, that at a very early period the stuffs so called ceased to be
woven of such a thickness.
Those strong silks of the present day with the thick thread called
“organzine” for the woof, and a slightly thinner thread known by the
technical name of “tram” for the warp, may be taken to represent the
ancient “examits.”
Just as remarkable for the lightness of its texture, as happened to be
“samit” on account of the thick substance of its web, yet quite as much
sought after, was another kind of thin glossy silken stuff “wrought
in the orient” by Paynim hands, and here called first by its Persian
name which came with it, _ciclatoun_, that is, bright and shining;
but afterwards _sicklatoun_, _siglaton_, _cyclas_. Often a woof of
golden thread lent it more glitter still; and it was used equally for
ecclesiastical vestments as for secular articles of stately dress. In
the “Inventory of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London,” A.D. 1295, there was a
cope made of cloth of gold, called “ciclatoun:”--“capa de panno aureo
qui vocatur ciclatoun.”[110]
Among the booty carried off by the English when they sacked the camp of
Saladin, in the Holy Land,
King Richard took the pavillouns
Of sendal, and of cyclatoun.
They were shape of castels;
Of gold and silver the pencels.[111]
In his “Rime of Sire Thopas,” Chaucer says of the doughty swain,
Of Brugges were his hosen broun
His robe was of ciclatoun.[112]
Though so light and thin, this cloak of “ciclatoun” was often
embroidered in silk, and had sewn on it golden ornaments; for we read
of a young maid who sat,
In a robe ryght ryall bowne
Of a red syclatowne
Be hur fader syde;
A coronell on hur hedd set,
Hur clothys with bestes and byrdes wer bete
All abowte for pryde.[113]
[109] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 26.
[110] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, new ed. p. 318.
[111] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. ii. p. 253.
[112] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iii. p. 83.
[113] Ancient English Met. Rom., ed. Ritson, t. iii. pp. 8, 9.
When in the field, over their armour, whether of mail or plate, knights
wore a long sleeveless gown slit up almost to the waist on both sides:
sometimes of “samit,” often of “cendal,” oftener still of “ciclatourn,”
because of its flowing showy texture was this garment made, and from
a new and contracted way of calling it, the name of the gown, like
the shortened one for its stuff, became known as “cyclas,” nothing
akin to the κυκλας--the full round article of dress worn by the women
of Greece and Rome. When, A.D. 1306, before setting out to Scotland,
Edward I. girded his son, the prince of Wales, with so much pomp, a
knight, in Westminster Abbey; to the three hundred sons of the nobility
whom the heir to the throne was afterward to dub knights in the same
church, the king made a most splendid gift of attire fitting for the
ceremony, and among other textiles sent them were these “clycases”
wove of gold:--“Purpura, bissus, syndones, cyclades auro textæ,” &c.
as we learn from Matthew Westminster, “Flores Historiarum,” p. 454.
How very light and thin must have been all such garments, we gather
from the quiet wit of John of Salisbury while jeering the man who
affected to perspire in the depth of winter, though clad in nothing but
his fine “cyclas:”--“dum omnia gelu constricta rigent, tenui sudat in
cylade.”[114]
Not so costly, and even somewhat thinner in texture, was a silken stuff
known as _cendal_, _cendallus_, _sandal_, _sandalin_, _cendatus_,
_syndon_, _syndonus_, as the way of writing the word altered as time
went on. When Sir Guy of Warwick was knighted,
And with him twenty good gomes
Knightes’ and barons’ sons,
Of cloth of Tars and rich cendale
Was the dobbing in each deal.[115]
[114] Polycraticus, lib. VIII. c. xii.
[115] Ellis’s Met. Rom. i. 15.
The Roll of Caerlaverock tells us that among the grand array which met
and joined Edward I. at Carlisle, A.D. 1300, on his
road to invade Scotland, there was to be seen many a rich caparison
embroidered upon cendal and samit:--
La ot meint riche guarnement
Brodé sur sendaus e samis.[116]
And Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, leading the first squadron, hoisted his
banner made of yellow cendal blazoned with a lion rampant purpre.[117]
Baner out de un cendal safrin,
O un lioun rampant purprin.
Most, if not all the other flags were made of the same cendal silk.
[116] Roll of Caerlaverock, ed. Wright, p. 1.
[117] Ibid. p. 2.
When the stalworth knight of Southampton wished to keep himself unknown
at a tournament, we thus read of him--
Sir Bevis disguised all his weed
Of black cendal and of rede,
Flourished with roses of silver bright, &c.[118]
Of the ten beautiful silken albs which Hugh Pudsey left to Durham,
two were made of samit, other two of cendal, or as the bishop calls
it, _sandal_: “Quæ dicuntur sandales.”[119] Exeter cathedral had a
red cope with a green lining of sandal: “Capa rubea cum linura viridi
sandalis;”[120] and a cape of sandaline: “Una capa de sandalin.”[121]
Chasubles, too, were, it is likely, for poorer churches, made of cendal
or sandel; Piers Ploughman speaks thus to the high dames of his day--
And ye lovely ladies
With youre long fyngres,
That ye have silk and sandal
To sowe, whan tyme is.
Chesibles for chapeleyns,
Chirches to honoure, &c.[122]
A stronger kind of cendal was wrought and called, in the Latin
inventories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, cendatus
afforciatus, and of such there was a cope at St. Paul’s;[123] while
another cope of cloth of gold was lined with it,[124] as also a
chasuble of red samit given by Bishop Henry of Sandwich.
[118] Ellis’s Met. Rom. ii. 156.
[119] Wills and Inventories, p. 3.
[120] Oliver, p. 299.
[121] Ib. p. 315.
[122] The Vision, Passus Sextus, t. i. p. 117, ed. Wright.
[123] P. 317.
[124] P. 318.
_Syndonus_ or _Sindonis_, as it would seem, was a bettermost sort of
cendal. St. Paul’s had a chasuble as well as a cope of this fabric:
“Casula de sindone purpurea, linita cendata viridi;[125] “capa de
syndono Hispanico.”[126]
[125] P. 323.
[126] Transcriber’s note: Footnote, originally number 9 on page xli,
not in original text.
_Taffeta_, it is likely, if not a thinner, was a less costly silken
stuff than cendal; which word, to this day, is used in the Spanish
language, and is defined to be a thin transparent textile of silk or
linen: “Tela de seda ó lino muy delgada y trasparente.”
As the Knights’ flags:
Ther gonfanens and ther penselles
Wer well wrought off grene sendels;
as their long cyclases which they wore over their armour were of
cendal, so too were of cendal, all blazoned with their armorial
bearings, the housing of the steeds they strode. Of cendal, also, was
the lining of the church’s vestments, and the peaceful citizen’s daily
garments. Of his “Doctour of Phisike,” Chaucer tells us:--
In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle
Lined with taffata, and with sendalle.[127]
For the weaving of cendal, among the Europeans, Sicily was once
celebrated, and a good example from others in this collection, is No.
8255, p. 163.
[127] Prologue, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 14.
_Sarcenet_, during the fifteenth century took by degrees the place of
cendal, at least here in England.
By some improvement in their weaving of cendal, the Saracens, it
is likely in the south of Spain, earned for this light web as they
made it, or sold it, a good name in our markets, and it became much
sought for here. Among other places, York Cathedral had several sets
of curtains for its high altar, “de sarcynet.”[128] At first we
distinguished this stuff by calling it, from its makers, “saracenicum.”
But while Anglicising, we shortened that appellation into the
diminutive “sarcenet;” and this word we keep to the present day, for
the thin silk which of old was known among us as “cendal.”
[128] Fabric Rolls, &c. p. 227.
_Satin_, though far from being so common as other silken textures,
was not unknown to England, in the middle ages; and of it thus speaks
Chaucer, in his “Man of Lawes Tale:”
In Surrie whilom dwelt a compagnie
Of chapmen rich, and therto sad and trewe,
That wide were senten hir spicerie,
Clothes of gold, and satins riche of hewe.[129]
[129] Poems, ii. 137.
But as Syria herself never grew the more precious kinds of spices,
so we do not believe that she was the first to hit upon the happy
mechanical expedient of getting up a silken texture so as to take, by
the united action at the same moment of strong heat and heavy pressure
upon its face, that lustrous metallic shine which we have in satin. No.
702, p. 8, is a good example of late Chinese manufacture, a process
which this country is only now beginning to understand and successfully
employ.
When satin first appeared in trade, it was all about the shores of
the Mediterranean called “aceytuni.” This term slipped through early
Italian lips into “zetani;” coming westward this, in its turn, dropped
its “i,” and smoothed itself into “satin,” a word for this silk among
us English as well as our neighbours in France, while in Italy it
now goes by the name of “raso,” and the Spaniards keep up its first
designation in their dictionary.
In the earlier inventories of church vestments, no mention can be found
of satin; and it is only among the various rich bequests (ed. Oliver)
made to his cathedral at Exeter by Bishop Grandison, between A.D.
1327-69 that this fine silk is spoken of; though later, and especially
in the royal wardrobe accompts (ed. Nicolas), it is perpetually
specified. Hence we may fairly assume that till the beginning of the
fourteenth century satin was unknown in England; afterwards it met
much favour. Flags were made of it. On board the stately ship in which
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign of Henry VI., sailed from
England to France, there were flying “three penons of satten,” besides
“sixteen standards of worsted entailed with a bear and a chain,” and
a great streamer of forty yards in length and eight yards in breadth,
with a great bear and griffin holding a ragged staff poudred full of
ragged staffs.[130] Like other silken textiles, satin seems to have
been, in some few instances, interwoven with flat gold thread, so as to
make it a tissue: for example, Lincoln had of the gift of one of its
bishops, eighteen copes of red tinsel sattin with orphreys of gold.[131]
Though not often, yet sometimes do we read of a silken stuff called,
_cadas_, _carda_, _carduus_, and used for inferior purposes. The
outside silk on the cocoon is of a poor quality compared with the
inner filaments, from which it is kept quite apart in reeling, and set
aside for other uses; this is _cadas_ which the Promptorium Parvulorum
defines, however, as “Bombicinium,” or silk. St. Paul’s, A.D. 1295,
had “pannus rubeus diasperatus de Laret lineatus de carda Inda;”[132]
and Exeter possessed another cloth for the purpose: “Cum carduis
viridibus.”[133] More frequently, instead of being spun it served as
wadding in dress; on the barons at the siege of Caerlaverock, might be
seen many a rich gambeson garnished with silk, cadas, and cotton:--
Meint riche gamboison guarni
De soi, de cadas e coton.[134]
One of the Lenten veils at St. Paul’s, in the chapel of St. Faith, was
of blue and yellow carde: “velum quadragesimale de carde croceo et
indico.”[135] The quantity of card purchased for the royal wardrobe,
in the twenty-eighth year of Edward I.’s reign, A.D. 1299, is set forth
in the Liber Quotidianus, &c.[136]
Chasubles made in the thirteenth century, and belonging to Hereford
Cathedral, were lined with carda: “Unam casulam de rubeo sindone linita
de carda crocea--tertiam casulam de serico de India linita de carda
viridi,” &c.[137]
[130] Baronage of England, Dugdale, i. 246.
[131] Mon. Anglic. viii. 1282.
[132] P. 335.
[133] Ed. Oliver, p. 317.
[134] Roll. p. 30.
[135] St. Paul’s ed. Dugdale, p. 336.
[136] P. 354.
[137] Roll of the Household Expenses of Swinford, Bishop of Hereford,
t. ii. p. xxxvi. ed. Web. for the Camden Society.
_Camoca_, _camoka_, _camak_, _camora_ (a misspelling), as the name is
differently written, was a textile of which in England we hear nothing
before the latter end of the fourteenth century. No sooner did it make
its appearance than this camoca rose into great repute; the Church used
it for her liturgical vestments, and royalty employed it for dress on
grand occasions as well as in adorning palaces, especially in draping
beds of state. In the year 1385, besides some smaller articles, the
royal chapel in Windsor Castle had a whole set of vestments and other
ornaments for the altar, of white camoca: “Unum vestimentum album de
camoca,” &c.... “Album de camoca, cum casula.”[138]... “Duo quissini
rubei de camoca.”[139] To his cathedral of Durham, the learned Richard
Bury left a beautifully embroidered whole set of vestments, A.D. 1345:
“Unum vestimentum de alma camica (_sic_) subtiliter brudata,” &c.[140]
Our princes must have arrayed themselves, on grand occasions, in
camoca; for thus Herod, in one of the Coventry Misteries--the Adoration
of the Magi--is made to boast of himself: “In kyrtyl of cammaka kynge
am I cladde.”[141] But it was in draping its state-beds that our
ancient royalty showed its affection for camoca. To his confessor,
Edward the Black Prince bequeaths “a large bed of red camora (_sic_)
with our arms embroidered at each corner,”[142] and the prince’s mother
leaves to another son of hers, John Holland, “a bed of red camak.”[143]
Our nobles, too, had the same likings, for Edward Lord Despencer, A.D.
1375, wills to his wife, “my great bed of blue camaka, with griffins,
also another bed of camaka, striped with white and black.”[144] What
may have been the real texture of this stuff, thought so magnificent,
we do not positively know, but hazarding a guess, we think it to have
been woven of fine camel’s hair and silk, and of Asiatic workmanship.
From this mixed web pass we now to another, one even more precious,
that is the _Cloth of Tars_, which we presume to have, in a manner,
been the forerunner of the now so celebrated cashmere, and along with
silk made of the downy wool of a family of goats reared in several
parts of Asia, but especially in Tibet, as we shall try to show a
little further on.
[138] Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, new edition, p. viii. 1363, _a_.
[139] Ib. p. 1366, _a_.
[140] Wills and Inventories, t. i. p. 25, published by the Surtees
Society.
[141] Ed. Halliwell, p. 163.
[142] Nicolas’s Testamenta Vetusta, t. i. p. 12.
[143] Ib. p. 14.
[144] Ib. p. 99.
_Velvet_ is a silken textile, the history of which has still to be
written. Of the country whence it first came, or the people who were
the earliest to hit upon the happy way of weaving it, we know nothing.
The oldest piece we remember to have ever seen was in the beautiful
crimson cope embroidered by English hands in the fourteenth century,
now kept at the college of Mount St. Mary, Chesterfield, and exhibited
here in the ever memorable year ’62.
Our belief is, that to central Asia--perhaps China,--we are indebted
for velvet as well as satin, and we think the earliest places in Europe
to weave it was, first the south of Spain, and then Lucca.
In the earlier of those oldest inventories we have of church vestments,
that of Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1277, velvet is not spoken of; but in
St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, there is some notice of velvet,[145]
along with its kindred web, “fustian,” for chasubles.[146] At Exeter,
in the year 1327, velvet--and it was crimson--is for the first time
there mentioned, but as in two pieces not made up, of which some yards
had been then sold for vestment-making.[147] From the middle of the
fourteenth century, velvet--mostly crimson--is of common occurrence.
The name itself of velvet, “velluto,” seems to point out Italy as the
market through which we got it from the East, for the word in Italian
indicates something which is hairy or shaggy, like an animal’s skin.
Fustian was known at the end of the thirteenth century. St. Paul’s
Cathedral had: “Una casula alba de fustian.”[148] But in an English
sermon preached at the beginning of this thirteenth century, great
blame is found with the priest who had his chasuble made of middling
fustian: “þe meshakele of medeme fustian.”[149] As then wove, fustian,
about which we have to say more, had a short nap on it, and one of
the domestic uses to which, during the middle ages, it had been put,
was for bed clothes, as thick undersheets. Lady Bergavenny bequeaths
A.D. 1434, “A bed of gold of swans, two pair sheets of Raynes (fine
linen, made at Rheims), a pair of fustians, six pair of other sheets,
&c.”[150] That this stuff may have hinted to the Italians the way of
weaving silk in the same manner, and so of producing velvet, is not
unlikely. Had the Egyptian Arabs been the first to push forward their
own discovery of working cotton into fustian, and changing cotton
for silk, and so brought forth velvet, it is probable some one would
have told us; as it is, we yield the merit to Asia--may be China.
Other nations took up this manufacture, and the weaving of velvet
was wonderfully improved. It became diapered, and upon a ground of
silk or of gold, the pattern came out in a bold manner, with a raised
pile; and, at last, that difficult and most beautiful of all manners
of diapering, or making the pattern to show itself in a double pile,
one pile higher than the other and of the same tint, now, as formerly,
known as velvet upon velvet, was brought to its highest perfection:
and velvets in this fine style were wrought in greatest excellence all
over Italy and in Spain and Flanders. Our old inventories often specify
these differences in the making of the web. York cathedral had “four
copes of crimson velvet plaine, with orphreys of clothe of goulde, for
standers;”[151] and besides, “a greene cushion of raised velvet,”[152]
possessed “a cope of purshed velvet (redd)”[153] “purshed” meaning the
velvet raised in a net-work pattern.
[145] P. 318.
[146] P. 323.
[147] Ed. Oliver, p. 317.
[148] Ed. Dugdale, p. 323.
[149] Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 129.
[150] Test. Vet. i. 227.
[151] Fabric Rolls, p. 309.
[152] Ib. p. 311.
[153] Ib. p. 310.
_Diaper_ was a silken fabric, held everywhere in high estimation during
many hundred years, both abroad and here in England. This we know from
documents beginning with the eleventh century. What was its distinctive
characteristic, and whence it drew its name, we have not been hitherto
told, with anything like certainty. Several eminent men have discussed
these points, but while hazarding his own conjecture, each of these
writers has differed from the others. Till a better may be found, we
submit our own solution.
The silk weavers of Asia had, of old, found out the way so to gear
their looms, and dress their silk, or their threads of gold, that
with a warp and woof, both precisely of the same tone of colour they
could give to the web an elegant design, each part of which being
managed in the weaving, as either to hide or to catch the light and
shine, looked to be separated from or stand well up above the seeming
dusky ground below it: at times the design was dulled, and the ground
made glossy. To indicate such a one-coloured, yet patterned silk, the
Byzantine Greeks of the early middle ages bethought themselves of the
term διασπρον, diaspron, a word of their own coinage, and drawn from
the old Greek verb, διασπαω, I separate, but meant by them to signify
“what distinguishes or separates itself from things about it,” as every
pattern must do on a one-coloured silk. Along with this textile, the
Latins took the name for it from the Greeks, and called it “diasper,”
which we English have moulded into “diaper.” In the year 1066, the
Empress Agnes gave to Monte Cassino a diaper-chasuble of cloth of gold,
“optulit planetam diasperam totam undique auro contextam.”[154]
How a golden web may be so wrought is exemplified, amid several other
specimens in this collection, by the one under No. 1270, p. 38, done
most likely by an English hand. At York Minster, in the year 1862,
was opened a tomb, very likely that of some archbishop; and there was
found, along with other textiles in silk, a few shreds of what had been
a chasuble made of cloth of gold diapered all over with little crosses,
as we ourselves beheld. It would seem, indeed, that cloth of gold was
at most times diapered with a pattern, at least in Chaucer’s days,
since he thus points to it on the housing of his king’s horse:--
-- -- trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele.[155]
[154] Chron. S. Monast. Cassin. Lib. iii. cap. 73, p. 450, ed.
Muratori.
[155] Knight’s Tale, l. 2159-60.
Our oldest Church inventories make frequent mention of such diapered
silks for vestments. In 1277, Exeter Cathedral had: “una (capa) de alba
diapra cum noviluniis,”[156]--a cope of white diaper with half moons.
It was the gift of Bishop Bartholomew, A.D. 1161. Bishop Brewer, A.D.
1224, bestowed upon the Church a small pall of red diaper: “parva palla
de rubea diapra;” along with a chasuble, dalmatic and tunicle of white
diaper: “casula, &c. de alba diapra.”[157] Among its vast collection of
liturgical garments, A.D. 1295, old St. Paul’s had a large number made
of diaper, which was almost always white. Sometimes the pattern of the
diapering is noticed; for instance, a chasuble of white diaper, with
coupled parrots in places, among branches: “casula de albo diaspro cum
citaciis combinatis per loca in ramusculis.”[158] Again: “tunica et
dalmatica de albo diaspro cum citacis viridibus in ramunculis,”[159]
where we see the white diaper having the parrots done in green.
Probably the most remarkable and elaborate specimen of diaper-weaving
on record, is the one that Edmund, Earl of Cornwall gave, made up in
“a cope of a certain diaper of Antioch colour, covered with trees and
diapered birds, of which the heads, breasts, and feet, as well as the
flowers on the trees, are woven in gold thread: “Capa Domini Edmundi
Comitis Cornubiæ de quodam diaspero Antioch coloris, tegulata cum
arboribus et avibus diasperatis quarum capita, pectora et pedes, et
flores in medio arborum sunt de aurifilo contextæ.[160]
[156] P. 297.
[157] P. 298.
[158] St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 323.
[159] Ib. p. 322.
[160] Ib. p. 318.
By degrees the word “diaper” became widened in its meaning. Not only
all sorts of textile, whether of silk, of linen, or of worsted, but the
walls of a room were said to be diapered when the self-same ornament
was repeated and sprinkled well over it. Thus, to soothe his daughter’s
sorrows, the King of Hungary promises her a chair or carriage, that--
Shal be coverd wyth velvette reede
And clothes of fyne golde al about your heede,
With damaske whyte and azure blewe
Well dyaperd with lylles newe.[161]
Nay, the bow for arrows held by SWEET LOOKING is, in Chaucer’s “Romaunt
of the Rose,” described as--
painted well, and thwitten
And over all diapred and written, &c.[162]
Even now, our fine table linen we call “diaper,” because it is figured
with flowers and fruits. Sometimes, with us, silks diapered were
called “sygury:” una capa de sateyn sygury, cum ymagine B. M. V. in
capucio.[163]
[161] Squire of Low Degree, ed. Ritson.
[162] “Romaunt of the Rose,” l. 900.
[163] Fabric Rolls of York Cathedral, p. 230.
In their etymology of diaper, modern writers try to draw the word from
Yprès, or d’Ypriès, because that town in Belgium was once celebrated,
not for silken stuffs, but for linen. Between the city and the name
of “diaper” a kinship even of the very furthest sort cannot be fairly
set up. From the citations out of the Chronicle of Monte Cassino we
learn, that at the beginning of the eleventh century, the term in
use there for a certain silken textile, brought thither from the
east, was “diasperon.” We find, too, how that great monastery was in
continual communication with Constantinople, whither she was in the
habit of sending her monks to buy art-works of price, and bring back
with them workmen, for the purpose of embellishing her Church and its
altars. Getting from South Italy to England, and our own records, we
discover this same Greece-born phrase, diaspron, diasper, given to
precious silks used as vestments during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, in London and Exeter. By the latter end of the fourteenth
century--Chaucer’s time--the terms “diasper,” and “diasperatus,” among
us, had slidden into “diaper,” “diaperatus,” Englished, “diapered.”
Now, in this same fourteenth century, do we, for the first time, meet
a mention of Yprès; and not alone, but along with Ghent, as famous for
linen, if by that word we understand cloth; and even then our own Bath
seems to have stood above those Belgian cities in their textiles. Among
Chaucer’s pilgrims--
A good wif was ther of beside Bathe
* * * * *
Of cloth making she hadde swiche an haunt
She passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.[164]
[164] The Prologue, 447.
Neither in this, nor any other subsequent notice of Yprès weaving,
is there anything which can be twisted into a warrant for thinking
the distinctive mark to have been the first employment of pattern on
its webs, or even its peculiar superiority in such a style of work.
The important fact which we have just now verified that several ages
had gone by between the period when, in Greece, in South Italy, and
England, the common name for a certain kind of precious silk was
“diaspron,” “diasper,” “diaper,” and the day when, for the first time,
Yprès, not alone, but in company with other neighbouring cities,
started up into notice for its linens, quite overthrows the etymology
thought of now-a-days for the word “diaper,” and hastens us to the
conclusion that this almost ante-mediæval term came to us from Greece,
and not from Flanders.
Of the several oldest pieces in this collection, there are not a
few which those good men who wrote out the valuable inventories of
Exeter and St. Paul’s, London, would have jotted down as “diasper,” or
“diaper.” The shreds of creamy, white silk, number 1239, p. 26, fully
illustrate the meaning of this term, and will repay minute inspection.
More ancient still are other terms which we are about to notice,
such as “chrysoclavus,” “stauracin,” “polystaurium,” “gammadion,” or
“gammadiæ,” “de quadruplo,” “de octoplo,” and “de fundato.” First,
textiles of silk and gold are, over and over again, enumerated as
then commonly known under such names, in the so-called Anastasius
Bibliothecarius, Liber Pontificalis seu de Gestis Romanorum Pontificum,
the good edition of which, in three volumes, edited by Vignolius, ought
to be in the hands of every student of early Christian art-work, and in
particular of textiles and embroidery.
The _Chrysoclavus_ or golden nail-head, was a remnant, which lingered a
long time among the ornaments embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments,
and robes for royal wear, of that once so coveted “latus clavus,” or
broad nail-head-like purple round patch worn upon the outward garment
of the old Roman dignitaries, as we learn from Horace, while laughing
at the silly official whom he saw at Fondi--
Insani ridentes præmia scribæ,
Prætextam et latum clavum.[165]
[165] Serm. lib. i. satir. v.
In the Court of Byzantium this device of dignity was elevated, from
being purple on white, into gold upon purple. Hence came it that
all rich purple silks, woven or embroidered, with the “clavus” done
in gold, became known from their pattern as gold nail-headed, or
chrysoclavus, a half Greek half Latin word, employed as often as
an adjective as a substantive; and silken textiles of Tyrian dye,
sprinkled all over with large round spots, were once in great demand.
Shortly after, A.D. 795, Pope Leo, among his several other gifts to
the churches at Rome, bestowed a great number of altar frontals made
of this purple and gold fabric, as we are told by Anastasius. To
the altar of St. Paul’s the pontiff sent “vestem super altare albam
chrysoclavam;”[166] but to another “vestem chrysoclavam ex blattin
Byzanteo.”[167] Sometimes these “clavi” were made so large that upon
their golden ground an event in the life of a saint, or the saint’s
head, was embroidered, and then the whole piece was called “sigillata,”
or _sealed_.
_Stauracin_, or “stauracinus,” taking its name from σταυρος, the Greek
for “cross,” was a silken stuff figured with small plain crosses, and
therefore from their number sometimes further distinguished by the word
signifying that meaning in Greek,
_Polystauron._ Of such a textile St. Leo gave presents to churches, as
we learn from Anastasius, lib. Pont. ii. 265.
How much silken textiles figured with the cross were in request for
church adornment we learn from Fortunatus, who, about the year 565,
thus describes the hangings of an oratory in a church at Tours--
Pallia nam meruit, sunt quæ cruce textile pulchra,
* * * * *
Serica qua niveis sunt agnava blattea telis,
Et textis crucibus magnificatur opus.[168]
Very often the crosses woven on these fabrics were of the simplest
shape; oftener were they designed after an elaborate type with a
symbolic meaning about it that afforded an especial name to the stuffs
upon which they were figured, the first of which that claims our notice
is denominated
[166] Lib. Pon. ii. 257.
[167] Ibid. 258.
[168] Poematum, Liber II. iv.
_Gammadion_, or _Gammadiæ_, a word applied as often to the pattern upon
silks as the figures wrought upon gold and silver for use in churches,
we so repeatedly come upon in the “Liber Pontificalis.”
In the Greek alphabet the capital letter of gamma takes the shape of an
exact right angle thus, Γ. Being so, many writers have beheld in it an
emblem of our Lord as our corner-stone. Following this idea artists at
a very early period struck out a way of forming the cross after several
shapes by various combinations with it of this letter Γ. Four of these
gammas put so
┘└
┐┌
fall into the shape of the so-called Greek cross; and in this form it
was woven upon the textiles denominated “stauracinæ;” or patterned
with a cross. Being one of the four same-shaped elements of the cross’s
figure, the part was significant of the whole. Being, too, the emblem
of our corner-stone--our Lord, the gamma, or Γ, was shown at one edge
of the tunic on most of the apostles in ancient mosaics; wherein
sometimes we find, in place of the gamma, our present capital Η for the
aspirate, with which for their symbolic purpose the early Christians
chose to utter, if not, write the sacred name. This Η is, however,
only another combination of the four gammas in the cross. Whatsoever,
therefore, whether of silver or of silk, was found to be marked in
these or other ways of putting the gammas together, or with only a
single one, such articles were called “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ;”
but as often the so-formed cross was designated as “gammaed,” or
“gammadia.” St. Leo gave to the Church of S. Susanna, at Rome, an
altar-frontal, upon which there were four of such crosses made of
purple silk speckled with gold spots; “vestem de blatthin habentem ...
tabulas chrysoclavas iiii cum gemmis ornatas, atque gammadias in ipsa
veste chrysoclavas iiii.”[169]
Ancient ingenuity for throwing its favourite gamma into other
combinations, and thus bringing forth other pretty but graceful
patterns to be wrought on all sorts of ecclesiastical appliances,
did not stop here. In the “Liber Pontificalis” of Anastasius, we
meet not unfrequently with such passages as these: “Cortinas miræ
magnitudinis de palliis stauracin seu quadrapolis;”[170] “vela ...
ex palliis quadrapolis seu stauracin;”[171] “vela de octapolo.”[172]
The explanation of these two terms, “de quadrapolo,” “de octapolo,”
has hitherto baffled all commentators of the text through their
forgetfulness of comparing together the things themselves and the
written description of them. In these texts there is evidently meant a
strong contrast between a something amounting to four, and to eight,
in or upon these textiles. It cannot be to say that one fabric was
woven with four, the other with eight threads: had that been so meant,
then the fact would have been announced by words constructed like
“examitus,” p. xxxvii. As the contrast is not in the texture, it must
then be searched for in the pattern of these two stuffs. Sure enough,
there we find it, as “de quadrapolis” and “stauracin” were, as we
see above, interchangeable terms; the first, like the second sort of
textile, was figured with crosses.
Given at the end of Du Cange’s “Glossary” is an engraving of a work
of Greek art, plate IX. Here St. John Chrysostom stands between St.
Nicholas and St. Basil. All three are arrayed in their liturgical
garments, which being figured with crosses, are of the textile called
of old “stauracin;” but a marked difference in the way in which the
crosses are put is discernible. As a metropolitan St. John wears the
saccos upon which the crosses are arranged thus
[Illustration]
St. Nicholas, and St. Basil have chasubles which, though worked all
over with crosses, made, as on St. John’s saccos, with gammas, are
surrounded with other gammas joined so as to edge in the crosses, thus
[Illustration]
As four gammas only are necessary to form all the crosses upon St.
John’s vestment, therein we behold the textile called by Anastasius,
“Stauracin de quadruplo,” or the stuff figured with a cross of four
(gammas); while as eight of these Greek letters are required for the
pattern on the chasubles, we have in them an example of the other
“stauracin de octaplo,” or “octapulo,” a fabric with a pattern composed
of eight gammas. But of all the shapes fashioned out of the repetition
of the one same element, the Greek letter Γ, by far the most ancient,
universal, and mystic, is that curious one particularized by many as the
[169] Lib. Pontif. ii. 243.
[170] Ib. ii. 196.
[171] Ib. ii. 198.
[172] Ib. ii. 209.
_Gammadion_, or _Filfot_, a name by which, at one time in England, it
was generally known. Several pieces in this collection exhibit on them
some modification of it, as Nos. 1261, p. 34; 1325, p. 60; 7052, p.
127; 8279A, p. 174; 8305, p. 185; 8635, p. 242; 8652, p. 249. Its figure
is made out of the usual four gammas, so that they should fall together
thus 卍: of its high antiquity and symbolism, we speak further on,
section VII.
Silks figured with a cross, some made with four, some with eight
Greek gammas, remained in Eastern Church use all through the middle
ages, as we may gather from several monuments of that period.
Besides a good many other books, Gori’s fine one, “Thesaurus Veterum
Diptychorum” affords us several instances.[173] The name also remained
to such textiles as we know from the Greek canonist Balsamon, who,
writing about the end of the twelfth century on episcopal garments,
calls the tunic, στιχάριον διὰ γαμμάτων or (with a pattern) of
gammas--gammadion. How to this day the cross made by four gammas is
woven on Greek vestments, may be observed in the plates we have given
in “Hierurgia.”[174] Two late specimens of “stauracin” are in this
collection under Nos. 7039, p. 123; 7048, p. 126; and 8250A, p. 161.
[173] T. iii. p. 84.
[174] Pp. 445, 448, second edition.
Of silks patterned with the Greek cross or “stauracin,” there are
several examples in this collection; and though not of the remotest
period, are interesting; the one No. 8234, p. 154, wrought in Sicily
as it is probable by the Greeks brought as prisoners from the Morea,
in the twelfth century, is not without some value. In the Chapter
Library at Durham may be seen a valuable sample of Byzantine stauracin
“colours purple and crimson; the only prominent ornament a cross--often
repeated, even upon the small portion which remains.”[175] Those who
have seen in St. Peter’s sacristy at Rome, that beautiful light-blue
dalmatic said to have been worn by Charlemagne when he sang the Gospel
at high mass, at the altar, vested as a deacon, the day he was crowned
emperor in that church by Pope Leo III. will remember how plentifully
it is sprinkled with crosses between its exquisite embroideries, so
as to make the vestment a real “stauracin.” It has been well given by
Sulpiz Boisserée in his “Kaiser Dalmatika in der St. Peterskirche;” but
far better by Dr. Bock in his splendid work on the Coronation Robes of
the German emperors.
Silks, from the pattern woven on them called _de fundato_, are
frequently spoken of by Anastasius. From the texts themselves of that
writer, and passages in other authors of his time, it would seem that
the silks themselves were dyed of the richest purple, and figured
with gold in the pattern of netting. As one of the meanings for the
substantive “funda” is a fisherman’s net, rich textiles so figured in
gold, were denominated from such a pattern “de fundato” or netted. To
St. Peter’s Church at Rome the pontiff, Leo III. gave “cortinam majorem
Alexandrinam holosericam habentem in medio adjunctum fundatum, et in
circuitu ornatum de fundato;”[176] and for the Church of St. Paul’s,
Leo provided “vela holoserica majora sigillata habentia periclysin et
crucem tam de blattin seu de fundato.”[177] From Fortunatus we gather
that those costly purple-dyed silks called “blatta,” were always
interwoven with gold:--
Serica purpureis sternuntur vellera velis,
Inlita blatta toris, aurumque intermicat ostro.[178]
This net-pattern lingered long, and, no doubt, we find it, under a new
name, “laqueatus”--meshed--as identified upon a cope made of baudekin,
at St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295: “Capa de baudekino cum pineis
(fir-apples) in campis laqueatis.”[179] Modifications of this very old
pattern may be seen in this catalogue (pp. 35, 36, 154).
[175] Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.
[176] Lib. Pontif. ii. 282.
[177] Ibid. 240.
[178] De Vita S. Martini lib. ii.
[179] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.
The Latin term “de fundato,” for this net-pattern, so unusual, has for
many been quite a puzzle. Here, too, art-works are our best help to
properly understand the meaning of the word. The person of Constantine
the Great, given by Gori,[180] as well as that of a much later
personage, shown us by Du Cange, at the end of his “Glossarium,”[181]
shows the front of the imperial tunic, which was purple, to have been
figured in gold with a netting-pattern, marked with pearls. Gori,
moreover, presents us with a bishop whose chasuble is of the same
design.[182] Further still, Paciaudi, in his “De Cultu S. Johannis
Baptistæ,”[183] furnishes a better illustration, if possible, by an
engraving of a diptych first published by him. Here St. Jacobus, or
James, is arrayed in chasuble and pall of netting-patterned silk; and
of the same-figured stuff is much of the trimming or ornamentation on
the robes of the B. V. Mary, but on those more especially worn by the
archangels, St. Michael and Gabriel. In the diapered pattern on some
of the cloth of gold found lately in the grave of some archbishop of
York, buried there about the end of the thirteenth century, is the same
netting discernible.
[180] T. iii. p. xx.
[181] T. viii. plate 5.
[182] Ib. p. 84.
[183] P. 389.
_Striped_ or _barred_ silks--stragulatæ--got their especial name
for such a simple pattern, and at one time were in much request.
Frequent mention is made of them in the Exeter Inventories, of which
the one taken, A.D. 1277, specifies, “Due palle de baudekyno--una
stragulata;”[184] and A.D. 1327, the same cathedral had, “Unum
filatorium de serico bonum stragulatum cum serico diversi
coloris,”[185] a veil or scarf for the sub-deacon, made of silk striped
in different colours. The illuminations on the MS. among the Harley
collection at the British Museum, of the deposition of Richard II.
published by the Society of Antiquaries, afford us instances of this
textile. The young nobleman to the right sitting on the ground at the
archbishop’s sermon, is entirely, hood and all, arrayed in this striped
silk,[186] and at the altar, where Northumberland is swearing on the
Eucharist, the priest who is saying mass, wears a chasuble of the same
stuff.[187] Old St. Paul’s had copes like it: “Capæ factæ de uno panno
serico veteri pro parte albi coloris, pro parte viridi;”[188] besides
which, it had offertory-veils of the same pattern, one of them with its
stripes paly red and green:--“Unum offertorium stragulatum, de rubeo et
viridi;” and two others with their stripes bendy-wise: “Duo offertoria
bendata de opere Saraceno.”[189] York Cathedral also had two red palls
paled with green and light blue: “Duæ pallæ rubiæ palyd cum viridi et
blodio,”[190] so admirably edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. Jas.
Raine, jun. Under this kind of patterned silks must be put one the name
for which has hitherto not been explained by our English antiquaries.
At the end of the twelfth century there was brought to England, from
Greece, a sort of precious silk named there _Imperial_.
Ralph, dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, London, tells us, that William
de Magna Villa, on coming home from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
made presents to several churches, A.D. 1178, of cloths which at
Constantinople were called imperial: “Pannos quos Constantinopolis
civitas vocat Imperiales, &c.”[191] Relating the story of John’s
apparition, A.D. 1226, Roger Wendover, and after him Matt. Paris,
tells us that the King stood forth dressed in royal robes made of
the stuff they call Imperial: “Astitit rex in vestibus regalibus de
panno scilicet quem imperialem appellant.”[192] In the Inventory of
St. Paul’s, London, drawn up A.D. 1295, four tunicles, vestments for
subdeacons and lower ministers about the altar, are mentioned as made
of this imperial. No colour is specified, except in the one instance
of the silk being marbled; and the patterns are noticed as of red and
green, with lions wove in gold.[193] It seems not to have been thought
good enough for the more important vestments, such as chasubles and
copes. Were it not spoken of thus by Wendover and Paris, as well as by
a dean of St. Paul’s, and mentioned once as used in a few liturgical
garments for that cathedral, we had never heard a word about such
a textile anywhere in England. Our belief is that it got its name
neither from its colour--supposed royal purple--nor its costliness,
but through quite another reason: woven at a workshop kept up by the
Byzantine emperors, just like the Gobelins is to-day in Paris by the
French, and bearing about it some small, though noticeable mark, it
took the designation of “Imperial.” That it was partly wrought with
gold, we know; but that its tint was always some shade of the imperial
purple--hence its appellation--is a purely gratuitous assumption.
Moreover, as Saracenic princes in general had wrought in their own
palaces, at the tiraz there, those silks wanted by themselves, their
friends, and officers, and caused them to be marked with some adopted
word or sentence; so, too, the rulers of Byzantium followed, it is
likely the same usage, and put some royal device or word, or name in
Greek upon theirs, and hence such textiles took the name of Imperial.
In France, this textile was in use as late as the second half of the
fifteenth century, but looked upon as old. Here, at York, as late as
the early part of the sixteenth, one of its deans bestowed on that
cathedral “two (blue) copes of clothe imperialle.”[194]
[184] Ed. Oliver, p. 298.
[185] Ib. p. 312.
[186] Plate v. p. 53.
[187] Plate xii. p. 141.
[188] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.
[189] Ib.
[190] York Fabric Rolls, p. 230.
[191] Hist. Anglic. Script. X. t. i. p. 602, ed. Twysden.
[192] Rog. de Wendover, Chronica, t. iv. p. 127, ed. Coxe.
[193] P. 322.
[194] Fabric Rolls, p. 310.
BAUDEKIN
Was a costly stuff much employed and often spoken of in our literature
during many years of the mediæval period.
Ciclatoun, as we have elsewhere remarked, was the usual term during
centuries throughout Western Europe, by which those showy golden
textiles were called. When, however, Bagdad, or Baldak, standing where
once stood the Babylon of old, took and held for no short length of
time the lead all over Asia in weaving, every kind of fine silks and
in especial golden stuffs shot, as now, in different colours, cloths
of gold so tinted became every where known more particularly among us
English as “baldakin,” “baudekin,” or “baudkyn,” or silks from Baldak.
At last the earlier term “ciclatoun” dropped quite out of use. With
this before him the reader will hereafter more readily understand
several otherwise puzzling passages in many of our old writers in
poetry and prose, as well as in the inventories of royal furniture and
church vestments.
Our kings and our nobility affected much this rich stuff for the
garments worn by them on high occasions. When, A.D. 1247, girding in
Westminster Abbey William de Valence his uterine brother, a knight, our
Henry III. had on a robe of baudekin, or cloth-of-gold, likely shot
with crimson silk: “Dominus Rex veste deaurata facta de preciosissimo
Baldekino et coronula aurea, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur redimitus,
sedens gloriose in solio regio, fratrem suum uterinum, baltheo
militari gaudenter insignivit.”[195] In the year 1259 the master of
Sherborn Hospital in the north, bequeathed to that house a cope made
of cloth-of-gold, or “baudekin:”--“Capam de panno ad aurum scilicet
Baudekin cum vestimento plenario de panno Yspaniæ ad aurum.”[196]
But these Bagdad or Baldak silks, with a weft of gold known among us
as “baudekins” were often wove very large in size, and applied here
in England to especial ritual purposes. As a thanks-offering after a
safe return home from a journey, they were brought and given to the
altar; at all the solemn burials of our kings and queens, and other
great ones, each of the many mourners, when offertory time came,
went to the illuminated hearse,--one is figured in the “Church of
Our Fathers,”[197]--and strewed a baudekin of costly texture over
the coffin. Artists or others who wish to know the ceremonial for
that occasion, will find it set forth in the descriptions of many of
our mediæval funerals. At the obsequies of Henry VII. in Westminster
Abbey:--“Twoe herauds came to the Duke of Buck. and to the Earles and
conveyed them into the Revestrie where they did receive certen Palles
which everie of them did bringe solemply betwene theire hands and
comminge in order one before another as they were in degree unto the
said herse, thay kissed theire said palles and delivered them unto the
said heraudes which laide them uppon the kyngs corps, in this manner:
the palle which was first offered by the Duke of Buck. was laid on
length on the said corps, and the residewe were laid acrosse, as thick
as they might lie.”[198] In the same church at the burial of Anne of
Cleves, A.D. 1557, a like ceremonial of carrying cloth-of-gold palls to
the hearse was followed.[199]
[195] Matt. Paris, p. 249.
[196] Wills, &c. of the Northern Counties of England, Surtees Society,
p. 6.
[197] Tom. ii. p. 501.
[198] Lelandi Collectanea, t. iv. p. 308.
[199] Excerpta Historica, p. 312.
Among the many rich textiles belonging to St. Paul’s, London, A.D.
1295, are mentioned: “Baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus
et hominibus equitantibus infra, de funere comitissæ Britanniæ. Item
baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus et Sampson fortis
infra arcus, de dono Domini Henrici Regis. Duo baudekyni rubei cum
sagittarijs infra rotas, de dono E. regis et reginæ venientium de
Wallia, Unus Baudekynus rubei campi cum griffonibus, pro anima Alianoræ
reginæ junioris,”[200] &c. At times these rich stuffs were cut up into
chasubles: “Casula de baudekyno de opere Saracenico,”[201] as was the
cloth-of-gold dress worn by one of our princesses at her betrothal:
“Unam vestimentum rubeum de panno adaurato diversis avibus poudratum,
in quo domina principessa fuit desponsata.”[202] The word “baudekin”
itself became at last narrowed in its meaning. So warm, so mellow, so
fast were all the tones of crimson which the dyers of Bagdad knew how
to give their silks, that without a thread of gold in them, the mere
glowing tints of those plain crimson silken webs from Bagdad won for
themselves the name of baudekins. Furthermore, when they quite ceased
to be partly woven in gold, and from their consequent lower price and
cheapness got into use for cloths of estate over royal thrones, on
common occasions, the shortened form of such a regal emblem, the canopy
hung over the high altar of a church, acquired, and yet keeps its
appellation, at least in Italy, of “baldachino.”
[200] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, pp. 328-9.
[201] Ibid. p. 331.
[202] Inventory of the Chapel, Windsor Castle, Mon. Ang. viii. 1363.
How very full in size, how costly in materials and embroidery, must
have sometimes been the cloth of estate spread overhead and behind the
throne of our kings, may be gathered from the “Privy Purse Expenses
of Henry the Seventh,” wherein this item comes: “To Antony Corsse
for a cloth of an estate conteyning 47½ yerds, £11 the yerd, £522
10_s._”[203]
About the feudal right, still kept up in Rome, to a cloth of estate,
among the continental nobility, we have spoken, p. 107 of this
catalogue, where a fragment of such a hanging is described.
The custom itself is thus noticed by Chaucer:--
Yet nere and nere forth in I gan me dress
Into an hall of noble apparaile,
With arras spred, and cloth of gold I gesse,
And other silke of easier availe:
Under the cloth of their estate sauns faile
The king and quene there sat as I beheld.[204]
[203] Excerpta Historica, p. 121.
[204] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 134.
This same rich golden stuff asks for our notice under a third and even
better known name, to be found all through our early literature as
CLOTH OF PALL.
The cloak (in Latin pallium, in Anglo-Saxon paell) of state for regal
ceremonies and high occasions, worn alike by men as well as women, was
always made of the most gorgeous stuff that could be found. From a very
early period in the mediæval ages, golden webs shot in silk with one or
other of the various colours--occasionally blue, oftener crimson--were
sought out, as may be easily imagined, for the purpose, through so
many years, and everywhere, that at last each sort of cloth of gold
had given to it the name of “pall,” no matter the immediate purpose
to which it might have to be applied, and after so many fashions.
Vestments for church use and garments for knights and ladies were made
of it. Old St. Paul’s had chasubles and copes of cloth of pall: “Casula
de pal, capa chori de pal, &c.”[205]
In worldly use, if the king’s daughter was to have a
Mantell of ryche degre
Purple palle and armyne fre.[206]
So in the poem of Sir Isumbras--
The rich queen in hall was set;
Knights her served, at hand and feet
In rich robes of pall.[207]
[205] Hist. ed. Dugdale, p. 336.
[206] The Squire of Low Degree.
[207] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. iii. p. 167.
For state receptions, our kings used to send out an order that the
houses should be “curtained” all along the streets which the procession
would have to take through London, “incortinaretur.”[208] How this was
done we learn from Chaucer in the “Knight’s Tale,”[209]
By ordinance, thurghout the cite large
Hanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge;
as well as from the “Life of Alexander:”--
Al theo city was by-hong
Of riche baudekyns and pellis (palls) among.[210]
Hence, when Elizabeth, our Henry VII.’s queen, “proceeded from the
Towre throwge the Citie of London (for her coronation) to Westminster,
al the strets ther wich she shulde passe by, were clenly dressed
and besene with clothes of Tappestreye and Arras. And some strets,
as Cheepe, hangged with riche clothes of gold, velvetts, and silks,
&c.[211] “As late as A.D. 1555, at Bow chyrche in London was hangyd
with cloth of gold and with ryche hares (arras).”[212]
Those same feelings which quickened our doughty knights and high-born
ladies to go and overspread the bier of each dead noble friend, with
costly baudekins or cloths of gold, so the church whispered and she
whispers us still to do, in due degree, the same to the coffin in which
the poor man is being carried to the grave beneath a mantle of silk and
velvet. The brother or the sister belonging to any of our old London
gilds had over them, however lowly they might have been in life, one
or other of those splendid hearse-cloths which we saw in this museum,
among the loans, in the ever memorable year 1862.
This silken textile interwove with gold, first known as “ciclatoun,”
on account of its glitter, then as “baudekin,” from the city where it
was best made, came at last to be called by the name of “pall.” Whether
employed on jubilant occasions, for a joyful betrothal, or a stately
coronation, or for a sorrowing funeral, it mattered not, it got the
common term of “cloth of pall,” which we yet keep up in that velvet
covering for a coffin, a burial pall.
[208] Matt. Paris, p. 661.
[209] V. 2569-70.
[210] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, t. ii. p. 8.
[211] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. p. 220.
[212] Machyn’s Diary, p. 102.
LETTERED SILKS
are of no uncommon occurrence, and some examples may be seen in this
collection.
A celebrated Mohammedan writer, Ebn-Khaldoun, who died about the middle
of the fifteenth century, while speaking of that spot in an Arab
palace, the “Tiraz,” so designated from the name itself of the rich
silken stuffs therein woven, tells us that of the attributes of all
Saracenic kings and sultans, and which became a particular usage for
ruling dynasties, one was to have woven the name of the actual prince,
or that special ensign chosen by his house, into the stuffs intended
for their personal wear, whether wrought of silk, brocade, or even
coarser kind of silk. While gearing his loom, the workman contrived
that the letters of the title should come out either in threads of
gold, or in silk of another colour from that of the ground. The royal
apparel thus bore about it its own especial marks emblematic of the
sultan’s wardrobe, and so became the distinguishing ensigne of the
prince himself, as well as for those personages around him, who were
allowed, by their official rank in his court, to wear them, and those
again upon whom he had condescended to bestow such garments as especial
tokens of the imperial favour, like the modern pelisse of honour.
Before the period of their having embraced Islamism the Kings of Persia
used to have woven upon the stuffs wrought for their personal use, or
as gifts to others, their own especial effigies or likeness, or at
times the peculiar ensign of their royalty. On becoming Mussulmans,
the rulers of that kingdom changed the custom, and instead of
portraiture substituted their names, to which they added words sounding
to their ears as foreboding good, or certain formulas of praise and
benediction.[213] Wherever the Moslem ruled, there did he set up the
same practice; and thus, whether in Asia, in Egypt, or other parts of
Africa, or in Moorish Spain, the silken garments for royalty and its
favoured ones, showed woven in them the prince’s name, or at least his
chosen badge. The silken garments wrought in Egypt for the far-famed
Saladin, and worn by him as its Kalif, bore very conspicuously upon
them the name of that conqueror.
In our old lists of church ornaments, frequent mention is found of
vestments inscribed, like pieces here, with words in real or pretended
Arabic; and when St. Paul’s inventory more than once speaks of silken
stuffs, “de opere Saraceno,” we lean to the belief that, though not
all, some at least of those textiles were so called from having Arabic
characters woven on them. Such, too, were the letters on the red
pall, figured with elephants and a bird, belonging to Exeter: “Palla
rubea cum quibusdam literis et elephantis et quadam avi in superiori
parte.”[214] Later, our trade with the South of Spain and the Moors
there, led us to call such words on woven stuffs Moorish, as we find
in old documents, thus Joane Lady Bergavenny bequeaths (A.D. 1434) a
“hullyng (hangings for a hall) of black, red, and green, with morys
letters, &c.”[215]
The weaving of letters in textiles is neither a Moorish, nor Saracenic
invention; ages before, the ancient Parthians used to do so, as we
learn from Pliny: “Parthi literas vestibus intexunt.” A curious
illustration of silken stuffs so frequently bearing letters, borrowed
in general from some real or supposed oriental alphabet, is the custom
which many of the illuminators had of figuring very often on frontals
and altar canopies, made of silk, meaningless words; and the artists
of Italy up to the middle of the sixteenth century did the same on the
hems of the garments worn by great personages, in their paintings. On
the inscribed textiles here, the real or pretended Arabic sentence is
written twice on the same line, once forwards, once backwards.
[213] Silvestre De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, t. ii. p. 287.
[214] Oliver, p. 298.
[215] Test. Vet. i. p. 228.
THE EAGLE,
single and double-headed, may frequently be found in the patterns of
old silks. In all ages certain birds of prey have been looked upon by
heathens as ominous for good or evil. Of this our own country affords
us a mournful example. Upon the standard which was carried at the head
of the Danish masters of Northumbria was figured the raven, the bird of
Odin. This banner had been woven and worked by the daughters of Regnar
Lodbrok, in one noontide’s while; and those heathens believed that if
victory was to follow, the raven would seem to stand erect, and as if
about to soar before the warriors, but if a defeat was impending, the
raven hung his head and drooped his wings; as we are told by Asser:
“Pagani acceperunt illud vexillum quod Reafan nominant: dicunt enim
quod tres sorores Hungari et Habbæ filiæ videlicet Lodebrochi illud
vexillum texuerunt et totum paraverunt illud uno meridiano tempore:
dicunt etiam quod, in omni bello ubi præcederet idem signum, si
victoriam adepturi essent, appereret in medio signi quasi corvus vivens
volitans: sin vero vincendi in futuro fuissent, penderet directe nihil
movens.”[216] Another and a more important flag, that which Harold and
his Anglo-Saxons fought under and lost at Hastings, is described by
Malmesbury as having been embroidered in gold, with the figure of a man
in the act of fighting, and studded with precious stones, all done in
sumptuous art:
“Quod (vexillum) erat in hominis pugnantis figura auro et lapidibus
arte sumptuosa intextum.”[217]
Still farther down in past ages, known for its daring and its lofty
flight, the eagle was held in high repute; throughout all the East,
where it became the emblem of lordly power and victory, often it is to
be seen flying in triumph over the head of some Assyrian conqueror,
as may be witnessed in Layard’s Work on Nineveh.[218] Homer calls it
the bird of Jove. Upon the yoke in the war chariot of the Persian king
Darius sat perched an eagle as if outstretching his wings wrought all
in gold: “Auream aquilam pinnas extendenti similem.”[219] The sight of
this bird in the air while a battle raged was, by the heathen looked
upon as an omen boding victory to those on whose side it hovered. At
the battle of Granicus those about Alexander saw or thought they saw
fluttering just above his head, quite heedless of the din, an eagle,
to which Aristander called the attention of the Macedonians as an
unmistakable earnest of success: “Qui circa Alexandrum erant, vidisse
se crediderunt, paululum super caput regis placide volantem aquilam
non gemitu morientium territam Aristander ... militibus in pugnam
intentis avem monstrabat, haud dubium victoriæ auspicium.”[220] The
Romans bore it on their standards; the Byzantine emperors kept it as
their own device, and following the ancient traditions of the east,
and heedless of their law that forbids the making of images, the
Saracens, especially when they ruled in Egypt, had the eagle figured on
several things about them, sometimes single at others double-headed,
which latter was the shape adopted by the emperors of Germany as their
blazon; and in this form it is borne to this day by several reigning
houses. No wonder then that eagles of both fashions are so often to be
observed woven upon ancient and eastern textiles.
Very likely, as yet left to show itself upon the walls of the citadel
at Cairo, and those curious old glass lamps hung up there and elsewhere
in the mosques, the double-headed eagle with wings displayed, which
we find on royal Saracenic silks, was borrowed by the Paynim from
the Crusaders, as it would seem, and selected for its ensign by the
government of Egypt in the thirteenth century, which will easily
account for the presence of that heraldic bird upon so many specimens
from Saracenic looms, to be found in this collection. The “tiraz,” in
fact, was for silk like the royal manufactory of Dresden and Sèvres
china, or Gobelin’s looms for tapestry, and as the courts of France for
its mark or ensign fixed upon the two LLs interlaced, and the house of
Saxony the two swords placed saltire wise, so at least for Saladin
and Egypt, in the middle ages the double-headed eagle with its wings
outstretched, was the especial badge or ensign. In the same manner
the sacred “horm,” or tree of life, between the two rampant lions or
cheetahs may be the mark of Persia.
As early as A.D. 1277 Exeter Cathedral reckoned among her vestments
several such; for instance, a cope of baudekin figured with small
two-headed eagles: “Capa baudekyn cum parvis aquilis, ij capita
habentibus;”[221] and our Henry III.’s brother, Richard the king
of Germany, gave to the same church a cope of black baudekin, with
eagles in gold figured on it: “Una capa de baudek, nigra cum aquilis
deauratis.”[222] Many other instances might be noticed all through
England.
[216] Asserius, De Rebus Gestis Ælfredi, ed. Wise, p. 33.
[217] Will. Malmes. Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. ii. p. 415, ed. Duffus
Hardy.
[218] Plates, 18, 20, 22.
[219] Quintus Curtius, Lib. III. cap. iii. p. 7.
[220] Ibid. Lib. IV. cap. xv. p. 72.
[221] Oliver, p. 299.
[222] Ibid.
As in architecture, sculpture, and painting, ancient and modern, so
IN WOVEN STUFFS THERE ARE STYLES NICELY DEFINED, AND EPOCHS EASILY
DISCERNIBLE.
Hitherto no attempt has been anywhere made to distribute olden silken
textiles into various schools, and as the present is the first and only
collection which has in any country been thrown open as yet to the
public, the occasion seems a fitting one to warrant such an endeavour
of classification.
With no other than the specimens here before us, we think we see them
fall into these several groups--Chinese, Persian, Byzantine, Oriental
or Indian, Syrian, Saracenic, Moresco-Spanish, Sicilian, Italian,
Flemish, British, and French.
_Chinese_ examples here are very few; but what they are, whether plain
or figured, they are beautiful in their own way. From all that we know
of the people, we are led to believe their own way two thousand years
ago is precisely theirs still, so that the web wrought by them this
year or two hundred years ago, like No. 1368, p. 75, would not differ
hardly in a line from their textiles two thousand years gone by, when
Dionysius Periegetes wrote that, the “Seres make precious figured
garments, resembling in colour the flowers of the field, and rivalling
in fineness the work of spiders.” In the stuffs, warp and woof are of
silk, and both of the best kinds.
_Persian_ textiles, even as we see them in this collection, must have
been for many centuries just as they were ever figured, and may be,
even now, described by the words of Quintus Curtius, with some little
allowance for those influences exercised upon the mind of the weaver by
his peculiar religious belief, which would not let the lowliest workman
forget the “homa,” or tree of life. When Marco Polo travelled through
those parts, in the thirteenth century, and our countryman, Sir John
Mandeville, a hundred years later, the old love for hunting wild beasts
still lived, and the princes of the country were as fond as ever of
training the cheetah, a kind of small lion or leopard, for the chase,
as we have noticed, p. 178.
When the design is made up of various kinds of beasts and birds, real
or imaginary, with the sporting cheetah nicely spotted among them; and
the “homa” conspicuously set forth above all; sure may we be that the
web was wrought by Persians, and on most occasions the textile will be
found in all its parts to be woven from the richest materials.
As an illustration of the Persian type of style, No. 8233, p. 154, may
be taken as a specimen.
For trade purposes, and to make the textile pass in the European market
as from Persia, the manner of its loom was often copied by the Jewish
and the Christian weavers in Syria, as we shall have to notice just now.
_The Byzantine_ Greeks, for their textiles from the time when in the
sixth century they began to weave home-grown silk, made for themselves
a school of design which kept up in their drawing not a little of the
beauty, breadth, and flowing outline which had outlived among them
the days of heathenish art. Along with this a strong feeling of their
Christianity showed itself as well in many of the subjects which they
took out of holy writ, as in the smaller elements of ornamentation.
Figures, whether of the human form or of beasts, are given in a much
larger and bolder size than on any other ancient stuffs. Though there
be very few known specimens from the old looms of Constantinople, the
one here, No. 7036, p. 122, showing Samson wrestling with a lion, may
serve as a type. In the year 1295 old St. Paul’s Cathedral, here in
London, would seem to have possessed several splendid vestments made of
Byzantine silk, as we note in the samples to be named _infra_ under the
head of Damask.
The way in which those Greeks gave a pattern to the stuff intended more
especially for liturgical purposes is pointed out while speaking about
“Stauracin” and the “Gammadion,” a form of the cross with which they
powdered their silks; p. lii.
The world-wide fame of the Byzantine purple tint is attested by our
Gerald Barry, whose words we quote further on. As a sample of the
Byzantine loom in “diaspron,” or diapering, we would refer to No. 1239,
p. 26.
The specimens here from the Byzantine, and later Greek loom, are
not to be taken as by any means appropriate samples of its general
production. They are poor in both respects--material and, when
figured, design--as may be seen at pp. 27, 28, 33, 36, 123, 124, 126,
219, &c.
_Oriental_ ancient silks and textiles have their own distinctive marks.
From Marco Polo, who wandered much over the far east, some time during
the thirteenth century, we learn that the weaving there was done by
women who wrought in silk and gold, after a noble manner, beasts and
birds upon their webs:--“Le loro donne lavorano tutte cose a seta e ad
oro e a uccelli e a bestie nobilmente e lavorano di cortine ed altre
cose molto ricamente.”[223]
Out of the several specimens here from Tartary and India, during our
mediæval period, we pick one or two which show well the meaning of
those words uttered by that great Venetian traveller, while speaking
about the textiles he saw in those countries. The dark purple piece of
silk, figured in gold with birds and beasts, of the thirteenth century,
No. 7086, p. 137, is good; but better still for our purpose is the
shred, No. 7087, p. 138, of blue damask, with its birds, its animals,
and flowers wrought in gold, and different coloured silks.
What India is, it has ever been, famous for its cloud-like transparent
muslins, which since Marco Polo’s days have kept till now even that
oriental name, through being better than elsewhere woven at Mosul.
[223] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1865, p. 345.
The _Syrian_ school is well represented here by several fine pieces.
The whole sea-board of that part of Asia Minor, as well as far
inland, was inhabited by a mixture of Jews, Christians, and Saracens;
and each of these people were workers in silk. The reputation of
the neighbouring Persia had of old stood high for the beauty and
durability of her silken textiles, which made them to be sought for by
the European traders. Persia’s outlet to the west for her goods, lay
through the great commercial ports on the coast of Syria. Setting, like
Persia used to do, as it were, her own peculiar seal upon her figured
webs, by mingling in her designs the mystic “homa,” to the European
mind this part of the pattern became, at first, a sort of assurance
that those goods had been thrown off by Persian looms. By one of those
tricks of imitation followed then, as well as now, the Syrian designers
for the loom threw this “homa” into their patterns. This symbol of
“the tree of life,” had no doubt been a borrow by Zoroaster from Holy
Writ.[224] Neither to the Christian’s eye, nor to the Jew’s, nor
Moslem’s, was there in it anything objectionable; all three, therefore,
took it and made it a leading portion of design in the patterns of
their silks; and hence is it that we meet it so often. Though done
with perhaps a fraudulent intention of palming on the world Syrian for
real Persian silks, those Syrians usually put into their own designs a
something which spoke of their peculiar selves and their workmanship.
Though there be seen the “homa,” the “cheetah,” and other elements of
Persian patterns, still the discordant two-handled vase, the badly
imitated Arabic sentence, betray the textile to be not Persian,
but Syrian. No. 8359, p. 213, will readily exemplify our meaning.
Furthermore, perhaps quite innocent of any knowledge about Persia’s
first belief, and her use of the “homa” in her old religious services,
the Christian weavers of Syria, along with the Zorasterian symbol, put
the sign of the cross by the side of that “tree of life,” as we find
upon the piece of silk, No. 7094, p. 140. Another remarkable specimen
of the Syrian loom is No. 7034, p. 122, whereon the Nineveh lions come
forth so conspicuously. As a good example of well-wrought “diaspron” or
diaper, No. 8233, p. 154, may be mentioned, along with No. 7052, p. 127.
[224] Genesis ii. 9.
_Saracenic_ weaving, as shown by the design upon the web, is
exemplified in several specimens before us.
However much against what looks like a heedlessness of the Koran’s
teachings, certain it is that the Saracens, those of the upper
classes in particular, felt no difficulty in wearing robes upon which
animals and the likenesses of other created things were woven; with
the strictest of their princes, a double-headed eagle was a royal
heraldic device, as we have shown, p. lxiii. Stuffs, then, figured
with birds and beasts, with trees and flowers, were not the less of
Saracenic workmanship, and meant for Moslem wear. What, however, may
be looked for upon real Saracenic textures is a pattern consisting of
longitudinal stripes of blue, red, green, and other colour; some of
them charged with animals, small in form, other some written, in large
Arabic letters, with a word or sentence, often a proverb, often a good
wish or some wise saw.
As examples we would point to No. 8288, p. 178, and 7051, p. 127.
For a fair specimen of diapering, No. 7050, p. 127, while No. 8639,
p. 243, presents us with a design having in it, besides the crescent
moon, a proof that architectural forms were not forgotten by the
weaver-draughtsman, in his sketches for the loom.
Later, in our chapter on Tapestry, we shall have occasion to speak
about another sort of Saracenic work or tapestry, of the kind called
abroad, from the position of its frame, of the basse lisse.
_Moresco-Spanish_, or Saracenic textiles, wrought in Spain, though
partaking of the striped pattern, and bearing words in real or imitated
Arabic, had some distinctions of their own. The designs shown upon
these stuffs are almost always drawn out of strap-work, reticulations,
or some combination or another of geometrical lines, amid which are
occasionally to be found different forms of conventional flowers.
Specimens are to be seen here at pp. 51, 55, 121, 124, 125, 186, 240,
&c. Sometimes, but very rarely, the crescent moon is figured as in the
curious piece, No. 8639, p. 243. The colours of these silks are usually
either a fine crimson, or a deep blue with almost always a fine toned
yellow as a ground. But one remarkable feature in these Moresco-Spanish
textiles is the presence, when gold is brought in, of an ingenious
though fraudulent imitation of the precious metal, for which shreds of
gilded parchment cut up into narrow flat strips are substituted, and
woven with the silk. This, when fresh, must have looked very bright,
and have given the web all the appearance of those favourite stuffs
called here in England “tissues,” of which we have already spoken, p.
xxiii.
We are not aware that this trick has ever been found out before, and it
was only by the use of a highly magnifying glass that we penetrated the
secret. Our suspicion was awakened by so often observing that the gold
had become quite black. Examples of this gilt vellum may be seen here,
at Nos. 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224; 8639, p. 244; &c.
When the Christian Spanish weavers lived beyond Saracenic control, they
filled their designs with beasts, birds, and flowers; but even then the
old Spanish fine tone of crimson is rather striking in their webs, as
is evidenced in the beautiful piece of diaper, No. 1336, p. 64.
Spanish velvets--and they were mostly wrought in Andalusia--are
remarkably fine and conspicuous both for their deep soft pile, and
their glowing ruby tones; but when woven after the manner of velvet
upon velvet, are very precious: a good specimen of rich texture, and
mellow colouring is furnished by the chasuble at No. 1375, p. 81.
The _Sicilian_ school strongly marked the wide differences between
itself and all the others which had lived before; and the history of
its loom is as interesting as it is varied.
The first to teach the natives of Sicily the use of cotton for their
garments, and how to rear the silkworm and spin its silk, were, as
it would seem, the Mahomedans, who, in coming over from Africa,
brought along with them, besides the art of weaving silken textiles,
a knowledge of the fauna of that vast continent--its giraffes, its
antelopes, its gazelles, its lions, its elephants. These Mussulmans
told them, too, of the parrots of India and the hunting sort of
lion,--the cheetahs, that were found in Asia; and when the stuff had to
be wrought for European wear, imaged both beast and bird upon the web,
at the same time that they wove a word in Arabic, of greeting to be
read among the flowers. Like all other Saracens, those in Sicily loved
to mingle gold in their tissues; and, to spare the silk, cotton thread
was not unfrequently worked up in the warp. When, therefore, we meet
with beasts taken from the fauna of Africa, such, especially, as the
giraffe, and the several classes of the antelope family--in particular
the gazelle--with, somewhere about, an Arabic motto--and part of the
pattern wrought in gold, which, at first poor and thin, is now become
black, as well as cotton in the warp, we may fairly take the specimen
as a piece of Sicily’s work in its first period of weaving, all so
Saracenic to the eye. Even when that Moslem nation had been driven out
by the Normans, if many of its people did not stay as workmen in silk
at Palermo, yet they left their teachings in weaving and design behind
them, and their practices were, years afterwards, still followed.
Now we reach Sicily’s second epoch.
While at war with the Byzantines, in the twelfth century, Roger, King
of Sicily, took Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, from each of which cities
he led away captives all the men and women he could find who knew how
to weave silks, and carried them to Palermo. To the Norman tiraz there,
these Grecian new comers brought fresh designs, which were adopted
sometimes wholly, at others but in part and mixed up with the older
Saracenic style, for silks wrought under the Normano-Sicilian dynasty.
In this second period of the island’s loom we discover what traces the
Byzantine school had impressed upon Sicilian silks, and helped so much
to alter the type of their design. On one silk, a grotesque mask amid
the graceful twinings of luxuriant foliage, such as might have been
then found by them upon many a fragment of old Greek sculpture, was the
pattern, as we witness, at No. 8241, p. 158; on another, a sovereign on
horseback wearing the royal crown, and carrying as he rides a hawk upon
his wrist--token both of the love for lordly sports at the period, and
the feudalism all over Italy and Christendom, shown in the piece, No.
8589, p. 223; on a third, No. 8234, p. 154, is the Greek cross, along
with a pattern much like the old netted or “de fundato” kind which we
have described, p. liii.
But Sicily’s third is quite her own peculiar style. At the end of the
thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, she struck out of
herself into quite an unknown path for design. Without throwing aside
the old elements employed till then especially, all over the east,
and among the rest, by the Mahomedans, Sicily put along with them the
emblem of Christianity, the cross, in various forms, on some occasions
with the letter V. four times repeated, and so placed together as to
fall into the shape of this symbol, like what we find at No. 1245, p.
28; in other instances the cross is floriated, as at No. 1293, p. 47.
From the far east to the uttermost western borders of the
Mediterranean the weavers of every country had been in the habit
of figuring upon their silks those beasts and birds they saw around
them: the Tartar, the Indian, and the Persian gave us the parrot
and the cheetah; the men of Africa the giraffe and the gazelle; the
people of each continent the lions, the elephants, the eagles, and
the other birds common to both. From the poetry and sculpture of the
Greeks and Romans could the Sicilians have easily learned about the
fabled griffin and the centaur; but it was left for their own wild
imaginings to figure as they have, such an odd compound in one being as
the animal--half elephant, half griffin--which we see in No. 1288, p.
45. Their daring flights of fancy in coupling the difficult with the
beautiful, are curious; in one place, No. 1302, p. 50, large eagles
are perched in pairs with a radiating sun between them, and beneath
dogs, in pairs, running with heads turned back, &c.; in another, No.
1304, p. 51, running harts have caught one of their hind legs in a cord
tied to their collar, and an eagle swoops down upon them; and the same
animal, in another place, on the same piece has switched its tail into
the last link of a chain fastened to its neck; on a third sample, No.
8588, p. 222, we behold figured, harts, the letter M floriated, winged
lions, crosses floriated, crosses sprouting out on two sides with
_fleurs-de-lis_, four-legged monsters, some like winged lions, some
biting their tails. Exeter Cathedral had a cloth of gold purple cope,
figured with “draconibus volantibus ac tenentibus caudas proprias in
ore,”[225] doves in pairs upholding a cross, &c. Hardly elsewhere to
be found are certain elements peculiar to the patterns upon silks from
mediæval Sicily; such, for instance, as harts, and demi-dogs with very
large wings, both animals having remarkably long manes streaming far
behind them, No. 1279, p. 41; harts again, but lodged beneath green
trees, in a park with paling about it, as in No. 1283, p. 43, and No.
8710, p. 269; that oft-recurring sun shedding its beams with eagles
pecking at them, or gazing undazzled at the luminary, pp. 48, 50, 137,
but sometimes stags, as at pp. 54, 239, carrying their well attired
heads upturned to a large pencil of those sunbeams as they dart down
upon them amid a shower of rain-drops. Of birds, the hawk, the eagle,
double and single headed, the parrot, may be found on stuffs all over
the east; not so, however, with the swan, yet this majestic creature
was a favourite with Sicilians, and may be seen here often drawn with
great gracefulness, as at Nos. 1277, p. 41; 1299, p. 49; 8264, p. 166;
8610, p. 232, &c.
[225] Oliver, p. 345.
The Sicilians showed their strong affection for certain plants and
flowers. On a great many of the silks in this collection, from
Palermitan looms, we see figured upon a tawny-coloured grounding,
beautifully drawn foliage in green; which, on a nearer inspection,
bears the likeness of parsley, so curled, crispy and serrated are its
leaves. Besides their cherished parsley along with the vine-leaf for
foliage, they had their especial favourite among flowers; and it is the
centaurea cyanus, our corn blue-bottle, shown among others in No. 1283,
&c. p. 43, No. 1291, p. 47, No. 1308, p. 53.
Another peculiarity of theirs is the introduction of the letter U,
repeated so as at times to mark the feathering upon the tails of birds;
at others, to fall into the shape of an O, as we pointed out at pp. 40,
225, 227, 228.
Whether it was that, like our own Richard I., crusaders in after times
often made Sicily the halting spot on their way to the Holy Land, or
that knights crowded there for other purposes, and thus dazzled the
eyes of the islanders with the bravery of their armorial bearings,
figured on their cyclases and pennons, their flags and shields, certain
is it that these Sicilians were particularly given to introduce a deal
of heraldic charges--wyverns, eagles, lions rampant, and griffins--into
their designs; and the very numerous occasions in which such elements
of blazoning come in, are very noticeable, so that one of the features
belonging to the Sicilian loom in its third period, is that, bating
tinctures, it is so decidedly heraldic.
Not the last among the peculiarities of the third period in the
Sicilian school is the use, for many of its stuffs, of two certain
colours--murrey, for the ground, and a bright green for the pattern.
When the fawn-coloured ground is gracefully sprinkled with parsley
leaves, and nicely trailed with branches of the vine, and shows beasts
and birds disporting themselves between the boughs of lively joyous
green; the effect is cheerful, as may be witnessed in those specimens
No. 8594, p. 226, No. 8602, p. 229, No. 8607, p. 231, Nos. 8609, 8610,
p. 232, all of which so admirably exemplify the style.
All their beauty and happiness of invention, set forth by bold, free,
spirited drawing, were bestowed, if not thrown away, too often upon
stuffs of a very poor inferior quality, in which the gold, if not
actually base, was always scanty, and a good deal of cotton was sure to
be found wrought up along with the silk.
Though Palermo was, without doubt, the great workshop for weaving
Sicilian silks, that trade used to be carried on not only in other
cities of the island, but reached towns like Reggio and other such in
Magna Græcia, northward up to Naples. We think that, as far as the two
Sicilies are concerned, the growth of the cotton plant always went
along with the rearing of the silkworm. Of the main-land loom we would
specify No. 8256, p. 163, No. 8634, p. 242, No. 8638, p. 243.
Till within a few years the royal manufactory at Sta. Leucia, near
Naples, produced silks of remarkable richness; and the piece, likely
from that city itself, No. 721, p. 13, does credit to its loom, as
it wove in the seventeenth century. Northern Italy was not idle; and
the looms which she set up in several of her great cities, in Lucca,
Florence, Genoa, Venice and Milan, earned apart for themselves a good
repute in some particulars, and a wide trade for their gold and silver
tissues, their velvets, and their figured silken textiles. Yet, like
as each of these free states had its own accent and provincialisms
in speech, so too had it a something often thrown into its designs
and style of drawing which told of the place and province whence the
textiles came.
_Lucca_ at an early period made herself known in Europe for her
textiles; but her draughtsmen, like those of Sicily, seem to have
thought themselves bound to follow the style hitherto in use, brought
by the Saracens, of figuring parrots and peacocks, gazelles, and even
cheetahs, as we behold in the specimens here No. 8258, p. 163, and No.
8616, p. 234. But, at the same time, along with these eastern animals,
she mixed up emblems of her own, such as angels clothed in white, like
in the example the last mentioned. She soon dropped what was oriental
from her patterns, which she began to draw in a larger, bolder manner,
as we observe, under No. 8637, p. 243, No. 8640, p. 244, and showing an
inclination for light blue, as a colour.
As in other places abroad, so at Lucca, cloths of gold and of silver
were often wrought, and the Lucchese cloths of this costly sort
were, here in England, during the fourteenth century, in particular
request. In all likelihood they were, both of them, not of the
deadened but sparkling kind, afterwards especially known as “tissue.”
Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, had a cope of silver tissue, or cloth
of Lucca:--“una capa alba de panno de Luk.”[226] At a later date,
belonging to the same church, were two fine chasubles--one purple, the
other red--of the same glittering stuff, “casula de purpyll panno,”
&c.,[227] where we find it specified that not only was the textile
of gold, but of that especial sort called tissue. York cathedral was
particularly furnished with a great many copes of tissue shot with
every colour required by its ritual, and among them were--“a reade cope
of clothe of tishewe with orphry of pearl, a cope with orphrey, a cope
of raised clothe of goulde,”[228] making a distinction between tissue
and the ordinary cloth of gold. But at the court of our Edward II. its
favour would seem to have been the highest. In the Wardrobe Accounts
of that king, we see the golden tissue, or Lucca cloth, several times
mentioned. Whether the ceremony happened to be sad or gay, this
glistening web was used; palls made of Lucca cloth were, at masses for
the dead, strewed over the corpse; at marriages the care-cloth was
made of the same stuff; thus when Richard de Arundell and Isabella,
Hugh le Despenser’s daughter, had been wedded at the door of the royal
chapel, the veil held spread out over their heads as they knelt inside
the chancel during the nuptial mass, for the blessing, was of Lucca
cloth.[229] Richard II.’s fondness for this cloth of gold was lately
noticed, p. xxx.
Just about Edward II.’s time was it that velvet became known, and
got into use amongst our churchmen for vestments, and our nobles for
personal wear, and the likelihood is that Lucca was among the first
places in Europe to weave it. The specimens here of this fine textile
from Lucchese looms, though in comparison with those from Genoa, they
be few and mostly after one manner--the raised or cut--still have now a
certain historical value for the English workman: No. 1357, p. 72, with
its olive green plain silken ground, and trailed all over with flowers
and leaves in a somewhat deeper tone, and the earlier example, No.
8322, p. 192, with its ovals and feathering stopped with graceful cusps
and artichokes, afford us good instances of what Lucca could produce in
the way of artistic velvets.
[226] Oliver, p. 315.
[227] P. 344.
[228] York Fabric Rolls, p. 308.
_Genoa_, though in far off mediæval times not so conspicuous as she
afterwards became for her textile industry, still must have from
a remote period, encouraged within her walls, and over her narrow
territory, the weaving of silken webs. Of these the earliest mention we
anywhere find, is to be seen in the inventory of those costly vestments
once belonging to our own St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in the year
1295: besides a cope of Genoa cloth, that church had, from the same
place, a hanging patterned with wheels and two-headed birds.[230]
Though this first description be scant, we read in it quite enough
to gather that these Genoese cloths must have entirely resembled the
textiles wrought at Lucca, but, in particular, in Sicily. Perhaps
they had been carried by trade from Palermo to the north-west shores
of Italy, whence they were brought in the same way to England, so
that they may be deemed to have reached us not so much from the looms
themselves of Genoa, as those of some other place, but through her then
great port.
Of Genoa’s own weaving of beautiful velvets there can be no doubt,
a reputation she keeps to the present day as far as plain velvet is
concerned.
In this collection we have samples in every kind of Genoese velvets,
from those with a smooth unbroken surface to the elaborately patterned
ones--art-wrought velvets in fact--showing, together with wonderful
skill in the weaving, much beauty of design. Among the plain velvets in
which we have nothing but great softness and depth of pile, along with
clear bright luminous tones of colour, No. 540, p. 3, is a very fair
specimen for its delicious richness of pile; and No. 8334, p. 199, not
merely for this property, but as well for its lightsome mellow deep
tint of crimson.
Getting to what may be truly called art-velvets, we come to several
specimens here. Some are raised or cut, the design being done in a pile
standing well up by itself from out of a flat ground of silk, sometimes
of the same, sometimes of another colour, and not unfrequently wrought
in gold, as at pp. 18, 90, 107, 110, 263. Then we have at No. 7795, p.
145, an example of that precious kind--velvet upon velvet--in which the
ground is velvet, and again of velvet is the pattern itself, but raised
one pile higher and well above the other, so as to show its form and
shape distinctly. Last of all we here find samples, as in No. 8323, p.
192, how the design was done in various coloured velvet. Such was a
favourite in England, and called motley; in his will, A.D. 1415, Henry
Lord Scrope bequeathed two vestments, one, motley velvet rubeo de auro;
the other, motley velvet nigro, rubeo et viridi, &c.[231]
[229] Archæologia, t. xxvi. pp. 337, 344.
[230] Hist. of St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, pp. 318, 329.
[231] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. 9, p. 274.
_Venice_ does not seem to have been at any time, like Sicily and
Lucca, smitten with the taste of imitating in her looms at home the
patterns which she saw abroad upon textile fabrics, but appears to have
borrowed from the Orientals only one kind of weaving cloth of gold: the
yellow chasuble at Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, figured with beasts,
cum bestiis crocei coloris,[232] is the solitary instance we know,
upon which she wove, like the east, animals upon silks. She, however,
set up for herself a new branch of textiles, and wrought for church
use certain square webs of a crimson ground on which she figured, in
gold, or on yellow silk, subjects taken from the New Testament, or the
persons of saints and angels. These square pieces were as they yet are,
employed, when sewed together in squares as frontals to altars, but
when longwise much more generally as orphreys to chasubles, copes and
other vestments. Of such stuffs must have been those large orphreys
upon a dalmatic and tunicle, at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, A.D.
1295.[233]
Though not of so early a date as the thirteenth century, there are
in this collection specimens of this Venetian web belonging to the
sixteenth, which are very fine, No. 5900, p. 112, represents the
resurrection of our Lord; so does No. 8976, p. 271, while No. 8978, p.
272, presents us with the coronation of the Virgin, and No. 8976, the
Virgin and the Child, as also No. 1335, p. 71. Far below in worth are
the same kind of webs wrought at Cologne, as will be noticed just now.
Any one that has ever looked upon the woodcuts done at Venice in
the sixteenth century, such as illustrate, for instance, the Roman
Pontifical, published by Giunta, the “Rosario della G. V. Maria,” by
Varisco, and other such religious books from the Venetian press, will,
at a glance, find on the webs before us from that state, the self-same
style and manner in drawing, the same broad, nay, majestic fold and
fall of drapery, and in the human form the same plumpness, and not
unfrequently with the facial line almost straight; and there, but more
especially about the hands and feet, a somewhat naturalistic shape;
so near is the likeness in design that one is led to think that the
men who cut the blocks for the printers also worked for the weavers of
Venice, and sketched out the drawings for their looms.
By the fifteenth century Venice knew how to produce good damasks in
silk and gold, and of an historiated kind: if we had nothing more than
the specimen, No. 1311, p. 54, where St. Mary of Egypt is so well
represented, it would be quite enough for her to claim for herself such
a distinction. That like her neighbours, Venice wrought in velvet,
there can be little or no doubt, and if she it was who made those deep
piled stuffs, sometimes raised, sometimes pile upon pile, in which
her painters loved to dress the personages, men especially, in their
pictures, then, of a truth, Venetian velvets were beautiful. Of this,
any one may satisfy himself by one visit to our National Gallery.
There, in the “Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Paulo Veronese, A.D.
1573, the second of the wise men is clad in a robe all made of crimson
velvet, cut or raised after a design quite in keeping with the style of
the period.
No insignificant article of Venetian textile workmanship was her laces
wrought in every variety--in gold, in silk, in thread. The portrait of
a Doge usually shows us that dignitary clothed in his dress of state.
His wide mantle, having such large golden buttons, is made of some rich
dull silver cloth; and upon his head is that curiously Phrygian-shaped
ducal cap bound round with broad gold lace diapered after some nice
pattern, as we see in the bust portrait of Doge Loredano, painted
by John Bellini, and now in our National Gallery. Not only was the
gold in the thread particularly good, but the lace itself in great
favour at our court during one time, where it used to be bought, not
by yard measure, but by weight; a pounde and a half of gold of Venys
was employed “aboutes the making of a lace and botons for the king’s
mantell of the garter.”[234] “Frenge of Venys gold,” appears twice, pp.
136, 163, in the wardrobe accounts of Edward IV.
Laces in worsted or in linen thread wrought by the bobbin at Venice;
but more especially her point laces, or such as were done with the
needle, always had, as indeed they still have, a great reputation:
sewed to table-covers, two specimens are found in this collection,
described at p. 141.
Venetian linens, for fine towelling and napery in general, at one time
were in favourite use in France during a part of the fifteenth century.
In the “Ducs de Bourgogne,” by Le Comte de Laborde,[235] more than
once we meet with such an entry, as “une pièce de nappes, ouvraige de
Venise,” &c.
[232] Oliver, p. 313.
[233] Ed. Dugdale, p. 321.
[234] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 8.
[235] T. ii. Preuves, p. 107.
_Florence_, always so industrious and art-loving, got for its loom,
about the middle of the fourteenth century, a place in the foremost
rank amid the weavers of northern Italy. Specimens of her earliest
handicraft are yet few--only two--here; but one sample of the able way
in which she knew how to diaper, well shows her ability: No. 8563, p.
215, woven in the fifteenth century, will prove this with reference
to her secular silks. The pieces described at pp. 202, 264, witness
the boldness of her design during the sixteenth century. In her webs,
expressly woven for church-use, is it that she displays her great taste
in design, and wonderful power--at least for that time, the fourteenth
century--in gearing the loom: the violet silk damask, No. 1265, p. 36,
and another like piece, No. 7072, p. 133, figured with angels swinging
thuribles, or bearing crowns of thorns in the hands, or holding a
cross, will warrant our remarks. The style of doing the face and hands
in white of those otherwise yellow angels, is a peculiarity of the
Tuscan loom.
The orphrey-webs of Florence are equally conspicuous for drawing and
skill in weaving as her vestment textiles, and in beauty come up to
those done at Venice, and far surpass anything of the kind ever wrought
at Cologne; specimens of this sort of Florentine work may be seen at
Nos. 4059, p. 89; 7080, p. 136; 7674, p. 142; 7791, p. 143; 197, p.
291. Along with these may be classed the hood of a cope, described at
No. 8692, p. 260, as well as the apparels to the dalmatic and tunicle,
p. 143, where the cherubic heads have white faces.
But it was of her velvets that Florence might be so warrantably proud.
Our Henry VII. in his will, “Testamenta Vetusta,”[236] bequeathed
“to God and St. Peter, and to the abbot and prior and convent of
our monastery of Westminster, the whole suit of vestments to be made
at Florence in Italy.” Gorgeous and artistically designed was this
textile, as we may yet see in one of these Westminster Abbey copes
still in existence, and belonging to Stonyhurst college. The golden
ground is trailed all over with leaf-bearing boughs of a bold type, in
raised or cut ruby-toned velvet of a rich soft pile, which is freckled
with gold thread sprouting up like loops. Though nothing so rich in
material, nor so beauteous in pattern, there are here, pp. 144, 145,
two specimens of Florentine cut, crimson velvet on a golden ground,
quite like in sort to the royal vestments, and having too that strong
peculiarity upon them--the little gold thread loop shooting out of the
velvet pile. Though a full century later than the splendid cope at
Stonyhurst, and the two pieces Nos. 7792, 7799, these illustrate the
peculiar style of Tuscan velvets.
Among the truly prince-like gifts of vestments to Lincoln Cathedral,
by John of Gaunt and his duchess, are many made of the richest crimson
velvet of both sorts, that is, plain, and cut or raised to a pattern
upon a ground of gold, as for instance:--two red copes, of the which
one is red velvet set with white harts lying in colours, full of these
letters S. S., with pendents silver and gilt, the harts having crowns
upon their necks with chains silver and gilt; and the other cope is of
crimson velvet of precious cloth of gold, with images in the orphrey,
&c.[237]
That peculiar sort of ornamentation--the little loop of gold thread
standing well up, and in single spots--upon some velvets, seems at
times to have been replaced, perhaps with the needle, by small dots of
solid metal, gold or silver gilt, upon the pile; of the gift of one of
its bishops, John Grandisson, Exeter cathedral had a crimson velvet
cope, the purple velvet orphrey to which was so wrought:--De purpyll
velvete operata cum pynsheds de puro auro.[238]
[236] Ed. Nicolas, t. i. p. 33.
[237] Mon. Anglic. viii. 1281.
[238] Oliver, p. 345.
_Milan_, though now-a-days she stands in such high repute for the
richness and beauty of her silks of all sorts, was not, we believe,
at any period during mediæval times, as famous for her velvets,
her brocades, or cloths of gold, as for her well wrought admirably
fashioned armour, so strong and trustworthy for the field--so furbished
and exquisitely damascened for courtly service. Still, in the sixteenth
century she earned a name for her rich cut velvets, as we may see in
the specimen, No. 698, p. 7; her silken net-work, No. 8336, p. 200,
which may have led the way to weaving silk stockings; and her laces
of the open tinsel kind once in such vogue for liturgical, as well as
secular attire, as we have in No. 8331, p. 197.
_Britain_, from her earliest period, had textile fabrics varying in
design and material; of the colours in the woollen garments worn by
each of the three several classes into which our Bardic order was
apportioned. Of the checkered pattern in Boadicea’s cloak we have
spoken just now, p. xii.
Of the beauty and wide repute of English needlework, we shall have to
speak when, a little further on, we reach the subject of embroidery.
From John Garland’s words, which we gave at p. xxii, it would seem that
all the lighter and more tasteful webs wrought here came from women’s
hands; and the loom, one of which must have been in almost every
English nunnery and homestead, was of the simplest make.
In olden times, the Egyptians wove in an upright loom, and beginning
at top so as to weave downwards, sat at their work. In Palestine the
weaver had an upright loom too, but beginning at bottom and working
upwards, was obliged to stand. During the mediæval period the loom,
here at least, was horizontal, as is shown by the one figured in that
gorgeously illuminated Bedford Book of Hours, fol. 32, at which the
Blessed Virgin Mary is seated weaving curtains for the temple.
As samples of one of the several kinds of work wrought by our nuns
and mynchens, as well as English ladies, we refer to Nos. 1233, p.
24, 1256, p. 33, 1270, p. 38, demonstrating the ability of their
handicraft as well as elegance in design during the thirteenth century.
For specimens of the commoner sorts of silken textiles and of wider
breadth, which began to be woven in this country under Edward III.,
it would be as hard as hazardous to direct the reader. Very recent
examples of all sorts--velvets among the rest--may be found in the
Brooke collection. To some students the piece of Old English printed
chintz, No. 1622, p. 84, will not be without an interest.
For the finer sort of linen napery, Eylisham or Ailesham in
Lincolnshire was famous during the fourteenth century. Exeter
cathedral, A.D. 1327, had “unum manutergium de Eylisham”--a hand towel
of Ailesham cloth.[239]
Our coarser native textiles in wool, in thread or in both, woven
together, forming a stuff called “burel,” made of which St. Paul’s
London, A.D. 1295, had a light blue chasuble;[240] and Exeter
cathedral, A.D. 1277, a long pall;[241] all sorts, in fine, of heavier
work, were wrought in our monasteries for men. By their rule the
Benedictine monks, and all their offsets, were bound to give a certain
number of hours every week-day to hand work, either at home or in the
field.[242]
Weeping over the wars and strife in England during the year 1265 and
the woes of the people, our Matthew of Westminster sums up, among our
losses, the fall in our trade of woollen stuffs, with which we used
to supply the world. O Anglia olim gloriosa ... licet maris angustata
littoribus ... tibi tamen per orbem benedixerunt omnium latera nationum
de tuis ovium velleribus calefacta.[243]
The weaving in this country of woollen cloth, as a staple branch of
trade, is older than some are willing to believe. Of the monks at
Bath abbey we are told by a late writer, “the shuttle and the loom
employed their attention, (about the middle of the fourteenth century,)
and under their active auspices the weaving of woollen cloth (which
made its appearance in England about the year 1330, and received the
sanction of an Act of Parliament in 1337) was introduced, established,
and brought to such perfection at Bath as rendered this city one of the
most considerable in the west of England for this manufacture.”[244]
Worcester cloth, which was of a fine quality, was so good, that by
a chapter of the Benedictine Order, held A.D. 1422, at Westminster
Abbey, it was forbidden to be worn by the monks, and declared smart
enough for military men.[245] Norwich, too, wove stuffs that were
in demand for costly household furniture, for, A.D. 1394, Sir John
Cobham bequeathed to his friends “a bed of Norwich stuff embroidered
with butterflies.”[246] In one of the chapels at Durham Priory there
were four blue cushions of Norwich work.[247] Worsted, a town in
Norfolk, by a new method of its own for the carding of the wool with
combs of iron well heated, and then twisting the thread harder than
usual in the spinning, enabled our weavers to produce a woollen stuff
of a fine peculiar quality, to which the name itself of worsted was
immediately given. Unto such a high repute did the new web grow that
liturgical raiment and domestic furniture of the choicest sorts were
made out of it; Exeter cathedral, among its chasubles, had several
“de nigro worsted” in cloth of gold. Elizabeth de Bohun, A.D. 1356,
bequeathed to her daughter the Countess of Arundel “a bed of red
worsted embroidered;”[248] and Joane Lady Bergavenny leaves to John of
Ormond “a bed of cloth of gold with lebardes, with those cushions and
tapettes of my best red worsted,”[249] &c. Of the sixteen standards of
worsted entailed with the bear and a chain which floated aloft in the
ship of Beauchamp Earl of Warwick, we have spoken before (p. xliii.)
In the “Fabric Rolls of York Minster” vestments made of worsted--there
variously spelt “worsett,”[250] and “woryst”[251]--are enumerated.
[239] Oliver, p. 314.
[240] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 323.
[241] Oliver, p. 298.
[242] Reg. S. Ben. c. xlviii. De Opere Manuum quotidiano, p. 129; c.
lvii. De Artificibus Monasterii, p. 131; ed. Brockie, t. i. “Lena”
is the mediæval Latin for a bed coverlet.
[243] Flores Histor. p. 396. Frankfort, A.D. 1601.
[244] Monasticon Anglicanum, t. ii. p. 259.
[245] Benedict. in Anglia, ed. Reyner, App. p. 165.
[246] Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicolas, t. i. p. 136.
[247] Hist. Dunelm. Scriptores Tres. Append. p. cclxxxvi.
[248] Testamenta Vetusta, i. 61.
[249] Ibid. p. 227.
[250] Pp. 301, 305.
[251] P. 302.
_Irish_ cloth, white and red, in the reign of John, A.D. 1213, was much
used in England; and in the household expenses of Swinford, bishop of
Hereford, A.D. 1290, an item occurs of Irish cloth for lining.[252]
But our weavers knew how to throw off from their looms, artistically
designed and well-figured webs; in the “Wardrobe Accounts” of our
Edward II. we read this item: “to a mercer of London for a green
hanging of wool wove with figures of kings and earls upon it, for the
king’s service in his hall on solemn feasts at London.”[253] Such
“salles,” as they were called in France, and “hullings,” or rather
“hallings,” the name they went under here, were much valued abroad, and
in common use at home: under the head of “Salles d’Angleterre,” among
the articles of costly furniture belonging to Charles V. of France,
A.D. 1364, who began his reign some forty years after our Edward
II.’s death, one set of such hangings is thus put down: “une salle
d’Angleterre vermeille brodée d’azur, et est la bordeure à vignettes et
le dedens de lyons, d’aigles et de lyepars,” quoted from the MS. No.
8356, in the Imperial Library, Paris, by Michel;[254] while here in
England, Richard Earl of Arundel, A.D. 1392, willed to his dear wife
“the hangings of the hall which was lately made in London, of blue
tapestry with red roses with the arms of my sons,”[255] &c.; and Lady
Bergavenny, after bequeathing her hullying of black, red, and green, to
one friend, to another left her best stained hall.[256]
[252] Ed. Web. for the Camden Society, p. 193, t. i.
[253] Archæologia, t. xxvi. p. 344.
[254] Tom. i. p. 49.
[255] Test. Vetust. t. i. p. 130.
[256] Ibid. pp. 228, 229.
_Flemish_ textiles, at least of the less ambitious kinds, such as
napery and woollens, were much esteemed centuries ago, and our
countryman, Matthew of Westminster, says of Flanders, that from the
material--perhaps wool--which we sent her, she sent us back those
precious garments she wove.[257]
Though industrious everywhere within her limits, some of her towns
stood foremost for certain kinds of stuff, and Bruges became in
the latter end of the fifteenth century conspicuous for its silken
textiles. Here in England, the satins of Bruges were in great use
for church garments; in Haconbie church, A.D. 1566, was “one white
vestmente of Bridges satten repte in peces and a clothe made thereof
to hange before our pulpitt;”[258] and, A.D. 1520, York cathedral had
“a vestment of balkyn (baudekin) with a crosse of green satten in
bryges.”[259]
Her damask silks were equally in demand; and the specimens here
will interest the reader. Nos. 8318, p. 190, 8332, p. 197, show the
ability of the Bruges loom, while the then favourite pattern with the
pomegranate in it, betrays the likings of the Spaniards, at that time
the rulers of the country, for this token of their beloved Isabella’s
reconquered Granada. No. 8319, p. 191, is another sample of Flemish
weaving, rich in its gold, and full of beauty in design.
In her velvets, Flanders had no need to fear a comparison with anything
of the kind that Italy ever threw off from her looms, whether at
Venice, Florence, or Genoa, as the samples we have here under Nos.
8673, p. 254, 8674, p. 255, 8704, p. 264, will prove. Nay, this last
specimen, with its cloth of gold ground, and its pattern in a dark
blue deep-piled velvet, is not surpassed in gorgeousness even by that
splendid stuff from Florence yet to be seen in one of the copes for
Westminster Abbey given it by Henry VII.
Block-printed linen was, toward the end of the fourteenth century,
another production of Flanders, of which pieces may be seen at Nos.
7022, p. 118, 7027, p. 120, 8303, p. 184, 8615, p. 234. Though to
the eyes of many, these may look so poor, so mean; to men like the
cotton-printers of Lancashire and other places they will have a
strong attraction; to the scholar they will be deeply interesting as
suggestive of the art of printing. Such specimens are rare, but it is
likely that England can show, in the chapter library at Durham, the
earliest sample of the kind as yet known, in a fine sheet wrapped about
the body of some old bishop discovered, along with several pieces of
ancient silks, and still more ancient English embroidery, in a grave
opened by Mr. Raine, A.D. 1827, within that grand northern cathedral.
What Bruges was in silks and velvets Yprès, in the sixteenth century,
became for linen, and for many years Flemish linens had been in
favourite use throughout England. Hardly a church of any size, scarcely
a gentleman’s house in this country, but used a quantity of towels and
other napery that was made in Flanders, especially at Yprès.[260] Of
this textile instances may be seen at pp. 34, 73, 75, 124, 203, 205,
255, 263.
[257] Hist. p. 396, Frankfort, A.D. 1601.
[258] Church Furniture, ed. Peacock, p. 94.
[259] Fabric Rolls, p. 302.
[260] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 356.
_French_ silks, now in such extensive use, were until the end of the
sixteenth century not much cared for in France itself, and seldom
heard of abroad. The reader, then, must not be astonished at finding
so few examples of the French loom, in a collection of ancient silken
textiles.
France, as England, used of old to behold her women, old and young,
rich and poor, while filling up their leisure hours in-doors, at work
on a small loom, and weaving certain narrow webs, often of gold, and
diapered with coloured silks, as we mentioned before (p. xxii.) Of such
French wrought stuffs belonging to the thirteenth century, some samples
are described at pp. 29, 130, 131.
In damasks, her earliest productions are of the sixteenth century, and
are described at pp. 13, 205, 206; and the last is a favourable example
of what the loom then was in France; everything later is of that type
so well known to everybody. In several of her textiles a leaning
towards classicism in design is discernible.
Though so few, her cloths of gold, pp. 9, 15, are good, more especially
the fine one at p. 104.
Her velvets, too, pp. 14, 89, 106, are satisfactory.
Satins from France are not many here.
The curious and elaborately ornamented gloves, p. 105, which got into
fashion, especially for ladies, at the end of the sixteenth century,
will be a welcome object for such as are curious in the history of
women’s dress, in France and England.
Quilting, too, on coverlets, shown at pp. 13, 104, displays the taste
of our neighbours in such stitchery, so much in use among them and
ourselves from the sixteenth century.
Like Flanders, France knew how to weave fine linen, which here in
England was much in use for ecclesiastical as well as household
purposes. Three new cloths of Rains (Rennes in Brittany) were, A.D.
1327, in use for the high altar in Exeter cathedral,[261] and many
altar-cloths of Paris linen. In the poem of the “Squier of Low Degree,”
the lady is told
Your blankettes shal be of fustyane,
Your shetes shal be of cloths of rayne;
and, A.D. 1434, Joane Lady Bergavenny devises in her will, “two
pair sheets of Raynes, a pair of fustians,” &c.[262] For her
Easter “Sepulchre” Exeter had a pair of this Rennes sheeting; “par
linthiaminum de Raynys pro sepulchro.”[263]
[261] Oliver, p. 314.
[262] Test. Vet. i. 227.
[263] Oliver, p. 340.
_Cologne_, the queen of the Rhine, became famous during the whole of
the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth century for a certain kind of
ecclesiastical textile which, from the very general use to which it
has been applied, we have named “orphrey web.” Since by far the greater
part of this collection, as it now exists, had been made in Germany,
beginning with Cologne, it is, as might be expected, well supplied with
specimens of a sort of stuff, if not peculiar, at least abounding in
that country. Those same liturgical ornaments which Venice and Florence
wove with such artistic taste for Italian church use, Cologne succeeded
in doing for Germany. Her productions, however, are every way far below
in beauty Italy’s like works. The Italian orphrey-webs are generally
done in gold or yellow silk, upon a crimson ground of silk. Florence’s
are often distinguished from those of Venice by the introduction of
white for the faces; Cologne’s vary from both by introducing blue,
while the material is almost always very poor, and the weaving coarse.
The earliest specimen here of this Cologne orphrey-web is No. 8279, p.
174; but it is far surpassed by many others, such as are, for instance,
to be found at pp. 61, 62, 63, 64, 69, 80, 82, 116, 117, 118, 119, 174,
175, 252, 253. Among these some have noticeable peculiarities; No.
1329, p. 61, a good specimen, has the persons of the saints so woven
that the heads, hands, and emblems are wrought with the needle; the
same, too, in Nos. 7023, p. 118, and 8667, p. 252; in No. 1373, though
the golden ground looks very fresh and brilliant, the gilding process,
as on wood, has been employed. Here in England this orphrey web was in
church use and called “rebayn de Colayn.”[264]
The piece of German napery at No. 8317, p. 190, of the beginning of the
fifteenth century will be to those curious about household linen, an
acceptable specimen.
If by hazard while reading some old inventory of church vestments the
reader should stumble upon some entry mentioning a chasuble made of
cloth of Cologne, let him understand it to mean not a certain broad
textile woven there, but merely a vestment composed of several pieces
of this kind of web sewed together, just as was the frontal made out of
pieces of woven Venice orphreys at No. 8976, p. 271.
[264] Testamenta Eborac, iii. 13.
The countries whence silks came to us are numerous; with confidence,
however, we may say, that till the middle of the fifteenth century,
when we began to weave some of them for ourselves, the whole geography
of silken textiles lay within the basin of the Mediterranean to the
west, and the continent of Asia to the east.
Though mention is often made of tissues coming from various places,
those cities are always to be found upon the map we have just marked
out. Among those spoken of _Antioch_, _Tarsus_, _Alexandria_,
_Damascus_, _Byzantium_, _Cyprus_, _Trip_ or _Tripoli_, and _Bagdad_,
are easily recognized, as well as the later centres of trade and
manufacture, Venice, Genoa and Lucca. To fix the localities of a few
others would be but guess-work.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century is mentioned occasionally
a silk called “_Acca_,” and, from the description of it, it must have
been a cloth of gold shot with coloured silk, figured with animals:
William de Clinton, Earl of Huntingdon, gave to St. Alban’s monastery a
whole vestment of cloth of gold shot with sky-blue, and called cloth of
Acca; “unum vestimentum ... de panno quem Accam dicimus; cujus campus
est aerius. In reliquis vero partibus resultat auri fulgor.”[265] To
some it would look as if this stuff took its name from having been
brought to us through the port of Acre. We lean towards this belief
on finding, on the authority of Macri, in his valuable Hierolexicon,
Venice, 1735, pp. 5, 542, that so used to be written the name of the
ancient Ptolemais in Syria.
What in one age, and at a particular place, happened to be so well
made, and hence became so eagerly sought for, at a later period, and
in another place, got to be much better wrought and at a lower price.
Time, indeed, changed the name of the market, but did not alter in any
great degree either the quality of the material, or the style of the
design wrought upon it. All over the kingdom of the Byzantine Greeks
the loom had to change its gearing very little. The Saracenic loom,
whether in Asia, Africa, or Spain, was always Arabic, though Persia
could not forget her olden Zoroasterian traditions about the “hom”
or tree of life separating lions, and having all about lion-hunting
cheetahs, and birds of various sorts.
With regard to the whole of Asia, we learn that its many peoples,
from the earliest times, knew how not only to weave cloth of gold,
but figure it too with birds and beasts. Almost two thousand years
afterwards, Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, found exactly
the very same kinds of textile known in the days of Darius still
everywhere, from the shores of the Mediterranean to far Cathay, in
demand and woven. What he says of Bagdad, he repeats in fewer words
about many other cities.[266]
In finding their way to England these fabrics had given them not so
often the names of the places where they had been wrought, but, if not
in all, at least in most instances, the names of the seaports in the
Mediterranean where they had been shipped.
[265] Mon. Anglic. ii. 221.
[266] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1863.
For beautifully wrought and figured silk, of the few terms that still
outlive the mediæval period, one is _Damask_.
China, no doubt, was the first country to ornament its silken webs
with a pattern. India, Persia and Syria, then Byzantine Greece,
followed, but at long intervals between, in China’s footsteps. Stuffs
so figured brought with them to the west the name “diaspron” or diaper,
bestowed upon them at Constantinople. But about the twelfth century,
so very far did the city of Damascus, even then long celebrated for
its looms, outstrip all other places for beauty of design, that her
silken textiles were eagerly sought for everywhere, and thus, as often
happens, traders fastened the name of Damascen or Damask upon every
silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether
it came or not from Damascus. After having been for ages the epithet
betokening all that was rich and good in silk, “Samit” had to be
forgotten, and Diaper, from being the very word significant of pattern,
became a secondary term descriptive of merely a part in the elaborate
design on Damask.
_Baudekin_, that sort of costly cloth of gold spoken of so much during
so many years in English literature, took, as we said before, its
famous name from Bagdad.
Many are the specimens in this collection furnishing proofs of the
ancient weavers’ dexterity in their management of the loom, but
especially of the artists’ taste in setting out so many of their
intricate and beautiful designs.
What to some will be happily curious is that we have this very day
before our eyes pieces, in all likelihood, from the self-same web which
furnished the material, centuries ago, for vestments and ornaments used
of old in the cathedrals of England. Let any one turn to p. 122, and,
after looking at number 7036, compare that silk with this item in the
inventory of St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1225: “Item, Baudekynus rubeus
cum Sampsone constringente ora leonum,” &c.[267] See also number 8589,
and number 8235.
An identification between very many samples, brought together here, of
ancient textiles in silk, and the descriptions of such stuffs afforded
us in those valuable records--our old church inventories--might be
carried on, if necessary, to a very lengthened extent.
[267] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 328.
_Dorneck_ was the name given to an inferior kind of damask wrought
of silk, wool, linen thread and gold, in Flanders. Towards the end
of the fifteenth century, mostly at Tournay, which city, in Flemish,
was often called Dorneck--a word variously spelt as Darnec, Darnak,
Darnick, and sometimes even Darness.
The gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Boston had a care cloth of
silke dornex and church furniture.[268] The “care cloth” was a sort of
canopy held over the bride and bridegroom as they knelt for the nuptial
blessing, according to the Salisbury rite, at the marriage mass. At
Exeter it was used in chasubles for orphreys.[269] A specimen of Dornex
may be seen, No. 7058, p. 129. See also York Fabric Rolls, pp. 291,
297, 298, 300, 305.
[268] Peacock, p. 204.
[269] Oliver, pp. 359, 365.
_Buckram_, a cotton textile, has a history and a reputation somewhat
varied.
In our oldest inventories mention is often made of a “panus Tartaricus”
or Tartary cloth, which was, if not always, at least often purple.
Asia, especially in its eastern borders, became famous for the fine
textiles it wove out of cotton, and dyed in every colour. Cities got
for themselves a reputation for some especial excellence in their
looms, and as Mosul had the name of Muslin from that place given to the
fine and delicate cotton webs it wrought, so the term of buckram for
another sort of cotton textile came from the city of Bokhara in Tartary
where this cloth was made. All along the middle ages buckram was much
esteemed for being costly and very fine, and consequently fit for use
in church vestments, and for secular personal wear. John Grandison,
consecrated bishop of Exeter, A.D. 1327, gave to his cathedral flags
of white and red buckram;[270] and among the five very rich veils for
covering the moveable lectern in that church, three were lined with
blue “bokeram.”[271] As late as the beginning of the sixteenth century
this stuff was held good enough for lining to a black velvet gown for a
queen, Elizabeth of York.[272] The coarse thick fabric which now goes
by the name was anything but the olden production known as “bokeram.”
[270] Ib. p. 319.
[271] Ib. p. 329.
[272] Her Privy Purse Expenses, ed. Nicolas, p. 22, &c.
_Burdalisaunder_, _Bordalisaunder_, _Bourde de Elisandre_, with other
varieties in spelling, is a term often to be met with in old wills and
church inventories. In the year 1327 Exeter had a chasuble of Bourde de
Elisandre of divers colours.[273] It was wide enough for half a piece
to form the adornment of a high altar.[274]
The difficulty of understanding what this textile was will vanish when
we remember that in Arabic “bord” to this day means a striped cloth;
and we know, both from travellers and the importation of the textile
itself, that many tribes in North and Eastern Africa weave stuffs for
personal wear of a pattern consisting of white and black longitudinal
stripes. St. Augustin too, living in North Africa near the modern
Algiers, speaks of a stuff for clothing called “burda,” in the end of
the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. Burdalisaunder was a
silken web in different coloured stripes, and specimens of this, at
one time known as “stragulata” may be found here at pp. 21, 27, 33,
56, 57, 161, 225, 226, &c. Though made in so many places round the
Mediterranean, this silk took its name, at least in England, from
Alexandria, because it was to be had in that Egyptian city, always
celebrated for its silks, either better made or at a much lower price
than elsewhere.
In all likelihood the curtains for the tabernacle, as well as the
girdles for Aaron and his sons, of fine linen and violet and purple,
and scarlet twice dyed, were wrought with this very pattern, so that
in the “stragulata” or “burd Aliscaunder” we behold the oldest known
design for any textile.
[273] Oliver, p. 312.
[274] Yorkshire Wills. Part i. p. 174.
_Fustian_, of which two of its forms we still have in velveteen and
corduroy, was originally wove at Fustat, on the Nile, with a warp of
linen thread and a woof of thick cotton, which was so twilled and cut
that it showed on one side a thick but low pile; and the web so managed
took its name of Fustian from that Egyptian city. At what period it was
invented we do not rightly know, but we are well aware it must have
been brought to this country before the Normans coming hither, for our
Anglo-Saxon countryman, St. Stephen Harding, when a Cistercian abbot
and an old man, _circ._ A.D. 1114, forbade chasubles in his church to
be made of anything but fustian or plain linen: “neque casulas nisi
de fustaneo vel lino sine pallio aureo vel argenteo,” &c.[275] The
austerity of his rule reached even the ornament of the church. From
such a prohibition we are not to draw as a conclusion that fustian
was at the time a mean material; quite the contrary, it was a seemly
textile. Years afterwards, in the fourteenth century, Chaucer tells us
of his knight:--
Of fustian he wered a gepon.[276]
Fustian, so near akin to velvet, is more especially noticed along with
what is said upon that fine textile.
In the fifteenth century Naples had a repute for weaving fustians, but
our English churchwardens, not being learned in geography, made some
laughable bad spelling of this, like some other continental stuffs:
“Fuschan in appules,” for fustian from Naples, is droll; yet droller
still is “mustyrd devells,” for a cloth made in France at a town
called Mustrevilliers.
[275] Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, v. 225.
[276] The Prologue, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 3.
_Muslin_, as it is now throughout the world, so from the earliest
antiquity has been everywhere in Asia in favourite use, both as an
article of dress and as furniture. Its cloud-like thinness, its
lightness, were, as they still are to some Asiatics, not the only
charms belonging to this stuff: it was esteemed equally as much for
the taste in which stripes of gold had been woven in its warp. As we
learn from the travels of Marco Polo, the further all wayfarers in Asia
wandered among its eastern nations, the higher they found the point of
excellence which had been reached by those people in weaving silk and
gold into splendid fabrics. If the silkworm lived, nay, thrived there,
the cotton plant was in its home, its birth-place, in those regions.
Where stood Nineveh Mosul stands now.
Like many cities of Middle Asia, Mosul had earned for itself a
reputation of old for the beauty of its gold-wrought silken textiles.
Cotton grew all around in plenty; the inhabitants, especially the
women, being gifted with such quick feeling of finger, could spin
thread from this cotton of more than hair-like fineness. Cotton then
took with them, on many occasions, the place of silk in the loom;
but gold was not forgotten in the texture. This new fabric, not only
because it was so much cheaper, but from its own peculiar beauty and
comeliness, won for itself a high place in common estimation. At once,
and by the world’s accord, on it was bestowed as its distinctive name,
the name of the place where it was wrought in such perfection. Hence,
whether wove with or without gold, we call to this day this cotton web
Muslin, from the Asiatic city of Mosul.
_Cloth of Areste_ is another of those terms for woven stuffs which
students of textiles had never heard of were it not to be found in our
old English deeds and inventories. The first time we meet it is in an
order given, A.D. 1244, by Henry III. for finding two of these cloths
of Areste with which two copes had to be made for royal chapels: “Duos
pannos del Areste ad duas capas faciendas,” &c.[277] Again it comes
a few years later at St. Paul’s, which cathedral, A.D. 1295, had,
besides a dalmatic and tunicle of this silk--“de serico albo diasperato
de Arest,”[278]--as many as thirty and more hangings of this same
texture.[279]
From the description of these pieces we gather that this so-called
cloth of Areste must have been as beautiful as it was rich, being for
the most part cloth of gold figured elaborately, some with lions and
double-headed eagles, others, for example, with the death and burial
of our Lord--“campus aureus cum leonibus et aquilis bicapitibus de
aurifilo contextis--campus rubeus cum historia Passionis Domini et
sepulturæ ejusdem.” These designs speak of the looms at work in the
middle ages on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and we are much
strengthened in this thought by beholding how the death and burial
of our Lord, like the sample here, number 8278, p. 170-1, are shown
on a crimson ground, as we shall have to instance further on under
Symbolism, § VII.
That this sort of stuff, wove of silk and gold, was of any kind of
Arras, or made in that town, to our seeming is a very unhappy guess.
Arras had not won for itself a reputation for its tapestry before the
fourteenth century. Tapestry itself is too thick and heavy for use in
vestments; yet this cloth of Areste was light enough for tunicles, and
when worn out was sometimes condemned at St. Paul’s to be put aside for
lining other ritual garments--“ad armaturam faciendam.”[280] The term
“Areste” has little or nothing in it common to the word “Arras,” as
written either in French, or under its Latin appellation “Atrebatum.”
Among the three meanings for the mediæval “Aresta,” one is, any kind of
covering. To us, then, it seems as if these cloths of Areste took their
name not from the place whereat they had been wove, but from the use to
which, if not always, for the most part, we put them--that of hangings
about our churches, since in the St. Paul’s inventory they are usually
spoken of as such--“culcitræ pendules, panni penduli.”[281] Moreover,
tapestry, or Arras work, being thick and heavy, could never have been
employed for such light use as that of apparels, nor would it have been
diapered like silk, yet we find it to have been so fashioned and so
used--“maniculariis apparatis quodam panno rubeo diasperato de Laret,
&c.”[282]
[277] Excerpta Historica, p. 404.
[278] St. Paul’s Cathedral, ed. Dugdale, p. 322.
[279] Ibid. p. 329.
[280] St. Paul’s Cathedral, ed. Dugdale, p. 329.
[281] Ibid. p. 329.
[282] Ibid. p. 335.
For not a few it would be hard to understand some at least among those
epithets meant in by-gone days to tell how
SILKS WERE DISTINGUISHED THROUGH THEIR COLOURS AND SHADES OF COLOUR.
To the inventories of vestments and church-stuffs of all sorts must we
go to gather the information which we want about the textiles in use in
this country at any particular period during by-gone days. The men who
had, in the thirteenth century, the drawing up of such lists, seem to
have been gifted with a keen eye for the varieties of shade and tints
in the colour of silks then before them. For instance, a chasuble at
St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, is set down thus:--“De sameto purpureo
aliquantulum sanguineo”--that is, made of samit (a thick silk) dyed
in a purple somewhat bordering on a blood-red tone. Such language is
unmistakable; not so, however, many other terms at the time in common
use, and though well understood then, are now not so intelligible.
We are told in the same inventory[283] several times of a “pannus
Tarsicus,” a Tarsus cloth, and of a “pannus Tarsici coloris,” a Tarsus
coloured cloth. What may have been the distinctive qualities of the
stuffs woven at Tarsus, what the peculiar beauty in that tint to which
that once so celebrated city had given its own name, we cannot say.
We think, however, those Tarsus textiles were partly of silk, partly
of fine goats’ hair, and for this reason Varro tells[284]--“Tondentur
(capræ) quod magnis villis sunt, in magna parte Phrygiæ; unde Cilicia,
et cætera ejus generis ferri solent. Sed, quod primum ea tonsura in
Cilicia sit instituta, nomen id Cilicas adjecisse dicunt.” Goats are
shorn in a great part of Phrygia, because there they have long shaggy
hair. Cilicia (the Latin for hair cloths) and other things of the
same sort, are usually brought from that country. For the reason that
in Cilicia such a shearing of goats arose, they say that the name of
Cilician was given to such stuffs woven of goats’ hair. As Tarsus is,
so always was it, the head city in all that part of Asia Minor known of
old as Phrygia. Hence then we think that--
[283] Pp. 322, 323.
[284] De Re Rustica, lii. cap. xi.
_Cloth of Tarsus_, _of Tars_, &c., was woven of fine goats’ hair and
silk. But this web was in several colours, and always looked upon as
very costly.
The _Tarsus colour_ itself was, as we take it, some shade of purple
differing from, and perhaps to some eyes more beautiful than, the
Tyrian dye. The people of Tarsus no doubt got from their murex, a
shell-fish of the class mollusca and purpurifera family to be found on
their coast, their dyeing matter; and when it is borne in mind what
changes are wrought in the animal itself by the food it eats, and
what strong effects are made by slight variations in climate, even
atmosphere, upon materials for colouring in the moments of application,
we may easily understand how the difference arose between the two tints
of purple.
We are strengthened in our conjecture that not only was the cloth of
Tarsus of a rare and costly kind, but its tint some shade of royal
purple, from the fact that while noticing the robes worn on a grand
public occasion by a king, Chaucer thus sketches the prince:--
The gret Emetrius, the king of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
His cote armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, &c.[285]
[285] Knightes Tale, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 64-5.
_Sky-blue_ was a liturgical colour everywhere in use for certain
festivals throughout England, as we have shown in another place.[286]
In the early inventories the name for that tint is “Indicus,” “Indus,”
reminding us of our present _indigo_. In later lists it is called
“Blodius,” not sanguinary, but blue.
[286] Church of our Fathers, t. ii. p. 259.
_Murrey_, or a reddish brown, is often specified; and a good specimen
of the tint is given us, No. 709, p. 9. Old St. Paul’s, London, had
several pieces of baudekin of this colour: “baudekynus murretus cum
griffonibus datus pro anima. Alphonsi filii regis E.”[287]
Going far down, and much below the middle ages, Purple, in all its
tones, and tints, and shades, was spoken of and looked upon as
allowable to be worn in garments only to worshipful, ennobled, or royal
personages. Whether it glowed with the brightness it seemed to have
stolen from the rose, or wore its darkest tone it could borrow from
the violet, whether it put on any one of those hundred shades to be
found between those two extremes, it mattered not; it was gazed at with
an admiring, a respectful eye. Eagerly sought out, and bought at high
price, were those textiles that showed this colour, and had been dyed
at Tyre, Antioch, Tarsus, Alexandria, Byzantium, or Naples. All these
places were at one time or another, in days of old, famous for their
looms, no less than their ability in the dyeing, especially of purple,
among the nations living on the shores of the Mediterranean; and each
of them had in its own tone a shade which distinguished it from that
of all the others. What the tint of purple was which established this
difference we cannot at this distance of time, and with our means
of knowing, justly say. Of this, however, we are perfectly aware,
that silks of purple usually bore their specific name from those
above-named cities, as we perceive while reading the old inventories
of our churches and cathedrals. Moreover, our native writers let us
know that, if not always from Greece, it was through that country
that purple textiles were brought to England. Besides speaking of a
conversation held about, beside other things, the produce of Greece in
purple silks--“Græcorum purpuris, et pannis holosericis”--Gerald Barry
gives us to understand that in his days not only were our churches
sumptuously hung with costly palls and purple silks, but that these
textiles were the work of Grecian looms--“rex (Willielmus Rufus)
ecclesiam quandam (in nova foresta) intraret quam adeo pulchram et
decentius ornatam auletis historicis, et pretiosis Græcorum palliis,
pannis holosericis et purpureis undique vestitam,” &c.[288]
Silks woven of two colours, so that one of them showed itself unmixed
and quite distinct on one side, and the second appeared equally clean
on the other--a thing sometimes now looked upon as a wonder in modern
weaving--might occasionally be met with here at the mediæval period:
Exeter Cathedral had, A.D. 1327:--“Unus pannus sericus curtus rubei
coloris interius et crocei coloris exterius.”[289]
[287] St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 328, &c.
[288] Giraldus Cambrensis, De Instructione Principum, pp. 168-173.
[289] Oliver, p. 316.
_Shot_, or, as they were then called, _changeable_ silks, were
fashionable in England during the sixteenth century, for when the
King’s (Edward VI.) Lord of Misrule rode forth with great pageantry,
among other personages there came “afor xx. of ys consell on horsbake
in gownes of chanabulle lynyd with blue taffata and capes of the sam,
like sage (men); then cam my lord with a gowne of gold furyd,” &c.[290]
At York Cathedral, A.D. 1543, there was “a vestment of changeable
silke,”[291] “besides one of changeable taffety for Good Friday.”[292]
[290] Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. Nichols for the Camden Society, p. 13.
[291] Fabric Rolls, p. 301.
[292] Ibid. p. 311.
_Marble_ silk had a weft of several colours so put together and woven
as to make the whole web look like marble, stained with a variety of
tints; hence it got its name. In the year 1295 St. Paul’s had “paruram
de serico marmoreo”[293]--an apparel of marble silk; “tunica de quodam
panno marmoreo spisso”[7]--a tunicle of a certain thick marble cloth;
“tunica de diaspro marmoreo spisso”[294]--a tunicle of thick diaper
marble; “casula marmorei coloris”[295]--a chasuble of marble colour.
During full three centuries this marble silk found great favour among
us since H. Machyn, in his very valuable and curious Diary tells his
readers how “the old Qwyne of Schottes rod thrught London,” and how
“then cam the Lord Tresorer with a C. gret horsse and ther cotes of
marbull,”[9] &c., to meet her the 6th of November, A.D. 1551.[296]
[293] Ibid. p. 320.
[294] Ibid. p. 322.
[295] Ibid. p. 323.
[296] Pp. 11, 12.