8279A.
Linen Napkin, for a Crozier; of very fine linen, and various embroideries. German, late 14th century. 2 feet 10 inches by 6 feet.
Such napkins are very great liturgical curiosities, as the present one, and another in this collection, are the only specimens known in this country; and perhaps such another could not be found on any part of the Continent, the employment of them having been for a very long time everywhere left off. Its top, like a high circular-headed cap, 4¾ inches by 4 inches, is marked with a diapering, on one side lozengy, on the other checky, ground crimson, and filled in with the gammadion or filfot in one form or another. On the lozenges this gammadion is parti-coloured, green, yellow, white, purple; in the checks, all green, yellow, white, and purple. Curiously enough, the piece of vellum used as a stiffening for this cap is a piece of an old manuscript about some loan, and bears the date of the year 1256. The slit up the middle of the linen, 11 inches long, is bordered on both edges with a linen woven lace, 1½ inches broad, embroidered on one side of the slit with L, one of the forms of the gammadion; on the other with the saltire, or St. Andrew’s cross; the gammadion and saltire are wrought in purple, green, crimson (faded), or yellow, each of one colour, and not mixed, as in one part of the cap. These two edgings brought together, and thus running up for the space of 6 inches, are stopped by a piece of woven silk lace, 3¼ inches by 2 inches, and figured with the filfot or gammadion. The linen is very fine, and of that kind which, in the middle ages, was called “bissus;” tent-like in shape, and closed, it hung in full folds. Its gold and silken cords, of various colours, as well as those large well-platted knobs of silk and gold by which it was strung to the upper part of the crozier, are all quite perfect; and an account of this ornament is given in the “Church of Our Fathers,” t. ii. p. 210. Dr. Bock has given a figure of the present one in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 4 Lieferung, pl. xiv. fig. i; and another specimen will be found here, No. 8662.