A metaphor or figurative speech is the utterance to the understanding
through the ear of words which have other and further meanings in
them than their first one. Symbolism is the bringing to our thoughts,
through the eye, some natural object, some human personage, some
art-wrought figure, which is meant to set forth a some one, or a
something else besides itself.
The use of both arose among men when they first began to dwell on earth
and live together. Through symbolism, and the phonetic system, Egypt
struck out for herself her three alphabets--the hieroglyphic or picture
writing; the hieratic or priestly characters, or shortened form of
the hieroglyphics; and the enchorial or people’s alphabet, a further
abridgment still. The Hebrew letters are the conventional symbols of
things in nature or art; and even yet, each keeps the name of the
object which at first it represented; as “aleph” or “ox,” “beth” or
“house,” “gimel” or “camel,” &c.
Holy Writ is full of symbolism; and from the moment that we begin to
read those words--“I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be
the sign of a covenant,”[409] till we reach the last chapter in the
New Testament, we shall, all throughout, come upon many most beautiful
and appropriate examples. The blood sprinkled upon the door-posts of
the Israelites; the brazen serpent in the wilderness; that sign--that
mystic and saving sign (Tau) of Ezekiel, were, each and every one of
them symbols.
[409] Gen. ix. 13.
Being given to understand that things which happened to the Jews were
so many symbols for us, the early Christian Church figured on the
walls of the catacombs many passages from ancient Jewish history as
applicable to itself, while its writers bestowed much attention on the
study of symbolism. S. Melito, bishop of Sardes, A.D. 170, drew out of
scripture a great many texts which would bear a symbolical meaning, and
gave to his work the name of “The Key.” Almost quite forgotten, and
well nigh lost, this valuable book, after long and unwearied labour,
was at last found and printed by Dom (now Cardinal) Pitra in his
Spicilegium Solesmense, t. ii. Among other works from the pen of St.
Epiphanius, born A.D. 310, we have his annotations on a book, then old,
and called “The Physiologist,” and a work of his own--a treatise on the
twelve stones worn by Aaron,[410] in both of which, the Saint speaks
much about symbolism. But the fourth century witnessed the production
of the two great works on Scriptural Symbolism; that of St. Basil in
his homilies on the six days’ creation;[411] which sermons in Greek
were styled by their writer “Hexæmeron;” and the other by St. Ambrose,
in Latin, longer and more elaborated, on the same subject and bearing
the same title. A love for such a study grew up with the church’s
growth everywhere, from the far east to the utmost west, amid Greeks
as well as Latins, all of whom beheld, in their several liturgies,
many illustrations of the system. It was not confined to clerics, but
laymen warmly followed it. The artist, whether he had to set forth
his work in painting or mosaic; the architects, whether they were
entrusted with the raising of a church, or building a royal palace, nay
a dwelling-house, were, each of them, but too glad to avail themselves,
under clerical guidance, of such a powerful help for beautiful variety
and happy illustration as was afforded them by Christian Symbolism.
So systematized at last became this subject that by the eleventh
century we find it separated into three branches--beasts, birds, and
stones--and works were written upon each. Those upon beasts were, as
they still are, known by the title of “Bestiaria,” or books on beasts;
“Volucraria,” on birds, and “Lapideria,” on stones. About the same
period, as an offset from symbolism, heraldry sprang up; whether the
crusaders were the first to bethink themselves of such a method for
personal recognition and distinction; or whether they borrowed the
idea from the peoples in the east, and while adopting, much improved
upon it, matters not; heraldry grew out of symbolism. Very soon it was
made to tell about secular as well as sacred things; and poets, nay
political partizans were quick in their learning of its language. The
weaver too of silken webs was often bade, while gearing his loom, to be
directed by its teaching, as several specimens in this collection will
testify. That some of the patterns, made up of beasts and birds, upon
silken stuffs from Sicilian, or Italian looms and here before us, were
sketched by a partizan pencil and advisedly meant to carry about them
an historic, if not political signification, we do not for a moment
doubt. Several instances of sacred symbolism here, have been specified,
and some explanation of it given.
[410] Exod. xxviii.
[411] Gen. i.
The “gammadion,” or the cross made thus 卐 a figure which, as we said
before, is to be seen traced upon the earliest heathenish art-works, as
well as the latest mediæval ones for Christian use, may be often found
wrought on textiles here.
Knowing, as we do, that the first time this symbol shows itself to our
eyes, is in the pattern figured on a web of the Pharaonic period, it is
to the early history of Egypt we ought to go, if we wish to learn its
origin and meaning.
The most astounding event of the world’s annals was the going out of
Israel from Egypt. The blood of the lamb slain and sacrificed the
evening before, and put upon both the door-posts, as well as sprinkled
at the threshold of the house wherein any Hebrew dwelt--a sign of
safety from all harm and death to man and beast, within its walls, on
that awful night when throughout all Egypt the first-born of everything
else was killed--must have caught the sight of every wonder-stricken
Egyptian father and mother who, while weeping over their loss, heard
that death had not gone in to do the work of slaughter where the blood
had signed the gates of every Israelite.
Among the Hebrew traditions, handed down to us by the Rabbins, one is
that the mark made by the Israelites upon their door-posts with the
blood of the sacrificed lamb, the night before starting out of Egypt,
was fashioned like the letter Tau made after its olden form, that is,
in the shape of a cross, thus +.
What is still more curious, we are told that the lamb itself was
spitted as if it had been meant to bear about its body, an unmistakable
likeness to a kind of crucifixion. Treating of the passover, the Talmud
says:--The ram or kid was roasted in an oven whole, with two spits made
of pomegranate wood thrust through it, the one lengthwise, the other
transversely (crossing the longitudinal one near the fore-legs) thus
forming a cross.[412] Precisely the same thing is said by St. Justin,
martyr, born A.D. 103, in his Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew. This very
mode of roasting is expressed in Arabic by the verb “to crucify;”
according to Jahn, in his “Biblical Antiquities,” § 142, as quoted by
Kitto, under the word Passover.[413]
[412] Pesachim, c. 3.
[413] T. ii. p. 477 of the “Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature.”
From the words of St. Jerome, it would seem that that learned hebraist,
well knowing, as he did, the traditions of the rabbins of his day, had
understood from them that the mark of the lamb’s blood sprinkled on the
doors of the Israelites going out of Egypt, had been so made as to take
the shape of a cross.
Deeply smitten as the whole of Egypt must have been at the woe that
befel them and theirs, the night before the great exode of the
Israelites from among them, those Egyptians could not help seeing
how all the Hebrews, their children, and their flocks had gone forth
scatheless out of that death-stricken land. At peep of dawn, the blood
upon the door-posts of every house where an Israelite had lately
dwelt, told the secret; for the destroyer had not been there. From
that hour, a Tau was thought by them to be the symbol of health and
safety, of happiness, and future life. St. Epiphanius, born A.D. 310,
in Palestine, for many years Archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and a
great traveller in Egypt, tells us, that being mindful of that day on
which the Israelites who had besmeared the door-posts of their houses
with the blood of the lamb, had been spared the angel’s death-stroke,
the Egyptian people were accustomed, at every vernal equinox--their new
year--to daub, with red paint, their doors, their trees, and animals,
the while they cried out that, “once at this time fire blighted every
thing;” against such a plague, they think that the remedy is a spell in
the colour of blood: “Egyptios memores illius diei quo a cæde angeli
liberati sunt Israelitæ qui agni sanguine postes domorum illinierant,
solitos esse, intrante æquinoctio vernanti, accipere rubricam et
illinere omnes arbores domosque clamantes ‘quia in tempore hoc ignis
vastavit omnia’ contra quam luem remedium putant ignis colorem
sanguineum rubricæ.”[414]
[414] Hæreses, xviii.
While they found blood upon the departed and unharmed Israelites’
door-posts, the sorrowing Egyptians must have seen that it had been
sprinkled there, not at hazard, but with the studied purpose of making
therewith the Egyptian letter Tau, as it used to be fashioned at the
time. But what was then its common shape? That the old Tau was a cross,
we are told by written authority, and learn from monumental evidence.
Learned as he was in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses, no doubt,
wrote with the letters of their alphabet. Now, the oldest shape of the
Tau in the Hebrew alphabet, and still kept up among the Samaritans in
St. Jerome’s days, was in the form of a cross: “Antiquis Hebræorum
literis, quibus usque hodie Samaritæ utuntur, extrema Tau crucis habet
similitudinem, quæ in Christianorum frontibus pingitur et frequentius
manus inscriptione signatur.”[415] For monumental testimony we refer
the reader to the proofs we have given, at large, in “Hierurgia,”
pp. 352-355, second edition. Strengthening our idea that the lamb’s
blood had been put on the door-post in the shape of a cross, and that
hence the old Egyptians had borrowed it as a spell against evil hap,
and a symbol of a life hereafter, is a passage set forth, first by
Rufinus, A.D. 397, and then by Socrates, A.D. 440:--“On demolishing
at Alexandria a temple dedicated to Serapis, were observed several
stones sculptured with letters called hieroglyphics, which showed the
figure of a cross. Certain Gentile inhabitants of the city who had
lately been converted to the Christian faith, initiated in the method
of interpreting these enigmatic characters, declared that the figure of
the cross was considered as the symbol of future life.”[416] We know
that, while the old Tau kept the shape of a cross, it took at least
three modifications of that form on those monuments which, up to this
time, have been brought to light: others may turn up with that letter
traced exactly like the so-called “gammadion” found upon an Egyptian
stuff of such an early date. Most probably this was the very shape, but
with shorter arms, of the letter found traced upon the door-posts.
[415] Hier. in cap. ix. Ezech.
[416] Hist. Eccles. lib. v. c. 17.
The recurrence of the gammadion upon Christian monuments is curious.
We find it shown upon the tunic of a gravedigger in the catacombs; it
comes in among the ornamentation wrought upon the gold and parcel-gilt
altar-frontal dome by our Anglo-Saxon countryman Walwin for the
Ambrosian basilican church at Milan; it is seen upon the narrow border
round some embroidery of the twelfth century, lately found within
a shrine in Belgium, and figured by that untiring archæologist the
Canon Voisin of Tournay; and upon a piece of English needlework of the
latter half of the same twelfth century--the mitre of our St. Thomas,
figured by Shaw, and still kept at Sens cathedral. As a favourite
element in the pattern worked upon our ecclesiastical embroideries,
this “gammadion” is as conspicuously shown upon the apparel round the
shoulders, and on the one in front of his alb, in the effigy of Bishop
Edington, at Winchester cathedral, as upon the vestments of a priest
in a grave-brass at Shottesbrook church, Berks, given by Waller in his
fine work.
Always keeping up its heathenish signification of a “future life,”
Christianity widened the meaning of this symbol, and made it teach
the doctrine of the Atonement through the death of our Lord upon a
cross. Furthermore, it set forth that He is our corner-stone. About
the thirteenth century, it was taken to be an apt memorial of His
five wounds; and remembering the stigmata or five impressions in the
hands, feet, and side of St. Francis of Assisi, this gammadion became
the favourite device of such as bore that famous saint’s name, and was
called in England, after its partial likeness to the ensigne of the
Isle of Man--three feet--a fylfot.[417]
[417] M. S. Harley, 874, p. 190.
To the symbolic meaning affixed unto some animals, we have pointed in
the catalogue, wherein, at p. 156, the reader will find that Christ,
as God, is typified under the figure of a lion, under that again of
the unicorn, as God-man. Man’s soul, at pp. 237, 311, is figured as
the hare; mischief and lubricity are, at p. 311, shadowed forth in the
likeness of the monkey.
Birds often come in here as symbols; and of course we behold the lordly
eagle very frequently. Bearing in mind how struggled the two great
factions of the Guelphs whose armorial arms were “un’ Aquila con un
Drago sotto i piedi”--an eagle with a dragon under its feet--and the
Ghibellini, we do not wonder at finding the noble bird, sometimes
single, sometimes double-headed, so frequently figured on silks woven
in Sicily, or on the Italian peninsula, triumphing over his enemy, the
dragon or Ghibelline stretched down before him. About the emblematic
eagle of classic times we have already spoken.
If the Roman Quintus Curtius, like the Greeks before him, was in
amazement at certain birds in India, so quick in mimicking the human
voice: “aves ad imitandum humanæ vocis sonum dociles,”[418] we
naturally expect to find the parrot figured, as we do here, upon stuffs
from Asia, or imitations of such webs.
Famous, in eastern story, are those knowing birds--and they were
parrots--that, on coming home at evening, used to whisper unto
Æthiopia’s queen (whom Englishmen not till the sixteenth century began
to call Sheba, but all the world besides called and yet calls Saba)
each word and doing, that day, of the far-off Solomon, or brought
round their necks letters from him. Out of this Talmudic fable grew
the method with artists during the fifteenth century of figuring
one of the wise men as very swarthy--an Æthiopian--under the name
of Balthasar, taking as their warrant, a work called “Collectaneæ,”
erroneously assigned to our own Beda; and because our Salisbury books
for the liturgy, sang, as all the old liturgies yet sing, on the feast
of the Epiphany:--“All shall come from Saba”--the name of the country
as well as of that queen who once governed it--“bringing gold and
frankincense,” &c. those mediæval artists deemed it proper to show
somewhere about the wise men, parrots, as sure to have been brought
among the other gifts, especially from the land of Saba. Upon a cope,
belonging now to Mount St. Mary’s, Chesterfield, made of very rich
crimson velvet, there is beautifully embroidered by English hands,
the arrival at Bethlehem of the three wise men. In the orphrey, on
that part just above the hood, are figured in their proper colours two
parrots, as those may remember who saw it in the Exhibition here of
1862; on textiles before us this bird is often shown. The appearance of
the parrot on the vestments at old St. Paul’s is very frequent.[419]
[418] Lib. viii. cap. 9.
[419] Dugdale, p. 317.
But of the feathered tribe which we meet with figured on these
textiles, there are three that merit an especial mention through the
important part they were made to take, whilom in England at many a
high festival and regal celebration--we mean the so-called “_Vow of
the Swan, the Peacock and the Pheasant_.” From the graceful ease--the
almost royal dignity with which it walks the waters, the swan with its
plumage spotless and white as driven snow, has everywhere been looked
upon with admiring eyes; and its flesh while yet a cygnet used to be
esteemed a dainty for a royal board, on some extraordinary occasions.
To make it the symbol of majestic beauty in a woman, it had sometimes
given it a female’s head. Among the gifts bestowed on his son, Richard
II. by the Black Prince, in his will were bed-hangings embroidered with
white swans having women’s heads. To raise this bird still higher, in
ecclesiastical symbolism, it is put forth to indicate a stainless, more
than royal purity; and as such, is often linked with and figured under
the Blessed Virgin Mary, as is shown upon an enamelled morse given in
the “Church of our Fathers.”[420]
Besides all this, the swan owns a curious legend of its own, set
forth by some raving troubadour in the wildest dream that minstrel
ever dreamed. “The life and myraculous hystory of the most noble
and illustryous Helyas, knight of the swanne, and the birth of y^e
excellent knight Godfrey of Boulyon,” &c., was once a book in great
favour throughout Europe; and was “newly translated and printed by
Robert Copland, out of Frensshe in to Englisshe at thinstigacion of y^e
Puyssaunt and Illustryous Prynce Lorde Edwarde Duke of Buckyngham--of
whom lynyally is dyscended my sayde lorde.”[421]
[420] T. ii. p. 41.
[421] Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, ed. Dibdin, t. iii.
pp. 152-3.
While our noble countryman boasted of an offspring from this fabled
swan, so did the greatest houses abroad. In private hands in England
is a precious ivory casket wrought on its five panels, before us in
photography, with this history of the swan. Helyas’s shield and flag
are ensigned with St. George’s cross; the armour tells of England and
its military appliances, about the end of the fourteenth century; and
the whole seems the work of English hands. At the great exhibition
of loans in this museum, A.D. 1862, one of the many fine textiles
then shown was a fine but cut-down chasuble of blue Sicilian silk,
upon which was, curiously enough for what we have said about the
birds before which the “Vow” was made, figured, amid other fowls the
pheasant. The handsome orphreys upon this vestment were wrought in this
country, and good specimens they are of English needlework during the
fourteenth century. These orphreys, before and behind, are embroidered
on a bright red silk ground, with golden flower and leaf-bearing
branches, so trailed as, in their twinings, to form Stafford knots in
places, and to embower shields of arms each supported by gold swans
all once ducally gorged. From these and other bearings on it, this
chasuble would seem to have been worked for the Staffords, Dukes of
Buckingham. At Corby Castle there is an altar frontal of crimson velvet
made for and figured with the great Buckingham and his Duchess both
on their knees at the foot of a crucifix. Amid a sprinkling of the
Stafford knot, for the Duke (Henry VIII. beheaded him) was Earl of
Stafford, the swan is shown, and the Lord Stafford of Cossey, in whose
veins the blood of the old Buckingham still runs, gives a silver swan
as one of his armorial supporters. At Lincoln cathedral there were:--A
cope of red cloth of gold with swans of gold;[422] and a cope of purple
velvet having a good orphrey set with swans.[423]
In mediæval symbolism, as read by Englishmen, the swan was deemed
not only a royal bird, but, more than that, one of the tokens of
royal prowess. Hence we may easily understand why our great warrior
king, Edward I., as he sat feasting in Westminster Hall, amid all the
chivalry, old and young of the kingdom, on such a memorable day, should
have had brought before him the two swans in their golden cages:--“tunc
allati sunt in pompatica gloria duo cygni vel olores, ante regem,
phalerati retibus aureis, vel fistulis deauratis, desiderabile
spectaculum, intuentibus. Quibus visis, rex votum vovit Deo cœli et
cygnis, se proficisci in Scotiam,” &c.[424] And then solemnly made the
“Vow of the Swan,” as we described, p. 287 of the Catalogue.
[422] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282.
[423] Ibid.
[424] Flores Historiarum, per Matt. Westmonast. Collectæ, p. 454.
In the pride of place, on such occasions, abreast with the swan stood
the peacock, “with his angel fethers bright;” and was at all times and
everywhere looked upon as the emblem of beauty. Not a formal banquet
was ever given, at one period, without this bird being among the
dishes; in fact, the principal one. To prepare it for the table, it
had been killed and skinned with studious care. When roasted, it was
sewed up in its skin after such an artistic way that its crested head
and azure neck were kept, as in nature, quite upright; and its fan-like
tail outspread; and then, put in a sitting position on a large broad
silver dish parcel gilt, used to be brought into the hall with much
solemnity.
On the last day of a tournament, its gay festivities ended in a more
than usual sumptuous banqueting. The large baronial hall was hung all
over with hangings, sometimes figured with a romance, sometimes with
scenes such as we read of in “The Flower and the Leaf;” and because
trees abounded on them, were known as tapestry of “verd.” At top of and
all along the travers ran the minstrel-gallery, and thither--
Come first all in their clokes white,
A company, that ware for their delite,
Chapelets fresh of okes seriall,
Newly sprong, and trumpets they were all.
On every trumpe hanging a broad banere
Of fine tartarium were full richely bete,
Every trumpet his lordes arms bare,
About their neckes with great pearles sete
Collers brode, for cost they would not lete, &c.[425]
From among those high-born damosels who had crowded thither, one was
chosen as the queen of beauty. When all the guests had gathered in that
dining-hall, and been marshalled in their places by the herald, and the
almoner had said grace, and set the “grete almes disshe of silver and
overgilt, made in manner of a shippe full of men of armes feyghtyng
upon the shippe syde weyng in all lxvii lb ix un[=c] of troye,”[426] at
the high board under the dais, a bold fanfar was flourished upon silver
trumpets, from which drooped silken flags embroidered with the blazon
of that castle’s lord, or--
Of gold ful riche, in which ther was ybete
some quaint device. Then a burst of music from the minstrel-gallery
arose as came in the queen of beauty. Her kirtle was of ciclatoun,
cloth of pall, or sparkling tissue:--
To don honour (to that day)
Yclothed was she fresshe for to devise.
Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse,
Behind hire back a yerde long I gesse;
And in the gardin at the sonne uprist,
She walketh up and doun wher as her list.
She gathereth floures, partie white and red,
To make a sotel gerlond for hire hed.[427]
One at each side of her, walked two of the youngest bachelors in
chivalry. These youths did not wear their harness, but came arrayed in
gay attire, having on white hoods, perhaps embroidered with dancing men
in blue habits, like the one given by Edward III. to the Lord Grey of
Rotherfield, to be worn at a tournament; or looking,[428] each of them,
like the “yonge Squier,” of whom Chaucer said:--
Embrouded was he, as it were a mede,
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and red.[429]
[425] Chaucer, The Flower and the Leaf, v. 207, &c.
[426] Antient Kalendars of the Exchequers, ed. Palgrave, ii. p. 184.
[427] Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, v. 1050.
[428] Dugdale’s Baronage, i. 723.
[429] The Prologue, v. 79.
Treading out sweetness from the bay leaves strewed among the rushes on
the floor, and with step as stately as the peacock’s own, the queen of
beauty for the nonce, bearing in both her hands the splendid charger
with the bird--the symbol of herself--slowly paced the hall. Halting on
a sudden, she set it down before the knight who, by general accord, had
borne him best throughout that tournament; such was the ladies’ token
of their praises. To carve well at table was one of the accomplishments
of ancient chivalry; and our own King Arthur was so able in that gentle
craft, that on one occasion he is said to have cut up a peacock so
cleverly that every one among the one hundred and fifty guests had a
morsel of the fowl. To show himself as good a knight at a feast as at
a passage of arms, the lady bade him carve the bird. What the lances
of his antagonists could not do, this meed of praise from the ladies
did--it overcame him. With deference, he humbly pleaded that many a
doughty knight there present was more worthy of the honour: all his
words were wasted. The queen of beauty would brook no gainsaying to her
behest. He therefore bowed obedience, and she went away. Ere applying
himself to his devoir, outstretching his right hand on high above the
dish before him, amid the deepest silence, and in a ringing voice, so
as to be well heard by all that noble presence, the knight vowed his
vow of the peacock. Almost always this vow was half religious, half
military; and he who took it bound himself to go on pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and, on his road thither or homeward, to join, as he might,
any crusade against the Paynim.
Hardly had the words of such a plight been uttered, when other knights
started up at every table, and bound themselves by his or some like vow.
The dinner done, the feast was not quite over. Plucking from its tail
the best and brightest of the peacock’s feathers, the beauty-queen wove
them into a diadem; the minstrel who had long distinguished himself,
was summoned by a pursuivant and brought before her; and she crowned
him as he knelt lowly down. Ever afterwards, at festival or tournament,
this music king wore this crown about his hat as blithely as did the
knight his lady’s glove or favour on his helmet, at a joust. Such was--
Vowis of Pecok, with all ther proude chere.
Sometimes a pheasant, on account of its next beautiful plumage, used to
be employed, instead of the larger, grander peacock.
With these facts set before him, any visitor to this collection will
take a much more lively interest in so precious a piece of English
embroidery as is the Syon cope, for while looking at it in admiration
of the art-work shown in such a splendid church vestment, he finds,
where he never thought of coming on, a curious record of our ancient
national manners.
Besides all that has been said in reference to this cope, at pp. 289-90
of the Catalogue, we would remind our reader that at easy distances
from Coventry might be found such lordly castles as those of Warwick,
Kenilworth, Chartley, Minster Lovel, Tamworth. The holding of a
tournament within their spacious walls, or in the fields beside them,
was, we may be certain, of frequent occurrence at some one or other of
them. The tilting was followed by the banquet and the “vow;” and the
vow by its fulfilment from those barons bold, who bore in their own
day the stirring names of Beauchamp, Warwick, Ferrers, Geneville, or
Mortimer. Of one or other of them might be said:--
At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.
Ful often time he hadde the bord begonne
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
In Gernade at the siege eke hadde he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene
In listes thries, and ay slain his fo.[430]
[430] Chaucer, The Prologue, vv. 51, &c.
At Warwick itself, and again at Temple Balsall, not far off, the
Knights Templars held a preceptory, and, as it is likely, aggregated
to the Coventry gild, had their badge--the Holy Lamb--figured on its
vestment. Proud of all its brotherhood, proud of those high lords
who had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, figured by the Star of
Bethlehem, and had done battle with the Moslem, according to the vow
signified by the swan and peacock, the Coventry gild caused to be
embroidered on the orphrey of their fine old cope, the several armorial
bearings of those among their brotherhood who had swelled the fame of
England abroad; and by putting those symbols--the swan and the peacock,
the star and crescent--close by their blazons, meant to remind the
world of those festive doings which led each of them to work such deeds
of hardihood.
In the fourteenth century a fashion grew up here in England of figuring
symbolism--heraldic and religious--upon the articles of dress, as we
gather from specimens here, as well as from other sources. The ostrich
feather, first assumed by our Black Prince, was a favourite device
with his son Richard II. for his flags and personal garments. This
is well shown in the illumination given, p. 31, of the “Deposition
of Richard II.,” published by the Antiquarian Society. That king’s
mother had bequeathed to him a new bed of red velvet, embroidered with
ostrich feathers of silver, and heads of leopards of gold, with boughs
and leaves issuing out of their mouths.[431] Through family feeling,
not merely the white swan, but this cognizance of the Yorkists--the
ostrich feather--was sometimes figured on orphreys for church copes and
chasubles, since in the Exeter, A.D. 1506, we find mentioned a cope,
“le orfrey de rubeo damasco operato de opere acuali cum rosis aureis
ac ostryge fethers insertis in rosis,” &c.;[432] and again, “le orfrey
de blodio serico operata de opere acuali cum cignis albis et ostryge
fethers--i casula de blodio serico operata opere acuali cum ostryge
fethers sericis, le orfrey de rubeo serico operato cum ostryge fethers
aureis.”[433] Lincoln Cathedral, too, had a cope of red damask, with
ostriges feathers of silver.[434] This somewhat odd element of design
for a textile is to be found on one here, No. 7058, p. 129.
[431] Testamenta Vetusta, i. 14.
[432] Ed. Oliver, p. 347.
[433] Ibid. p. 365.
[434] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282, ed. Caley.
To eyes like our own, accustomed to see nowhere but in English
heraldry, and English devices, harts figured as lodged beneath green
trees in a park as in Nos. 1283-4, p. 43, or stags couchant, with a
chain about the neck, as at pp. 53, 239, and in both samples gazing
upward to the sun behind a cloud, it would appear that they were but
varieties of the pattern sketched for the silken stuffs worn by Richard
II., and admirably shown on that valuable, yet hitherto overlooked
specimen of English mediæval workmanship in copper and engraving still
to be found in Westminster Abbey, as we before observed,[435] and the
symbolism of which we now explain. The pattern of the silken textile
worn by the king consists of but three elements--the broom-pod, the
sun’s rays darting upwards from behind a cloud, and a stag lying down
on the grass, looking right forward, with about its neck a royal crown,
down from which falls a long chain. The broom tells, of course, that
Richard was a Plantagenet. His grandfather’s favourite cognizance was
that of sunbeams issuing from clouds; his mother’s--Joan, the fair maid
of Kent--the white hart. The latter two were evidently meant to bring
to mind the words of the Psalmist, who says:--“The heavens show forth
the glory of God. He hath set His tabernacle in the sun. The Lord is
my light, and His throne as the sun.” The white hind brings to our
thoughts how the hart panting for the water-fountains, is likened to
the soul that pants after God. This symbolism is unfolded into a wider
breadth upon the design for the stuffs here, No. 1310, p. 53; No.
8624, p. 239. Here, instead of the sunbeams shooting upwards, as if to
light the whole heavens, they dart downward, as if for the individual
stag with upturned gaze, amid a gentle shower of rain; as if to say
that if man look heavenward by prayer, light will be sent down to him,
and helping grace, like rain, like the shower upon the grass to slake
his ghostly thirst.
[435] P. cxx.
About the time of Richard II. the white hart seems to have been a
favourite element in ornamental needlework here in England, for Lincoln
cathedral had “a red velvet cope set with white harts lying, colours
(with collars?) full of these letters S S ... the harts having crowns
upon their necks with chains, silver and gilt,” &c.[436] So thoroughly
national at the time was this emblem that we believe every piece of
silken textile to be found here or elsewhere had its design sketched
in this country and sent to Palermo to be woven there in stuffs for
the use of the English court. When his order had been done, the weaver
having his loom geared at our king’s expense, threw off a certain
quantity of the same pattern for home use or his trade with Germany;
and hence we see such a beautiful variation figured on the apparels
upon the old alb, No. 8710, p. 268 of the catalogue. The eagle shown
all in gold, with a crown not on but above its head, may refer to one
of Richard’s ancestors, the King of the Romans, who never reigned as
such. The hart, collared and lodged in its park, is Richard’s own
emblem. That dog, collared and courant, has a story of its own in
Richard’s eventful life. Dogs when petted and great favourites, were
always arrayed in ornamented collars; hence we must not be surprised
to find put down among the things of value kept in the Treasury of the
Exchequer:--“ii grehondes colers of silk enbrouded with lettres of gold
and garnyssed with silver and overgilt.”[437] Telling of Richard’s
capture in Flint castle by the Earl of Derby, soon afterwards Henry
IV., Froissart says:--“King Richard had a greyhound called Math,
beautiful beyond measure who would not notice nor follow any one but
the king. Whenever the king rode abroad the greyhound was loosed by
the person who had him in charge, and ran instantly to caress him, by
placing his two fore feet on his shoulders. It fell out that as the
king and the Duke of Lancaster were conversing in the court of the
castle, their horses being ready for them to mount, the greyhound was
untied, but instead of running as usual to the king, he left him, and
leaped to the Duke of Lancaster’s shoulders, paying him every court,
and caressing him as he was formerly used to caress the king. The duke
asked the king, ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Cousin,’ replied the king, ‘it
means a great deal for you, and very little for me. This greyhound
fondles and pays his court to you this day as King of England.’”[438]
That such a pet as Math once so given to fawn upon his royal master
should, with other emblematic animals, have been figured in the pattern
on a textile meant for its master’s wear, or that of his court, seems
very likely: and thus the piece before us possesses a more than
ordinary interest.
[436] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1281, ed. Caley.
[437] Antient Kalendars and Inventories, ed. Palgrave, t. ii. p. 252.
[438] Froissart’s Chronicles, by Johnes, t. ii. chap. cxiii. p. 692.
Respecting ecclesiastical symbolism, we have to observe that with
regard to the subjects figured upon these liturgical embroideries, we
may see at a glance, that the one untiring wish, both of the designer
and of those who had to wear those vestments, was to set before the
people’s eyes and to bring as often as possible to their mind the
divinity of Christ, strongly and unmistakably, along with the grand
doctrine of the Atonement. Whether it be cope, or chasuble, or reredos,
or altar-frontal such a teaching is put forth upon it. Beginning with
the divinity of our Saviour’s manhood, sometimes we have shown us how,
with such lowly reverence, Gabriel spoke his message to the Blessed
Virgin Mary with the mystic three-flowered lily standing up between
them; or the Nativity with the shepherds or the wise men kneeling in
adoration to acknowledge the divinity of our Lord even as a child
just born; then some event in His life, His passion, His scourging at
the pillar, the bearing of His cross, His being crowned with thorns,
always His crucifixion, often above that, His upraised person like
a king enthroned and crowning her of whom He had taken flesh; while
everywhere about the vestment are represented apostles, martyrs,
and saints all nimbed with glory, and among them, winged seraphim
standing upon wheels, signifying that heaven is now thrown open to
fallen but redeemed man, who, by the atonement wrought for him by our
Divine Redeemer, is made to become the fellow-companion of angels and
cherubim. To this same end, the black vestments worn at the services
for the dead were, according to the old English rite, marked; the
chasubles on the back with a green cross upon a red ground, the copes
with a red orphrey at their sides, to remind those present that while
they mourned their departed friend, they must believe that his soul
could never enter heaven unless made clean and regenerated by the
atoning blood shed for it on the cross.
At his dubbing, “unto a knight is given a sword, which is made in the
semblance of the cross, for to signify how our Lord God vanquished in
the cross the death of human lineage, to the which he was judged for
the sin of our first father Adam.” This we are told in the “Order of
Chivalry,” translated by Caxton.[439] While stretched wounded and dying
on the battle-field, some friendly hand would stick a sword into the
ground before the expiring knight, that as in its handle he beheld this
symbol of the cross, he might forgive him who had struck him down, as
he hoped forgiveness for himself, through the atonement paid for him on
the cross at Calvary.
[439] Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, t. i. p. 234.
The ages of chivalry were times of poetry, and we therefore feel no
surprise on finding that each young knight was taught to learn that
belonging to every article of his armour, to every colour of his
silken array, there was a symbolism which he ought to know. All these
emblematic significations are set forth in the “Order of Chivalry,”
which we just now quoted. The work is very rare, but the chapter on
this subject is given by Ames in his “Typographical Antiquities of
Great Britain;”[440] as well as in “Lancelot du Lac” modernized and
printed in the “Bibliothèque Bleu,” pp. 11, 12. In that black silk
chasuble with a red orphrey upon which our Lord is figured hanging upon
a green cross--“cum crucifixo pendente in viridi cruce,”[441] it was
for a particular reason that the colour of this wood for the cross is
specified: as green is the tint of dress put on by the new-born budding
year, which thus foretells of flowers and fruits in after months, so
was this same colour the symbol of regeneration for mankind, and the
promise of paradise hereafter. For such a symbolic reason is it that,
upon the wall painting lately brought again to light in West Somerton
Church, Norfolk, our uprisen Lord is shown stepping out of the grave,
mantled in green, with the banner of the resurrection in His left hand,
and giving a blessing with His upraised right. At all times, and in
every land, the “Language of Flowers” has been cultivated, and those
who now make it their study will find much to their purpose in Chaucer,
especially in his “Flower and the Leaf.” There speaking of “Diane,
goddesse of chastite,” the poet says:--
And for because that she a maiden is,
In her hond the braunch she beareth this,
That agnus castus men call properly;
* * * * *
And tho that weare chapelets on their hede
Of fresh woodbind, be such as never were
Of love untrue in word, thought ne dede,
But aye stedfast, &c.[442]
[440] Ibid.
[441] Oliver, p. 134.
[442] Works, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 259.
Were it not for this symbolism for the woodbine, we had been quite
unable to understand why in our old testamentary bequests, the flower
should have been so especially mentioned as we find in the will of Joan
Lady Bergavenny who, A.D. 1434, leaves to one of her friends, a “bed
of silk, black and red, embroidered with woodbined flowers of silver,”
&c.[443] Besides its symbolism of those colours--black and red--for
which we have but this moment given the reasons, p. cxlix., the funeral
cope which we noticed before, p. cxxvi., showed a symbolism of flowers
in the woodbine wrought upon it. Sure may we be that the donor’s
wish--perhaps the fingers of a weeping widow had worked it for Lincoln
Cathedral--was to tell for her in after days the unfaltering love she
ever bore towards her husband, and to say so every time this vestment
happened to be worn at the services sounded for him. May be that quaint
old likeness of Anne Vavasour, exhibited here A.D. 1868 among the
“National Portraits,” and numbered 680, p. 138 of the Catalogue, had
its background trailed all over with branches of the woodbine in leaf,
at the particular behest of a fond spouse Sir H. Lee, and so managed
that the plant’s only cyme of flower should hang just below her bosom.
By Shakespeare floral symbolism was well understood; and he often shows
his knowledge of it in “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii. He gives
us several meanings of flower-speech, and when he makes (Henry VIII.
act iv. scene ii.) Queen Katherine say to Griffith “Farewell--when I am
dead--strew me over with maiden flowers, that all the world may know I
was a chaste wife to my grave,” he tells of an olden custom still kept
up among us, and more fully carried out in Wales and the Western parts
of England, where the grave of a dear departed one is weekly dressed by
loving hands with the prettiest flowers that may be had. The symbolism
of colours is learnedly treated by Portal in his “Couleurs Symboliques.”
The readers of those valuable inventories of the chasubles, copes,
and other liturgical silk garments which belonged to Exeter cathedral
and that of London, about the middle of the thirteenth century, will
not fail to observe that some of them bore, amongst other animals,
the horse, and fish of different sorts, nay, porpoises figured on
them: “una capa de palla cum porphesiis et leonibus deauratis,”[444]
“due cape de palla cum equis et avibus,”[445] “unum pulvinar
breudatum avibus, piscibus et bestiis,”[446] “capa de quodam panno
Tarsico, viridis coloris cum pluribus piscibus et rosis aurifilo
contextis.”[447] Even here, under No. 8229, p. 151, we have from the
East a small shred of crimson silk, which shows on it a flat-shaped
fish. If to some minds it be a subject of wonderment that, amid flowers
and fruits, not only birds and beasts--elephants included--but such odd
things as fish, even the porpoise, are to be found represented upon
textiles chosen for the service of the altar, they should learn that
all such stuffs were gladly put to this very use for the symbolism they
carried, by accident, about them. Then, as now, the clergy had to say,
and the people to listen daily to that canticle: “O all ye works of
the Lord, bless ye the Lord; O ye angels of the Lord, O ye whales, and
all that move in the waters, O ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts
and cattle, bless ye the Lord and magnify Him for ever!” Not merely
churchmen, but the lay folks, deemed it but fitting that while the
prayer above was being offered up, an emphasis should be given to its
words by the very garment worn by the celebrant as he uttered them.
[443] Test. Vet. i. 228.
[444] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 299.
[445] Ibid.
[446] St. Paul’s, p. 316.
[447] Ibid. p. 318.