8342.
Linen Napkin, or rather Sindon or Pyx-cloth, the borders embroidered with coloured silks and silver-thread. Perhaps Flemish, 16th century. 18½ inches by 16½ inches.
In more senses than one this small linen cloth is of great value, being, in the first place, a liturgical appliance of the mediæval period, now unused in this form, certainly unique in this country, and hardly ever to be met with on the continent, either in private hands or public collections. According to ancient English custom, the pyx containing particles of the Blessed Eucharist for giving, at all hours of day or night, the Holy Communion to the dying, and kept hanging up over the high altar of every church in this land, was overspread with one of such fine linen and embroidered veils, as may be seen in an illumination from the “Life of St. Edmund, King and Martyr,” in the Harley Collection, British Museum, and engraved in the “Church of our Fathers,” t. iv. p. 206.
The readers of English history will, no doubt, feel an interest in this specimen, when they learn that, with such a linen napkin, Mary Queen of Scots had her face muffled just before she laid her head upon the block: “Then the maid, Kennedy, took a handkerchief, edged with gold, in which the Eucharist had formerly been enclosed, and fastened it over her eyes.” “Pict. Hist. of England, ed. Knight,” t. ii. p. 671. Knight is wrong in saying that the Holy Eucharist had ever been immediately enclosed in this cloth, which is only the veil that used to be cast over the pyx or small vessel in which the consecrated hosts were kept, as we observed in the introduction, § 5.